The Heartless Mirror of HBO's Succession
Introduction
In an era of engrossing modern television narratives, few small-screen dramas have been as gripping and culturally significant as HBO's Succession. The series, which premiered in 2018, delves into the world of the ultra-rich Roy family, who control one of the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerates.
Roys’ pursuit of power, the familial infighting, and the lavish displays of wealth have become the cornerstone of water cooler conversations and cultural discourse. The Emmy-winning drama has earned acclaim for its complex characters, sharp writing, and incisive commentary on wealth, power, and family dynamics in our contemporary world.
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At its core, Succession explores the concept embedded in its title. Traditionally, succession refers to inheriting a title, office, property, or entire empire. It is often associated with orderly progression, a transition from generation to generation. However, within the context of the Roy family, the term takes on a decidedly more contentious and complex nature. Succession becomes not merely an act of inheritance but a battleground of power dynamics, loyalty, betrayal, and survival.
The finale of Succession concludes the exploration of power, the portrayal of the consequences of wealth disparity, and the examination of moral ambiguity within family and corporate life structures. This essay aims to unpack Succession's cultural meaning and implications, examining how this show speaks to and shapes our understanding of power, privilege, family, and ethics in the modern age.
Analysis of Main Themes and Characters
Profiting from Misery of Suffering
Succession shines a harsh spotlight on the underbelly of corporate authority and power structures, exposing the ruthless tactics and relentless ambition necessary to climb the proverbial ladder. In the world of the Roys, power is the ultimate prize — a currency more valuable than wealth itself. Logan Roy’s paradigm is that wealth is the natural by-product of power, which he covets and weaponizes as a tool for manipulation and control within his corporate and family realms.
His company, Waystar Royco, closely resembles the real media empire named after a wily little forest creature, which has nearly destroyed global faith in the institutions of Democracy after soaking news and discussion in the kerosene rag of outrage and lighting it on fire for millions every night, every year for decades.
The dynamics between Logan Roy, the patriarch, and his children — Kendall, Shiv, and Roman — embody a continual power struggle. Each character's pursuit of authority often reflects their personality and ethical boundaries, intriguingly exploring power dynamics within a family business context. Still, all the Roy children strive for and never fully attain their father’s approval or outward affection.
One of the great ironies of Succession is that Logan Roy’s primary weakness in acquiring and keeping power is the love for his children, a weakness that the ultimate successor will not possess. The great tragedy of this show is that despite the depth of affection for his children, Logan Roy cannot convey how much he loves them. His humanity has been eradicated through years of manipulating cynical conspiracies for profit, pitting humans against each other in a made-up game where only a few win and only for a short time, as long as succession is successful.
Furthermore, the hierarchical structures of Waystar Royco mirror real-world corporate power structures and their impacts. The series exposes the dubious moral and ethical decisions that often accompany the consolidation of power in any large company, suggesting that authority is rarely attained without the personal cost of losing humanity and crossing moral and sometimes criminal lines of demarcation.
In the series finale, these themes of power and authority are brought to a head and used as a battering ram to destroy what little love and dignity there was between the three Roy children while clearing the way for the natural heir to Logan’s Roy’s empire to assume the throne under the Law of the Jungle.
Why Cronos Swallowed His Children
A portion of Cronos Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya, circa 1819-1823
"Cronus Devouring His Son" is a painting by Francisco Goya, created around 1819–1823, and it's part of a series of 14 "Black Paintings" that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house. This painting portrays the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (known as Saturn in Roman mythology), who, fearing that he would be overthrown by one of his children, devoured each one upon their birth.
Logan Roy may have wished from time to time that his children had died in their cribs. Despite their immense wealth and privilege, the Roys are marred by a fundamental lack of trust. What should be a genuine emotional connection in the diamond-sharpened presence of opulence and immense power to move the world has been replaced with ongoing competition for control and recognition, each child seeking their father's approval in vain while those who depend on them die in the vine from water that will not flow forward. In addition, every member of the Roy family brings a distinct personality and set of motivations to the table, further complicating their relations.
Let’s briefly explore each main character individually by understanding their motivations, fears, and primary character flaws.
Logan Roy, Patriarch
Motivation: Keep control and maintain power over Waystar Royco, his media and entertainment empire, and preserve his legacy as the most extraordinary business titan in the universe's history.
Fear: Losing his authority and influence by becoming irrelevant and incapacitated due to his deteriorating health.
Major Shortcoming: His ruthlessness and inability to show genuine affection towards his children led to a lack of trust and emotional connection within the family.
Connor Roy, Eldest son from Logan’s first marriage
Motivation: Seeks relevance and significance unconventionally, such as his political aspirations and lavish lifestyle.
Fear: Being overlooked or dismissed by his family and society due to his lack of involvement in Waystar Royco.
