“Realistically though, that’s it. You don’t know. You can’t know. But I’ve got my fucking suspicions.” - Logan Roy
Succession, as a series, is sometimes a confusing watch. Not because of the entertainment value, far from it. On that end, it’s one of the better series to come along in the last few years. But, who the hell do you root for? Everyone is deeply flawed, no one is all that (or at all) redeemable and there isn’t really a hero or even an anti-hero.
It’s just a cluster of mostly funny, increasingly tragic, snarky high society automatons who would love nothing more than put up $100K+ to ruin your life if you don’t get them the helicopter they need.
Warning: Successions Spoilers ahead
So being confused about what you want to happen to each character on an episode-to-episode or season-to-season basis is difficult. Just when you start kind of rooting for someone, they do something supremely fucked up, it’s a hard reset on that fandom and you’re back to square one.
But though you don’t root for them (or kind of do but not really, but kind of) one thing Succession has done almost perfectly since the beginning is allowed you to understand them. The motivations for the Roy children and the inner circle hangers are worn on them like an ATN news crawl. Each of their overtly transparent self-interests would be gross if they weren’t hilarious.
And it’s within the context of this character and motivational understanding that “Connor’s Wedding” works so well. Brilliantly really. They sat us down with a group of pretty despicable people, ran them through the emotional and logistical wringer while also killing off the most entertaining and loathsome of the bunch, all while never really knowing what was happening. The brilliance was in the chaos.
A show about, well, succession really only had two ways to skip to the end game. Have Logan step down from the throne and pass power over amicably (wasn’t going to happen) or have him kick the bucket. They went the latter route after dancing around it for multiple seasons now.
Hell, remember they nearly did this in the very first episode. In that one, it was in the helicopter with Romulus and Shiv as we first began to see the scheming that this family would go through with him at the helm.
He obviously survived that particular bout of brain aneurysm. And from there we had literal and metaphorical attempts at slaying this particular dragon whether it was Antifa protestors, bear hugs, Board votes, or his own kids turning against him. They failed each time.
But there were clues that Logan was living on borrowed time. In the first episode of this season, while sitting with (his “pal”) Colin at the restaurant, Logan wonders what happens in death, having his own ideas about the afterlife.
That he bought his one-way ticket in the bathroom of his corporate jet probably didn’t work into his top-down plan, but that’s besides the point. The deed was done and all that was left was to see how everyone took it, whose wheels would really start turning.
In the second episode this season, Greg has one of the best lines of the entire series when describing Logan to Tom saying, “It’s like Jaws, if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws.” While it could have been a throwaway observation from easily the funniest character in the show, it was more of a predictive precursor to Logan’s demise as well as a perfect summary of the character himself.
Thinking about Logan Roy more as a supervillain or horror movie big bad who can’t be killed (or keeps coming back until you nuke the whole fucking thing to make sure he’s dead) contextualizes, in part, just why this episode and this particular set of events was so good.
The kids, much like the viewer, simply can’t believe Logan Roy could be dead until we got eyes on that body.
To extend on Greg’s metaphor and take it one step further into this episode,this was like watching the residents of Haddonfield or Woodsboro find out Michael Myers or Ghostface was dead only to stumble in figuring out what to say to those monsters as they lay dying.
It would be like if those killers not only tortured, terrorized, and killed their victims, but also weirdly gave them purpose. Fending off the bad guy was, in essence, their essence. It’s supremely fucked up and one of the reasons watching Succession’s death arc play out in real-time was a pretty singular experience.
Sure the Roys are sad and shocked, but there’s also immense relief too. That’s a very weird juxtaposition to watch unfold on screen. Those characters, the three kids (and Connor sort of but not really) struggle with this insane push and pull of the moment, taking the viewer on the same kind of emotional ride for the better part of an hour.
Are you sure Logan’s dead? No. Is there a lot at stake? You saw the stock price drop, right? Is everyone kind of vying to be the next big bad in the franchise? Of course, that’s the succession part after all. And then you wrap it back into, again, Wait, is he actually really dead? There was a slow circular spiral towards the conclusion.
Things never work that way in shows. It’s usually, slow build-up, slow build, and then bam, a bullet to the head. Not here. Instead, this went in the opposite direction. Starting with the ending and then ostensibly working backward through the muck and mire. That was, in part, why the whole episode was like a television out-of-body experience (for the viewers and the main players).
To pull off the 60 or so minutes of characters wondering, wishing, and hoping around Logan’s death would have been impossible had you not understood each one on a base level. They’ve been moving towards this eventuality for multiple seasons now, so watching them cry, stumble, and curse through it all while never really every getting “there” when it came to actual grief was pretty fucking spot on. Romulus tried, but it was mostly just to get a hug from Gerri.
The uncertainty surrounding Logan’s death was more important than the death itself. The will-he-won’t-he functioning of his last breaths was a narrative push more than anything else. Masterminding this episode and pulling it off flawlessly is pretty unmatched. I doubt we see much like it for some time.
In the end, “Connor’s Wedding” was more like the beginning. The show is completely altered now, setting up a series of showdowns for those left standing. And now we’ll get to see the version of the horror movie where the remaining characters figure their lives out in the wake of the existential (and real-life) threat being removed for good.
The killer gave them purpose and now they need to fill the void. How will it play out? It’s hard to know for sure, but I’ve got my fucking suspicions.