Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Succession’ Season 4 On HBO, The Final Showdown Between Logan Roy And His Kids For His Media Empire

Season 3 of Succession ended with some serious Roy vs. Roy matchups, with Waystar Royco CEO Logan Roy (Brian Cox) basically saying he no longer needs his kids and will continue to lead his company himself through its sale. You know that the Roy kids won’t take that lying down. Let’s get the popcorn out and see where the final season of HBO’s hit series will go.

SUCCESSION SEASON 4: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A drone shot of the Upper West Side of Manhattan from Central Park. Logan Roy walks through his living room, with people celebrating his birthday.

The Gist: Logan is closely followed by his current assistant/lover Kerry (Zoe Winters), and he absolutely looks like he doesn’t want to be there. The only one of his kids that is there is Connor (Alan Ruck), who is still trying to hold on to his one percent share of primary votes in his run for president. Greg (Nicholas Braun) brings a random date; when Kerry sees that, she pulls him aside and tells him, “We’re not a Shake Shack, Greg. This isn’t a pre-fuck party, it’s a birthday party.” Tom (Matthew Macfayden), who sided with Logan in his war with his other three kids, wants to know if he’s still good with Logan if he and Shiv (Sarah Snook) break up.

Logan is feeling his age, and is ready to sell off Waystar Royco to Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), keeping ATN, which will be spun off. But he’s not going away; he seems to be the primary suitor for Pierce Global Media, despite being mortal enemies with the left-leaning Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones).

In what looks like a sunny mountain retreat, Shiv, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are strategizing about The Hundred, the new media company they’ve teamed up to create as soon as they resign their positions at Waystar Royco. Then Shiv gets a weird call from Tom; he just had drinks with Naomi Pierce (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), and he wanted to let her know, per their separation agreement. At first, she’s pissed, but then with Kendall and Roman, she figures out the meeting is because their dad is making a play for PGM.

This sets their head spinning. “Fuck The Hundred?” Shiv asks, much to to the consternation of Roman. But Kendall thinks making their own bid is a smart idea; they can take their dad on head-to-head while remaking PGM for the 2020s.

The trio actually fly out to meet Nan Pierce, who continues to say that they have their primary bidder. But then things escalate as Logan, Shiv and Roman get wind that the primary bidder is their dad and they try to outmaneuver him, almost bidding against themselves and throwing around numbers that they are going to scramble to come up with. They’ll get some money via the GoJo sale, and they have investors lined up, but as things escalate to the $10 billion mark, the numbers stop having any meaning.

Logan dismisses his guests and gets his inner circle together; Greg wants to tell him about the hand stuff he did with his date in a guest room. Tom keeps calling Shiv to see where things are with them. Will “the rats”, as Logan now calls his three youngest offspring, get the better of him?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Succession Seasons 1-3.

Our Take: When we read that Succession creator Jesse Armstrong has declared the fourth season to be the show’s last, we breathed a sigh of relief. We were wondering how many more years we could watch various iterations of Roy vs. Roy until we threw up our hands looking for some sort of conclusion. Now we know that this season is setting up a battle royal between Logan and Shiv-Kendall-Roman, and the first episode lets us know that we’ve got to buckle in for a fun and wild ride.

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Will this alignment — Logan and his sycophants vs. his youngest three kids — last the entire season? Who knows? We know that Shiv is always looking for The Next Thing, Roman desperately wants to be Logan’s favorite and Kendall… well, Kendall is all over the place at this point. There may be defections at some point. We’re hoping the entire final season stays in this alignment, because it feels like this is the only way it’s going to end. Is this show still about who gets Waystar Royco in the end or who plants their flag on top of the family mountain? We’re thinking it’s the latter.

Of course, we know the siblings won’t always be so allied, but their anger at Logan may keep them together. For all we know, Logan, who sits at a diner with his head of security and tells him that “you’re my best pal,” may finally realize that he’s too old for this shit. He does seem to be slightly slower on the business uptake than before, not anticipating his kids might outbid him for PGM.

The dialogue is as snappy and profane as ever, but now that we’re into the fourth season with all of these characters, we know where that defensive snappiness is coming from. For instance, in a scene where Tom and Shiv essentially decide on the fate of their marriage, we see both the cruelty and the affection that the two have had for each other (the cruelty more on Shiv’s side); that is a scene that would not have been at all authentic had it occurred in the first or second season.

Sex and Skin: Sex is talked about (like the aforementioned hand stuff), but never shown.

Parting Shot: Logan is watching ATN and calls Cyd (Jeannie Berlin) when he sees an anchor with a crew cut. “He looks like a ball sack in a toupee.” He’s exerting control over the only asset he may have left.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Justine Lupe as Willa, who basically has spent the last three seasons acting like a person feigning interest in whatever Connor is talking about. We hope she’ll get rewarded for her sacrifice in the end.

Most Pilot-y Line: Actually this is a great line, so we’re putting it here: When Shiv asks Kendall where he is in his relationship with Naomi Pierce, Kendall replies, “I dunno… like, carnival of mind fuck?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Succession is setting up a final season that feels like it’ll be the ultimate Roy vs. Roy showdown, and we can’t wait to take it all in.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.