Succession finale: Brian Cox/Jesse Armstrong’s thoughts and speculation
By Wade Wainio
With the season 2 finale of HBO’s Succession over with. star Brian Cox and creator Jesse Armstrong have thoughts on the show’s future.
[As we delve lightly into the season 2 finale of Succession, keep in mind that some spoilers may be ahead.]
In the Succession season 2 finale, we finally learned who the “blood sacrifice” is: Logan Roy (Brian Cox) himself! Yes, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) turned against him to the press, revealing his dad knew about the cruise ship sex scandal. As Cox explains of his character:
"“In Logan’s purity and punitiveness, he doesn’t consider himself a victim of something he did not take care of.”"
In other words, his character would’ve thought he could retain control. Meanwhile, Logan back-stabbed people along the way, including not only Kendall but his daughter, Shiv (Sarah Snook).
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Speculation on season 3
Meanwhile, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong suggests future seasons have a lot of possible angles:
"“We read the financial papers and there’s a ton of tech and media mergers and acquisitions we’re likely to take inspiration from…”"
In fact, as season 2 ended, Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) proved his worth by meeting Turkish financiers for a (potentially) company-saving deal — risking his own skin in the process. While Shiv isn’t exactly a rising star at this point, she still has more promise than the floundering Presidential candidate, Connor Roy (Alan Ruck).
Of course, people also mocked a certain person’s chances of ascending to a certain position of power, too. Will Succession show Connor Roy to have more potential as a bold, brash voice of all things controversial, pseudo-intellectual and conspiratorial? Will he successfully masquerade as the working man’s billionaire? It could be a big element of Succession in the future if he can retool his image.
Interestingly, Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun) has proven himself a valuable asset, simply by preserving documents ordered to be destroyed by Tom (Matthew Macfadyen). While he may never rise to the top of Waystar Royco, he has already been viewed favorably by Kendall Roy, which is not a bad thing (or at least not the worst thing).
Finally, season 2 puts to bed the premise that Shiv was necessarily better than her brothers, by mere virtue of being a woman. It’s simply a fact that, as far as these particular characters go, Kendall oddly has a knack for power wrangling, whereas Shiv was more impulsive than she believed.
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Ken is impulsive as well, but he seems quite naturally attuned to business strategy. Shiv’s specialty is more about public image, communicating with the press and seeming more “pleasant” than the other Roys. However, when push comes to shove, she’s currently still more likely to be pushed than successfully shove back. Still, she too may have additional tricks up her sleeve.
What are your thoughts on Succession? Let us know in the comments!