Major Shortcoming: Naivety and detachment from reality, demonstrated by his unrealistic ambitions and ignorance about fundamental social and economic facts.
Kendall Roy, 2nd eldest son from Logan’s second marriage
Motivation: Proving his worth and capability to lead Waystar Royco and earning his father's approval.
Fear: Failing to meet his high expectations and becoming a disappointment to his father and his siblings and children.
Major Shortcoming: Lack of solid will and decision-making skills, often buckling under pressure and showing a tendency towards self-destruction.
Roman Roy, The middle child from Logan’s second marriage
Motivation: Proving his worth and capability to lead Waystar Royco and earning his father's approval.
Fear: Being seen as incompetent and lesser than his siblings.
Major Shortcoming: Immaturity and lack of seriousness, often resorting to humor to mask his insecurities, and failing to follow through on responsibilities. The last two episodes reveal what may be a profound mental illness.
Siobhan 'Shiv' (Wambsgans) Roy, the Youngest child from Logan’s second marriage
Motivation: Establishing her own identity and power, both within the family and in the political landscape. Also, proving her worth and capability to lead Waystar Royco and earning her father’s approval.
Fear: Being manipulated or controlled by others, especially her father, husband, and brothers.
Major Shortcoming: Overconfidence and underestimating her opponents, leading to critical tactical errors in her pursuit of power.
Caroline (Roy) Collingwood, Logan’s second wife
Motivation: Maintaining her independence and lifestyle after divorcing Logan and keeping some semblance of a relationship with her children, albeit often from a distance.
Fear: Losing her remaining influence and connection with her children and being entirely disconnected from the Roy family.
Major Shortcoming: Emotional detachment and lack of maternal warmth, seeming more interested in her own well-being and interests than the emotional needs of her children.
Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s Husband and President of ATN
Motivation: Ascending the corporate and social ladder within the Roy family, securing his position by marrying Shiv, and gaining respect from the family, particularly Logan.
Fear: Being exposed as incompetent or humiliated and losing his place within the Roy family or his marriage to Shiv.
Major Shortcoming: Overt ambition and sycophancy can often lead to his overlooking ethical boundaries, and he sometimes fails to stand up for himself, especially with Shiv and the Roys.
Greg Hirsch, Logan’s nephew, and honorless corporate soldier
Motivation: Navigating his way through the complexities of the Roy family dynamics and securing his position within Waystar Royco, often by aligning with the right people at the right time.
Fear: Being ostracized or fired, losing his newfound wealth and status, and falling back into insignificance and poverty.
Major Shortcoming: Naivety and lack of experience in the high-stakes world of the Roys leads to Greg being manipulated. However, he learns how to play the game as the series progresses and is one of the few to make it through on the other side of the merger with Gojo.
Ewan Roy, Logan’s estranged brother
Motivation: Unlike his younger brother, Ewan has chosen to live in solitude and isolation on his ranch in Canada. Although he holds significant shares in Waystar Royco, Ewan is often vocally critical of the company's ethics and actions, especially the news division's unscrupulous tactics and sensationalism. Ewan's primary motivation seems to be preserving the integrity and moral standards in business and his personal life.
Fear: Ewan's greatest fear is likely seeing Greg succumb to the same ethical compromises and cut-throat business tactics he perceives in Logan's operation. He also seems to fear the detrimental societal impact of the misinformation spread by Waystar Royco's news division. These are the show's most essential fears; cynically, they are completely ignored by every other character to impressive ruin.
Major Shortcoming: His rigid, uncompromising stance on holding his principles. While these attributes attest to his integrity, they also strain and break his relationships, particularly with Greg, who often finds himself torn between his grandfather’s warnings and the allure of the Roy family empire. Moreover, Ewan's approach can sometimes come off as self-righteous or overly critical, which can push away those he is trying to influence. There is a proper way to tell someone to go fuck themselves, and Ewan has never found it.
Marriage is Either a Weakness or a Liability
Succession depicts matrimony as another layer of manipulation and emotional exploitation. The marriages within the Roy family are more like strategic alliances between warring nations than genuine partnerships rooted in love and sacrifice. This underscores how these characters instrumentalize personal relationships in their pursuit of power.
There is no knowledge of love for any of these pitiful characters, and each is morally lower than the proverbial homeless, crazy person on the street who can at least still cry over the pain they witness all around them.
The Morality and Ethics of a Black Hole
Succession presents a challenging moral landscape where ethical boundaries are often blurred or ignored in pursuing power for the wealth of control. Each character in the series wrestles with moral dilemmas, often choosing self-interest over ethical and legal actions.
The Roy family's handling of scandals, ruthless business tactics, and treatment of those outside their elite circle all point to a warped moral compass fueled by wealth and privilege. As the patriarch, Logan Roy sets much of this tone, placing the survival of his empire above all else, even at high personal and ethical costs.
