The bad news? Succession is coming to an end. The good news? It's going out on a high note.
Jesse Armstrong's Emmy-winning drama takes no prisoners in its fourth and final season. It's as unsparing and sharp as its predecessors, yet somehow manages to up the show's audacity to new heights. You thought finale twists like Kendall's (Jeremy Strong) betrayal of Logan (Brian Cox) or Logan's decision to sell Waystar Royco were game-changers? Get ready, because several moments in the first four episodes sent to critics eclipse those showstoppers. The words "brace yourselves" don't feel like enough.
Logan battles his children in Succession Season 4.
Following an explosive Season 3 finale that saw Logan distancing Kendall, Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) from Waystar — a definitive "fuck off" from the "fuck off" king — Season 4 of Succession picks up with the Roys in an all-out war.
Logan is in the final stages of selling Waystar to tech mogul Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), a deal that pushes out Kendall, Shiv, and Roman, who have plans to start up their own rival venture. Meanwhile, eldest Roy son Connor (Alan Ruck) continues his presidential bid with little success, and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Greg (Nicholas Braun) hold down the fort at ATN.
Succession has played with similar plotlines before, but here they reach their heightened, vicious conclusions. With the Roy siblings finally united against their father, the show's backstabbings and betrayals have never felt more raw. Business negotiations become riveting battlefields where the Roys tackle their personal problems with talk of financing and market caps. Passive aggressive swipes — including some scorchers that will surely wind up in the Succession insult pantheon — are further proof of the cutting ways this family finds to tear itself apart.
Succession's final season gets off to a thrilling start.
Succession has always been good, but it's the sense of finality that makes this season such a phenomenal watch. In a callback to the show's very first episode, Season 4 opens with Logan's birthday party. But with three of his four children avoiding him and the sale of his company mere days away, Logan finds himself in a vastly different place. It's an effective, almost poignant way to kick off the start of the season: There's no escaping that this is the beginning of the end.
With that end in sight, Succession pulls out the stops and goes bigger than it has before, making multiple daring choices in these four episodes alone that genuinely had me wondering, "Where can we go from here?"
Yet despite the season's boldest narrative chess moves, Succession never loses sight of the threads of hurt that run between each of its characters. In fact, Season 4 places Logan and his children at their most vulnerable points yet, both business-wise and emotionally. The push and pull between retaliation and any possibility of reconciliation drives these opening episodes and allows the always-incredible Succession ensemble to deliver some show-best performances.
It's tempting to feel sad about losing Succession. (I know that I'll have a tough time letting this show go.) But with such a bombastic start to Season 4, it's impossible to deny that we're going to get a top-tier closer to a top-tier drama. Succession may be ending, but it's ending on its own terms — and what terms they are.
Succession Season 4 premieres Mar. 26 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max(opens in a new tab), with new episodes airing weekly.
