SPOILERS from this week’s Succession will be found below.
Save for a last bit of psychological warfare with Roman and a few obscured body parts as his character lay dying, we barely got any Brian Cox magic last night as we bid adieu to Logan Roy on Succession. Weird as it is to say, it might be the first time in history that less Brian Cox was the right decision in a show or movie. But series creator and episode writer Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod knew exactly what they were doing — they were turning their toxic nepobabies into relatable and sympathy-worthy characters.
While Logan will return for a couple of flashback scenes, as Cox confirmed to Vulture, we know that his active presence on the show is basically complete and that he will be missed in ways that are hard to comprehend right now as we face a stretch run that could get quite ugly without him at the center.
Logan was intimidating, ferocious, frustrating, enthralling, dryly comedic, and even vulnerable on rare occasions. Brian Cox gave us a maximum performance that’ll be studied among the best in TV history. But following that tour de force last week with his seeming renewed vigor and his meager efforts to tie up loose ends on the family side before showing a peek of heart with his bodyguard/pal, what more was there to say?
How do you top this?
Or this?
Sure, Armstrong could have flipped Cox another slab of red meat to tear into with a big attention grabber of a death scene that would have overshadowed everything else with its actorly brilliance, but he and Mylod wanted to avoid cliches (as Mylod confirmed on the Succession podcast). They also wanted to put the audience and the Roy kids on the same footing during the chaos of that 28-page one-shot scene as the kids speedily ran through the stages of grief, their poses from the karaoke bar and smugness shattered with the hammer of hopelessness and loss.
This season began with Shiv, Roman, and Kendall perched in a luxurious lair, toying with the idea of a new media company like the bored Gods that they are. For all of their endearing ridiculousness, the power of the show’s amazing writing and tremendous acting, and the real trauma of being raised and crushed by Logan and his toxic demands and actions, the kids are, at their core, rotten. They’re entitled brats. But last night, none of their power or money made a bit of difference as they sat all alone on a crowded superyacht. And seeing them reckon with those limitations mattered because we all feel that way and all confront our limitations in that moment.
“No, I can’t have that.” – Shiv Roy
This show about billionaires tugged on a relatable thread, recreating the nightmare that is being caught in the moment between finding out a loved one is likely and definitely gone, especially when that nightmare happens from a world away with only the hollow substitute of technology to act as a bridge. Something many of us have had to deal with.
“My dad is dead and now I feel old.” – Connor Roy
Death is sudden even when it isn’t. It’s messy, destabilizing, and forces people to confront their own mortality and call upon instinct even when they spend their lives trying to suppress it. Note the reflexive “I love yous” and Kendall standing firm in his conviction to not forgive while also, basically undercutting that same statement in his own farewell call. Look at Connor, falling into the habits formed by a lifetime of self-blame, missing the latest instance of his siblings treating him like an afterthought while costing him the chance to say goodbye to his father.
It would have been interesting to see Brian Cox get to play being on the other end of those calls, reckoning with the end and what it meant for his character’s relationship with his children. Same as it would have been powerful to see Logan bowed, pale and panicked while brought to the gates of his own mortality with all the fear and questions that brings. But we’ve seen those things before across the expanse of this amazing show, or at least moments that conjured those same feelings. How many times do we need to see the magic trick to be sufficiently amazed?
We haven’t seen the Roy kids this helpless, this shaken, this human before. I’m at a loss trying to think of another show that has ever delved into grief so intensely in such a concentrated dose before. That one-shot scene is as jaw-dropping as it was uncomfortable and resets this show in a way, challenging Kendall, Shiv, Roman, and Connor to react to and be changed by this in ways that are sure to be compelling, wrongheaded, possibly ruinous, or maybe profound.
Last night, Succession stopped being about the giant that was Logan Roy. Next week, it’ll be about the world without him and how sycophants scatter and scrape as industries, governments, and economies move on. The kids will be front and center, for better or worse. But for a pocket of time last night it was about the loss of a father – a surprising reminder that all these treasures, rivalries, and games are utterly meaningless in the end.