In the wake of Logan’s death in the middle of the final season, Waystar Royco’s daily assault on Democracy through manufactured outrage and consent is their primary source of profit. Still, their decision to call an election under highly dubious circumstances has undermined the state of order. Moreover, they threatened to upend what little global security remains according to what their anchors say to the audience daily, always poking them with a red-hot fire iron.
However, Succession is more than a display of the immorality of the rich and powerful. Over 30 hours of intense drama, this show delves into the personal ethical conflicts that each character experiences and some they share.
Let’s consider some of the worst moral behavior of these characters and introduce the true successor for the final part of our exploration.
Logan Roy manipulates and pits his children against each other to secure his control over Waystar Royco. He is also revealed to have covered up devastating sexual misconduct allegations within his company and arranged for a murder that his son committed to “go away.”
Kendall Roy, while under the influence, drives off a bridge resulting in the death of a young server. Kendall flees the scene, failing to report the incident to the police. Instead, he relies on the cunningness and immorality of his father to protect him from standing trial for his mortal sin.
Siobhan Roy manipulates her husband, Tom, throughout their relationship, often neglecting his feelings and belittling him. She even offers Tom’s freedom as an imprisonable sacrifice for her father to cover up the company's wrongdoings.
Roman Roy’s moral transgressions are more subtle but include a general lack of empathy towards his family and co-workers and a willingness to sabotage his siblings for personal gain. He is also guilty of abusing love in his complex relationship with Gerri, an older matron of the Waystar Royco empire and the closest thing to a mother than Roman has ever had.
Connor Roy has delusions of grandeur and exploits his relationship with Willa, a woman he keeps financially dependent on him, even through their vacant marriage.
Tom Wambsgans has no self-respect or soul. He is complicit in the cover-up of sexual harassment cases within the company's cruise division, even destroying evidence. He also pressures Greg to participate in these unethical actions. In addition, Tom morally betrays his wife many times and is loyal only to his survival and self-protection.
Greg Hirsch participates in destroying crucial documents to cover up the cruise division scandal under Tom's direction. However, he saves some documents as insurance, demonstrating a degree of cunning and self-preservation at the expense of others. Greg plays both sides right up to the end when he sells his soul to Tom to secure his future outside of poverty.
Caroline Collingwood (Roy) maintains a distant relationship with her children and often prioritizes her interests over their emotional needs. Her neglect is a contributing factor to the dysfunction within the Roy family. She abandoned her children to the cynicism and emotional brutality of Logan Roy.
Ewan Roy could have been a better influence on his brother. There may have been a time in their young lives when a more profound, more honest, and emotional connection between the brothers could have better guided Logan’s hands and mouth as he created a global media and entertainment empire that has turned into a cyanide pill for Western civilization. Instead, he watches the world crumble in silence from his private cabin deep in the woods and far away.
Lukas Matsson
It’s time to introduce the Successor, Lukas Matsson. He is the CEO of a Norwegian tech company that runs more effective digital communications than Waystar, which is old and heavy with ancient formatting and treacherous government restrictions.
Motivation: Matsson is chaotic-neutral. He is equally okay with being the wealthiest man in a world that runs smoothly and safely or sitting on a throne of ashes after it’s all burned down.
Fear: Human connection that is not transactional.
Major Shortcoming: Matsson has no morality or concept of love. He finds these strange delusions that others suffer from a significant liability with an opportunity to dismantle the world's institutions while profiting from their destruction.
Why does Matsson win? It’s a fair argument that Logan Roy chose this man as his true successor because he knew Matsson would do to his children what Logan could not — set them free from this poisonous Waystar dragon he conjured from the darkest hole in the Earth, which is, of course, the human heart.
So Logan made a deal with Matsson that his children would be the beneficiaries of the most significant wealth ever passed from one generation to the subsequent, wealth that would last long beyond their incompetence and deep character flaws.
Finally, Logan Roy chose Matsson because he did not suffer from Logan’s primary and ironic weakness, love for his children, even though it expressed itself in the most demented and emotionally abusive ways.
Gender, Sexual Power Dynamics, and the Cynical End of Me Too
The Me Too Movement has led to a necessary global conversation about sexual harassment and assault, fostering a sense of solidarity among survivors and prompting many industries, including film, music, and politics, to confront and address systemic abuse of those with less power by those with all the power, those who abuse that power as a weapon to satisfy what seems to be an ever-scaling sinful lust from the pit of Hell.
This movement has led to the justified downfall of many influential figures in various industries, most credibly accused of gross sexual misconduct in business for profit. And the Me Too Movement has also sparked insightful discussions about consent, power dynamics, and how institutions protect individuals accused of sexual harassment or assault. And there has also been criticism of the Me Too Movement, such as concerns about due process for those accused and fear of false allegations used as an extra-legal form of attack by bad actors.
