Succession Season 4 Episode 10 Review: The Sea Full of Sharks in the Season Finale | HBO Series
Cast: Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, Matthew McFadyen, Nicholas Braun, Alexander Skarsgard
Created By: Jesse Armstrong
Streaming Platform: HBO
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The family and life revolve around this nucleus made up of blood ties. The family, a source of conflict and joy. In Succession Season 4 Episode 10, the family is important: in reality, it has been since the beginning of the series. The first minutes of each episode say that from 2018 to today, the last episode begins the fantastic adventures of the Roy brothers: the theme song. We see fragments of a story, a past that no longer exists, in which the four brothers – Connor, Kendall, Shiv, and Roman – play and just wait for their father to join them while he, however, is elusive. Things in the fourth season are different: if before the death of Logan Roy, the sons do to get revenge, now they just want a slice of his inheritance. However, the key to their behavior is the same: trying to live up to their father, trying to please him and make him proud. Even when dead. It was in the air.
Betrayal at court had been in the air for some time after all the series created by Jesse Armstrong in 2018 for the HBO television station had already accustomed us to knowing how to turn our backs on the blood of our blood for personal gain, to grab at all costs a slice of power, a seat on the throne, crown on his head. Armstrong’s entire project intended for the small screen was interwoven with references to the themes and narrative structures of the great Shakespearean dramas, such as the struggle for the throne and the fratricidal wars for Succession. But every war, at the end of games and slimy strategies, must come to its conclusion. In our review of Succession Season 4 Episode 10, we analyze in detail what happens not only in the final appointment of the fourth season but also in what is the final episode of a television journey that began quietly in 2018 with the first season and then continued with triumphant bass drumming in the following years. Now, it is time to say goodbye to Succession and its unforgettable characters.
Succession Season 4 Episode 10 Review: The Story Plot
The Waystar board of directors is about to meet one last time to determine whether the company of the late Logan Roy (Brian Cox) will officially be taken over by the GoJo of the Swede Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard), but Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is not there stands and organizes one last defense of followers to prepare to overturn the result of the board vote. In the end, his sister Shiv (Sarah Snook) takes sides with him, who in the meantime goes to her mother’s house to understand the condition of her brother Roman (Kieran Culkin), emotionally and physically exhausted after being in a scuffle after the funeral of the father in the previous episode. When the three brothers get together to decide what to vote for, betrayals and revelations will surface with unexpected consequences.
Thus begins the tenth episode of Succession, the one that acts as a curtain, as the grand finale of the entire system of characters created by Jesse Armstrong back in 2018. With the episode entitled “With Open Eyes” (written by the same showrunner and directed by veteran Mark Mylod) all matters finally come to a head, the fate of Logan Roy‘s company is revealed, as is the future of his even more power-hungry progeny. In what in the Mylod episode promises to be a real war to the last vote for possession of the crown, what to expect one last time from the Roy brothers if not greed and betrayal?
In Succession Season 4 Episode 10, the pattern repeats itself. It’s never been a battle between the three brothers against all: Logan Roy‘s legacy has always been a family affair. It’s a race between the three brothers, to see who can be the first to reach the top, this surrogate of love, bureaucratic quirks, and political alliances. How many times have we heard this sentence uttered by Kendall: “I think it’s up to me”? After Connor, the older brother among the Roys makes it a matter of life and death. What if without this agreement, without this victory his life is relegated to a balustrade, a precipice, from which to look at everything from the other, maybe go inside, jump in, and see how it goes? Ever since the first season, since her father’s first heart attack that almost knocks him out, Kendall has been trying in every way to sit in that f***ing chair.
