Succession's Season 3 finale was a perfect episode of television -- and, with a few exceptions, an uncanny patchwork of things that already happened

The Atlantic

"As in the Season 2 finale, 'This Is Not for Tears,' someone mistakenly referred to Kendall as the 'eldest son,' infuriating Connor," says Sophie Gilbert. "(Not for nothing is his family nickname the 'first pancake.') Just like Season 1’s 'Nobody Is Ever Missing,' there was a wedding, not that anyone really cared. Once again, Mark Mylod (who’s directed all three finales) arranged Kendall in a way that alluded to High Renaissance art—his crumpling in the dust as he confessed, with his brother and sister reluctantly flanking him in the corrupted shape of a heart, reminded me of the Bandini Pietà, also known as “The Deposition.” Again, Logan managed to thwart an alliance against him through luck and bile. And again, there was a physical expression of both affection and betrayal that evoked The Godfather: Part II. Will Succession always be exactly like this, over and over? Do we even want it to change? I wasn’t fully on board with the first season until 'Austerlitz,' an episode that mined some of the rot in the Roy family tree while also suggesting that the siblings had the redeeming ability to occasionally care about one another. Season 2, with its excursions and civil wars, was more evenly structured and entirely compelling throughout. But Season 3 has seemed to affirm that this show will always save the goods for the very end. If you just can hold on through the profane politicking and the egomaniacal expressionism and the endless penis wordplay, Succession says, you’ll be rewarded with some of the most devastating drama that’s ever aired on television."

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• Nothing changed and everything changed in Season 3: "The promotional materials for Succession’s third season were largely head fakes toward a grand war between Kendall and Logan," says Emily VanDerWerff. "But that war had mostly fizzled out by the end of the season’s second episode when Kendall’s siblings refused to join his quest to take down their dad. (Go back and watch that episode. It’s remarkable just how much Kendall’s pitch for the future of Waystar-Royco matches what Mattson, the tech CEO of Gojo, pitches to Logan. Kendall really did know what he was doing.) That head fake led to some complaints that the show was just endlessly repeating itself. To me, that was the season’s point: The Roy kids are all battling endlessly over something that ultimately doesn’t matter, because their dad likes pitting them against each other and they are too traumatized to see that. All the same, I could see the argument that the show was somehow turning itself into a fatuous sitcom where absolutely nothing mattered. What’s notable about 'All the Bells Say' is that within it, several big changes seem to occur. Logan is proceeding with the deal with Gojo, cutting his children not just out of the deal but out of the financial windfall it will afford him (and only him). The siblings’ mother betrays them. Tom betrays Shiv. Willa says she’ll marry Connor (who gets the most sincere moments of screen time he probably ever has). Greg is maybe going to become king of Luxembourg. But the season preceding this episode underscores that none of this will ultimately matter."
• The defense of Succession's plot sloppiness -- that it's a show about character, not plot -- doesn't make sense: "I have to admit that distinction doesn’t make sense to me, since plot ideally creates the conditions that reveal character," says Lili Loufbourow. "Shiv, for instance, hasn’t made a lot of sense to me this season; her brutal indifference to Tom’s incarceration doesn’t seem to square with whatever mild awakening she had then. Her rages—which seem like breaking points to someone who doesn’t tolerate ego injuries well—never seem to extend to the next episode; she seems to forget all about them and remains cordial, witty and affable with people I thought she was ready to kill. (Particularly Roman and her dad.) I also don’t really understand why Logan—whose whole driving motivation has been to keep control—has suddenly gotten lackadaisical and sees losing his supremacy as “winning.” Money has never mattered to him as much as control. (Remember the ruinously expensive Pierce acquisition he was attempting?) And sure, the Department of Justice fine is going to be big, but it still seems like a slap on the wrist relative to what could have happened; I don’t see how the Logan who wanted to defy the FBI—that’s how little he thought their actions would affect the company’s fortunes, and he’s a guy who prides himself on <i>creating the climate—is happy to leave power to make babies with Kerry in order to turn the kids from his second marriage into Connors. He’s a dynasty guy and I don’t think he’d be so impressed with Matson that he’d decide the 'Roy' part of Waystar/Royco no longer mattered. Maybe he’s just so surrounded by cowering sycophants that he found it kind of bracing when Matson called him old to his face? Who knows. But never mind: I loved the finale, and one bit of psychological plotting that does make perfect gorgeous sense, and was deftly threaded throughout, is Tom’s betrayal of Shiv. Such a terrific development, nicely foreshadowed by the Sporus moment with Greg (which begins with Nero killing his pregnant wife). What did you make of that incredible twist? And had it happened before? Did Tom, for instance, warn Logan the kids had gathered at Rava’s place? Is Tom indirectly responsible for the doughnuts?"