However, the overall impact of the Me Too Movement has been widely regarded as a significant shift towards holding perpetrators of sexual misconduct accountable and supporting survivors to try and move past their traumas, to trust again, and hopefully experience love in the waking moment, which is where it lives.
But this movement has also led to a cynical cultural moment, threatening to break down the behavior of our species that biologically allows for the only succession that matters on the long timescale — creating and protecting happy, healthy children who will carry our love and sacrifices forward into the future. This statement is validated in this show by the next to the final scene of the last episode. Shiv and Tom are riding away from their phyric victory, almost holding hands and finally looking like they fit together in their barren but bountiful lives. Even in their shared vacancy, there is a potential to make everyone’s life better in this world, starting with their own.
Succession ends in the most bottomless cynicism by revealing the concrete wall at the end of all the finger-pointing and screaming. Simply put, Shiv gets shunned for “her own protection” by Matsson, who chooses her morally vacant husband as the puppet leader he wants instead of the puppet master he purely and desperately needs. Shiv could have been that equalizing force for Matsson that Ewan never provided for his emotionally lost younger brother.
Shiv Roy is all set to be the successor at a few points in this show, but Matsson ultimately finds she has too many ideas. She pushes too hard on Matsson. Shiv doesn’t yield because that’s not who her father taught her to be, and Matsson is revolted by this. She will not break. Matsson composes the excuse of his sexual attraction to Shiv as a distraction that will not settle, so it must be mitigated. He tells this to Tom, of all people, when he announces his choice for American CEO will be “…the man who put the baby in [the woman I want to fuck].” And Matsson passes this revelation of his sexual desire for another man’s wife and its avoidance as a moral measure, almost chivalrous. As if Matsson’s feigned loyalty for his new hollow American CEO would prevent him from making a move on Shiv.
And because the Me Too Movement has revealed the trauma tunnel of achieving economic and political power as a woman seems to have required a consistent measure of sexual assault, the problem is “solved” by Matsson when he simply removes the possibility of Shiv ever having power from the equation entirely, at least not in the company her father built. A woman will never wield power in Logan Roy’s world, and Lukas Matsson will never share authority with any Roy, male or female.
In Matsson’s world, women will either behave or be escorted from the room, the building, and then from future conversations. Metaphorically, the cynicism of pointing fingers everywhere in Succession has devolved into the depravity of cutting them off so they can never point and tell again. True power is never shared. And power, without a circling ring of morality binding human kindness and dignity together, is a black hole that swallows the universe and never yields light back.
Shiv accepts this new paradigm because it will keep her close to this dark power as it slithers forward in time. Imagine if plants refused to give up Oxygen after having their way with Sunlight and Water. This is the cynicism of Succession and how these characters live perpendicular to Natural Law.
Reflection on the Cultural Impact of Succession
The final two scenes of this show reveal that Tom and Shiv have formed a separate peace unbeknownst to the viewer, and their decision has taken everything of personal value away from Kendell Roy. They have exposed their worst to one another, naked and now innocent despite all their moral crimes. This is the plea that Shiv offers Tom when she begs him early in the finale to return to their marriage and help raise their child. Tom not only discovered a way to inherit the power of the Roy family, but he also discovered a way to save his own and begin a new legacy with what Logan Roy would confirm as “His wife finally put into her place.” This is a tragic ending for Shiv, who was often the moral pulse of this sad story of hearts blackened in the fire of wealth and power.
We end Succession when Tom is a clear tapeworm wrapped around the chaotic and empty soul of Lukas Matsson. Tom will gladly hack at the columns of Democracy if it turns a consistent profit. And Tom doesn’t mind being cast as the hero or the villain as long as he can feed off the power of more powerful men.
Besides Logan Roy’s brother Ewan (arguably the show's most ethical and moral character), Shiv was the only remaining character with a moral compass moving into the final episode. She had her dignity and ethical center when the last episode began, but both were exhausted by the end. Instead of running her father’s empire, Shiv becomes the tapeworm wrapped around another tapeworm. She was once as close to the man at the top as a person could be, and now she is one man removed, sentenced to the silence of the shadows.
The Legacy of Logan Roy
Imagine being a father with all the world's wealth and unable to tell your children you love them. He was one of the poorest men ever to live in a fictional timeline.
The most important question to ponder at the end of Succession is not…
Will the Gojo Waystar deal succeed?
Will Jeryd Mencken be President and usher in a new Fascism for an old America?
Will Roman learn to live with his apparent mental illness and inability to lead?
Will Kendell murder himself by jumping into the Hudson because he has nothing to live for in his babied, privileged life?
Will Shiv and Tom create a family built on more than the vacuous pursuit of power for its sake at the cost of love and human connection?
No, after finishing Succession, the only question that matters is:
