The stellar season three finale of Succession revisited a theme that the show has always treated rather cautiously: familial love.
While HBO was doubling down in its efforts to fill the void left by Game of Thrones—a recent report revealed that the network wasted $30 million on an unproduced spin-off—it didn't realize that Succession made a comeback. A quiet march to the top had begun. The Next Big Thing already existed, and to the surprise of everyone, including the network's own, it was an HBO show.
Sunday's season three finale—compared to many of GoT's Red Wedding episodes—was a season finale that not only offered a welcome respite from the overwhelming nature of streaming, but also reminded viewers of That regardless of how many minutes of Netflix you watch. The squid game has accumulated, HBO is still in its own league.
Written by series creator Jesse Armstrong, the finale was an encapsulation of everything that makes the show so compelling—an unholy marriage of unbearable paranoia and raucous dialogue, punctuated by the tragic drama at its center. But it also revisited a theme that the show has always dealt with with caution: family love.
On several occasions during the three seasons of Succession, the Roy siblings declare, mostly in an off-hand manner and with complacency on their faces, that they love each other. You never really believed them, at least Roman and Siobhan. When the two already showed up for Kane's doomed birthday party a few episodes later, they arrived with the intention of not going nut, but with the intention of getting some shit on what they were doing. But all this changed in the finale.
This year you'll see that in one of television's most remarkable 30-minute segments, Kane is so deaf to help that even his numb siblings are forced to pay attention. And this time, his worries didn't seem redundant. Not only was it made clear that Kane tried to kill himself in the eighth episode, he also revealed the magnitude of his mental turmoil to Rome and Shiva, who probably realized at that exact moment that they were killing their brother. To what extent were you guilty of pushing? Edge.
In a still from the episode that fans are furious about - one person described it as a Renaissance painting, while another corrected them and said they probably meant it looked Baroque - Kane The next one has collapsed on the dirt floor. Trash bins behind a 16th-century Tuscan villa. He is crying. Rome and Shiva hover over it, not knowing what to say, or what they do with their hands. Shiva pats her on the head, while Rome defaults to her defense mechanism: humor. After awkwardly squeezing Kane's shoulders, Rome delivers one of the most uncomfortable dark one-liners of the year, reminding us not only of how emotionally underdeveloped he is, but how sick he is.
Their trauma has prevented the Roy siblings from having normal relationships with other people—worryingly, Kane admits in the finale that he also has no feelings for his children. The Roys move towards each other not because of any family ties, but because they are all afraid of a shared past.
"When you look at the Roy kids, you see how damaged they are," Brian Cox told Vulture. "But having too much of it, having too much, does harm. It's like a gulp, like overeating and making yourself sick." It might not be something you agree with — it frees Logan from his criminal incompetence as a parent — but it does provide an interesting insight into how the actors treat the characters they play. make rational.
The siblings had flirted with the idea of teaming up against their father several times in the past, even earlier in the same season, when both Shiva and Roman rejected Kane's offer of a strategic partnership. But it was always driven by power, or status, or part of an elaborate plan driven by selfishness. But this time, it was a different hit. Sure, the team-up was born almost as an act of collective self-preservation, but it took a completely unexpected turn when both Rom and Shiv pitted against Logan in the episode's tense final moments. And their reward for finally standing up for each other? Betrayal.
In a symbolic reversal of that scene under the already Tuscan sun, it was Cain who grabbed Rome's hand as the younger Roy fell to the floor, retreating in horror at the Machiavellian trick that his father had pulled off. .
But this time it seemed that they love each other. Ironically, for characters that have never been particularly articulate – Kane's vocabulary is dominated by 'ums' and 'uhs' and his father reacts to every uncomfortable situation with the same misogynistic expression - when They are far ahead when it comes to love. In a way, how the Roys express affection for each other... is very white; This is in contrast to how people express affection in many Eastern cultures. In countries like ours, parents can go a lifetime without telling their children that they love them. But even someone like Logan Roy, who doesn't and doesn't think twice before throwing his kids under the bus, regularly tells his kids how he feels about them. Whether it is there or not is another matter.
A storm is approaching, and appropriately for a show called Succession, Roy will soon have to face the consequences of his actions.