• Logan Roy is a winner simply because he exists: "If Succession were a lesser show, Logan’s sudden reversal in desires would scan as bad storytelling," says Tom Ley. "If this were not a show about literal planet-destroying oligarchs, Logan telling his children that his priorities have shifted so dramatically simply because he 'feels it in his bones' could be held up as evidence of the show’s writers losing the plot and just throwing shit at the wall. But on this show, the fact that Logan can just change what was supposed to be his defining character trait on a whim, give up the thing that he has always been fighting to maintain, and still declare himself a winner is evidence of just how well Succession understands its characters and the world they exist in. The fact that Logan can just change the rules and conditions of the game with a snap of his fingers is the point; 'winning' is and always has been whatever he chooses to define it as because that’s what planet-destroying oligarchs get to do. It’s not the billions that Logan will receive for selling his company that makes him a winner. Nor is it the fact that he has taken something away from his own children. Logan is a winner simply because he exists. He lives in the sort of insulated environment in which it is impossible for him to ever truly lose. Succession is about a lot of things, and one of them is the ways in which the richest, most powerful, and most sociopathic people in America go about shaping the world that the rest of us have to live in. These people have the power that they do, in part, because they can describe and manifest the world to fit whatever vision most pleases them. At times, the show gets this point across in ways that are a little bit ham-fisted. As great as Justin Kirk’s performance was in this season’s sixth episode as an amalgamation of Donald Trump/Jordan Peterson/Tucker Carlson, the appearance of such real-world stand-in characters can sometimes make it feel like the show is laying things on a little too thick. Succession’s attempts to grapple with and explain the world it is set in are much more affecting when those efforts unfold more subtly and through the actions of the main cast."
• Season 3 has been about the quiet, often sidelined transformation of Tom Wambsgans: "While the three main Roy siblings were scheming and striving and stabbing one another in the back, Tom became fully disillusioned," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "The family was willing to let him go to prison, and a part of him longed to go, hoping he would be able to escape the terrible limbo of being proximate to power but never respected enough to grab any for himself. The prospect of prison might also have been a way to demonstrate his worth to the family. In essence, it was Tom still trying to give Logan a present he might actually value."
• A lesser show would have rested happily on its laurels: "The third season of Succession started well then perhaps wandered a little far into the corporate weeds and let the family stuff, the emotional heft, fall by the wayside," says Lucy Mangan. "But the second half gathered everything back up and the last four or five episodes were first-class rehearsals for the sheer perfection of the finale; the story tighter than ever, the writing acute and subtle (and never more so than in the callback to Tom’s story of Sporus when, after Shiv’s call from the car, he asks Greg to throw his lot in with him once more), brilliantly funny and wounding by turns."
• Season 3 underlined the terrible potential of a boar evolving into a bully in bold: "One of the season’s sharpest and hardest to watch threads saw Roman (Kieran Culkin), the Roy who may or may not have asked his family to lock him in a cage for fun as a kid, realizing how much more fun it is to be a monstrous winner than a sore loser," says Caroline Framke. "The second Logan deigned to show him an ounce of respect — or, dare he hope, even affection? — Roman hardened his heart to match his father’s. He mirrored Logan’s tone and bombastic approach, mimicking his methods to remain in his good graces. He positioned a true-blue fascist to become the Republican Party favorite, both because he didn’t care to consider the actual consequences and because he saw a way to impress Logan with his ability to separate emotion from business. When he finally, literally pushes his brother Kendall (Jeremy Strong) in front of a laughing crowd, even his ruthless sister Shiv (Sarah Snook) can hardly believe just how completely Roman’s embraced the belligerent armor that their father has wielded against them time and time again. Once forced to look up at his betters (both literally and physically), Roman’s stature grows in both the narrative and meticulous directing as he transforms into the man who so forcefully put him in his place. Having spent most of his life belittled, dismissed, and physically battered by the one person he so desperately wants to please, of course Roman would jump at the chance to flip the script given the chance. Still: Roman’s a Roy, and as such, will always have protection and higher status that others can’t claim. As the bookends of 'Hunting' and 'All the Bells Say' make excruciatingly clear, the Tom Wambsgans and Greg Hirschs of the world have to fight harder, dirtier, and craftier to get off the floor and dangle sausages for the unlucky losers below."
• By the end of the season, the lack of ideological commitment feels like the show's most profound message: "Here is a band of ultra-rich, overgrown children who oversee a media operation doing genuine damage, every day, to American democracy — and none of them really talk about it," says David Faris. "Neither Logan nor any of his offspring seems bothered more than fleetingly by the grandparent-radicalizing scheme they operate. But more damningly, they don't seem to have an ideology at all. They aren't right-wing activists forged in some Heritage Foundation retreat, but rather a gaggle of profoundly damaged narcissists with daddy issues whose feckless maneuvers nevertheless have the practical impact of accelerating America's democratic decline. You could just as easily see them staging a takeover of MSNBC, so divorced is their plotting from any political project that has meaning to them."
• Succession is the ultimate dark British sitcom: "If you’re a Succession-head wondering what to watch next after the HBO hit stops dropping its hours of delectable awfulness with the Season 3 finale Sunday, may I recommend Peep Show?" says Chris Taylor. "The nine-season British sitcom is little known in the U.S. but regarded as one of the best of this century in the UK. Until Succession, Peep Show was what British showrunner Jesse Armstrong was most widely known for co-creating. It may focus on a council flat rather than the Elysian heights of the ultra-wealthy, but in its leads — ultra-serious Mark (David Mitchell) and everything’s-a-joke Jeremy (Robert Webb) — you will see the progenitors of Kendall and Roman with some Tom and Greg sprinkles. Every scene is shot from the POV of one of the characters, meaning they’re all effectively talking to you, looking you directly in the eye, occasionally kissing you. Peep Show unnerves even as it makes you laugh. It has Succession DNA shot right through it. Peep Show and the other major UK hit that Armstrong co-wrote, The Thick Of It, are the main reasons why I saw his Succession as a dark British sitcom from Season 1. One that hides behind a big budget, and an orchestral score to make everything sound soaring and tragic and fancy, but a dark British sitcom nonetheless."
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• J. Smith-Cameron weighs in on the finale and Gerri and Roman’s future: "That’s the million-dollar question," she says. "I don’t know, I’d like to think they have enough of a real connection that there’s something else coming — either they somehow make contact, even if it’s to be arch-enemies, or it takes the form of them being really furious with each other." 
• Brian Cox on the season finale twist: "Well, I kind of knew that was going to happen": "I was the one person who knew about that all the way through — I had been informed," Cox tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Normally, I don’t want to know about the scripts. But I was informed that was the trajectory we were going to go down. It was a little different from what they suggested, but it actually did come true." Cox adds: "Unfortunately, we had to lose some really wonderful, beautiful stuff because of time, because of edit and writers’ decisions and directors’ decisions...So it’s fascinating — just fascinating — what they have to choose because they have so much material. I think they could have gone to an hour and a half with that show, but they had to edit it. And they might have even got a 10th episode, I don’t know. There was certainly a lot of material that we sadly lost. I’m glad that we kept all that wonderful stuff of Connor’s about being the eldest son, I thought that was fantastic and very important because of the perspective and the selfishness of the three of them, and the fact that they only think of themselves. I mean, I can’t complain about the writing, it’s first-class. It’s a fantastic thing to be part of. I haven’t been part of anything like this in years, apart from working with David Milch (and) I’ve never had anything that’s remotely at that level of high expectation."
• In his memoir, Cox recalls some of the Season 3 directors giving the well-established cast some needless notes: He recalls how Kiernan Culkin was apparently told by a director to “slow down.” “Now this is an actor who’s calibrated the patterns of his character’s delivery over the course of two previous seasons,” Cox writes. “In that sense at least, the work is done, and unless the writing calls for it, he won’t be changing anytime soon. He’s not going to suddenly slow down just because you’ve given him a note. But that’s directors for you.” As for Jeremy Strong, Cox writes: “I just worry about what he does to himself; I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare. I just feel that he just has to be kinder to himself, and therefore has to be a bit kinder to everybody else.”
• Creator Jesse Armstrong would rather Succession feel true than surprising: Indiewire asked Armstrong, "When you’re in the writers’ room or the editing bay, do you consider viewer reactions to scenes that are somewhat open to interpretation? Do you worry about leading them too far down a speculative path, or do you simply trust the narrative and characters to speak for themselves?" Armstrong responded: "I think the kind of artist in me wants to say all the latter, and I think it is the latter. That stuff is not useful to me, and it’s not useful to us in the room I don’t think at all. Not that critics and interested viewers don’t have cool, valid things to say, but it’s just too much. It would be too much to take on board. The good thing for us is that we’re not as likely to get caught up in that stuff because I don’t intentionally lay any fake trails, I don’t think. I like the show to be a surprise. I don’t want everyone to know what’s going to happen. But I’d much prefer it to feel true than surprising. If it also feels surprising, then surprises happen in life and those are the kind of surprises I want. It might be more difficult if it was a different kind of story we’re telling, but I am always wanting to completely follow character and the reality of what would be happening to a big media company like this in the moment. You can’t completely keep the buzz out of your head, it would be inhuman, but you should (try)."