We need to talk about Shiv Roy in the series finale
Succession Series Finale-Recap: Kendall’s Ultimate Failure for a Man That Can’t Always Be Afraid of Women
The point was never who was going to win. The aim was always that the people would destroy themselves in the battle. The best finales feel like they were always destined to happen and you wouldn’t have thought of them. I think this passes that test, at least according to me.
It’s exactly the right finale for this show, I think. Kendall’s ultimate failure seems like it has been inevitable. This season has been very focused on men who treat women badly. It made sense that if you’re in a man’s world, you should pick the man that you can most easily work with, since that’s what kept Kendall from the throne. The only thing that would ever be him was the fact thatKendall said with a quivering lip.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/29/1178689904/succession-series-finale-recap
Does Roman Really Think About Power? Yes, but not necessarily so. A tribute to Roman and the ugly side of Kieran Culkin
He was not raised in a world like this, so he has been better at navigating it. Tom understands how these people think about power, because he had to learn that in order to survive. He was not born with advantages except for his malleability. He is the closest thing this world has to a scrapper, despite the fact that his biggest worry about prison was forgetting to burp the toilet wine. When there are no principles and there is no loyalty, there is only humiliating yourself in whatever way you must — playing boar on the floor, sitting calmly while a sexist devalues your wife — to obtain, or to keep, your position. Perhaps you will end up as a figurehead, elevated by someone with no faith in you, who may grow even more grotesquely rich while not gaining any additional amount of respect from anyone.
Tom did not gain the leadership role at the end of the series because of some masterstroke, some brilliant gambit or crazy chess move. Tom got the leadership position thanks to being a dependable suck up who always looked at the power wherever it led. He doesn’t have particular skills or principles, but he always has been willing to be a yes man because he has no pride. Yes I will betray my wife, yes I will go to prison for you, yes I will accept this position you’re offering me specifically because you know I will not bring anything to it. I will keep it from my wife and mother of my child that you are doing this in order to get at my wife and make me want to have a baby with her. Yes, yes.
There’s a good argument that Kieran Culkin has been the MVP of this season if I were forced to pick only one, in part because he has slipped so effortlessly between genuinely sympathetic moments like the funeral and horrible ones like his behavior on election night. The ugly side of Roman came to the fore once more when he told Kendal that Shiv is the true heir to the family name and her kids are not real. This causes a fight that allows Shiv enough room to leave the room and cast her vote to let the company go to Matsson.
They even got a very nice moment together remembering their father, watching him have a rather normal dinner party with friends on a tape Connor played while they went around dividing up Logan’s possessions. It was as if he was as happy as we have ever seen him. It couldn’t possibly last.
He got agonizingly close. Seeing Jeremy Strong playing the confident, smooth side of Kendall in the first part of the board meeting was so painful, because it seemed entirely too easy. It is difficult to be this easy. Kendall fathered Roman, embraced him, and helped him to make it ok when trouble was about to start with him. He even brought his one loyal friend Stewy back into the fold to support him — to be “Team Ken.”
In a sense, the story of Succession has always been Kendall taking over for his father. This was an important step for Waystar Royco; they would be taking over as the CEO. The answer was always ” yes or no”, which seemed to be the point.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/29/1178689904/succession-series-finale-recap
Why Did Kendall Go Along with GoJo Go? The Case of Kendall, Caroline, and the Good, the Bad, the U.S. CEO
She put her hand on Tom’s head, but didn’t hold it, but they were together in the car. Still, with a baby coming, it seems likely that they will find their way back into a stable marriage that might eventually offer Shiv a way back into Waystar. Shiv is a woman who has had limited choices her entire life. Her father took the top job that he offered her. The brothers cut her out. Her husband doesn’t even think she should have children, because she’s incapable of love. She has made her choices. She will stay with them.
The car crash at the end of the first season, in which Kendall drove while high and wound up killing a young waiter at Shiv’s wedding, had been lying dormant all season since the fateful scene in Tuscany after Caroline’s wedding, in which Kendall confessed to his siblings. They never spoke of it, never poked him with it — even when Shiv and Kendall were seemingly getting very frank during parts of “America Decides,” they didn’t touch on it or even refer to it. So it seemed like maybe it would just never come up again. But … didn’t it have to come up again? If this was going to become a bitter showdown between Kendall and Shiv, it’s hard to believe she wouldn’t mention it. And eventually, in the heat of the moment, she did.
There are many different explanations of why Shiv went this way. She could have felt bad for Tom. It might have been because she was cut out of the show this season by Roman and he played “Rape Me” over the Waystar loudspeaker while she was speaking. Maybe she believed she had a better chance of retaining a connection to the company through her husband than through her brother, and she had realized those were the only choices. Maybe at some level, she knew Kendall really wasn’t qualified.
Matsson’s alliance with Shiv fell apart, thanks to Greg sniffing around a meeting where Matsson revealed his actual choice for the new U.S. CEO: Tom. Kendall managed to get the siblings united in a plan to kill the GoJo deal and anoint him CEO, but when it came right down to it, Shiv chose not to go along. Tom became CEO, GoJo bought Waystar, andKendall was wandering aimlessly through New York.
What is the big deal? Narratively, Succession was about whether any of the Roy children could escape their father’s legacy as a terrible parent who made them into what his oldest son, Connor (Alan Ruck), once called “needy love sponges.” The answer is no. Needy love sponges 4-ever!) But Shiv’s big move is what the show was about as a television event.
Who is she? One last time before the series ends, Brian Cox died in the third episode of the final season, and he was the only daughter of the media mogul who had only one child, the youngest child, played by Sarah Snook. She goes by “Shiv,” and if your first thought is, “Shiv, like the knife?” The answer is, yes, Exactly like the knife.
HBO Succession Ends a Four-Second Season for the O(a)-Lambda Radio Network
HBO’s Succession ended a four-season run on Sunday night. The final choice was made by Siobhan Roy, which illustrates what the show has been best at, and what its fans love about it.
