After delivering a haunting episode filled with powerhouse performances by Kieran Culkin, and surprisingly, James Cromwell, the Succession series finale is now less than a week away. When it arrives, it will be the longest episode ever for the prestige series that has already seen its runtime stretch past the hour mark in its fourth and final season.
Clocking in at 90 minutes, the Succession series finale will play like a feature film when it arrives on Memorial Day weekend, according to the show’s composer Nicholas Brittell.
“It’s 90 minutes,” Britell told Variety. “It’s a huge episode — like a movie.”
Of course, Succession fans will be used to the runtime after the penultimate episode, which clocked in at 1 hour and 21 minutes and practically breezed by thanks to the taut wheeling and dealings happening amidst the funeral for family patriarch Logan Roy.
As for why the series is ending after just four seasons, the answer is simple: Creator Jesse Armstrong wanted to “go out strong.”
“I went into the writing room for Season 4 sort of saying, ‘I think this is what we’re doing, but let’s also keep it open,’” Armstrong told The New Yorker ahead of the Season 4 premiere. “I like operating the writing room by coming in with a sort of proposition, and then being genuinely open to alternative ways of going. And the decision to end solidified through the writing and even when we started filming: I said to the cast, ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but I think this is it.’ Because I didn’t want to bullsh*t them, either.”
The Succession series finale airs May 28 on HBO.
(Via Variety)