It’s a cycle that repeats itself, but all sorts of things happened in the intermezzo. The children have grown up, they have more awareness, but no more maturity. It is the problem that Logan also posed during his life, to whom to entrust the inheritance that for over twenty years has been in his hands. It didn’t necessarily have to be a family thing, that’s why not finding anyone (and perhaps to tease his children) Logan relied on the cold Swedish fjords to sell off his company. “I think it’s up to me”, Kendall believes it but finds opposition from the brothers every time. He becomes a race, a three-way tug of war where one returns to the past, to not very confused pieces of memory where whoever goes back the most in time will be able to get the place at the top, at the top. “He promised me when he was seven”, Kendall again. All victims, once again, of a game played by the great and perverse Logan Roy.
It could have been you if you weren’t so fragile, Roman. It could have been you if you weren’t a pregnant woman, Shiv. So, the winner is whoever has – apparently – the least problems. The most – apparently – lucid among the brothers. Kendall takes the lead, with her brother’s approval, retracing her father’s footsteps but seemingly finding strength in her family’s ties. Thus, for the first time, Succession Season 4 Episode 10 shows us an unusual family theater where the three brothers agree on who will – apparently – take over the reins of the company.
Succession Season 4 Episode 10 Review and Analysis
This Succession Season 4 Episode 10 is almost an hour-and-a-half feature film. When we are at the end of the first act, things look good for the three brothers. Perhaps, after much talk, after Shiv‘s double-crossing and Roman‘s fall, they find a way to stop the deal by sealing everything with a dip in the sea. A metaphorical swim in the sea, because the writing of this masterfully composed series reminds us why we are here, why we have reached this point, in this particular moment. ” Let’s jump in, let’s all do it together”, but the sea is full of sharks and Roman is terrified of them: so how do face a simple and metaphorical swim in the sea: together as a family? Sounds too Romantic, even for Succession. Even for a series finale that has been playing a double game since its pilot. The sea is full of sharks, but these shouldn’t be killed, they shouldn’t be fenced off and stopped in the bud, you have to swim with them. In Succession Season 4 Episode 10 our sharks are only Tom, Matsson, and also Gregg. The latter, repeatedly brought up by fan theories in this ending, will have his showdown and like during a sale to the highest bidder, Tom will make the highest offer, buying it. Not because I care about him, but to underline his power play.
If teamwork dreams never come true like in Succession Season 4 Episode 10 we see that it is not so. Mark Mylod directs once again after the previous episode written by Jesse Armstrong, and both play a double game until the end. All are exposed. Roman sees things clearly for the first time, everything that’s happening doesn’t matter. The quarrels, the double-crossing, the betrayals, the lies, nothing compared to life. As if he had had some mystical revelation at his father’s funeral: he knows he’s not ready to lead the company, and he knows his brother isn’t ready but to encourage him and receive some love Roman would have made false cards. Shiv, on the other hand, gets on the bandwagon, literally. He takes a step back once again. He lets the others celebrate, there is no place for her in this world populated by men who continually seek an ideal of supremacy. In Succession Season 4 Episode 10 she opposes the vote and in doing so, she favors Tom, going against Kendall.
Kendall is faced with his greatest shock and is nailed by the brothers, begs them, insults them, and lays hands on them: he transforms into the most brutal version of Logan Roy, the one Roman is most afraid of but the one Shiv does not fears. Kendall takes off his mask and just as in the first season he leaves the board room defeated: the agreement with Gojo will be made and Tom will become CEO, inheriting that magical chair, Logan Roy‘s chair. He suffers that shock once again: he comes catatonic out of the room and the audience knows him; he knows what he means. He has failed at everything: with his wife, with his children, with his career. His life has been a complete failure, and he knows it. This is what has pushed him to the edge of the precipice several times, literally.
And so, we find ourselves at the final stages, in silence. Only the waves of the sea accompany the scenes. There is a balustrade, a fender, this time from the Hudson. Kendall approaches, looks at him, and reflects. Then, she turns her back to him, sits down and maybe for a moment he thinks about resting, thinks “Maybe it’s not so bad, this life” and sighs, as we have seen him do several times during these episodes. A severed sigh, which is never entirely liberating, neither is this last one. And while she’s doing it, we know he’s about to speak. Mind you. If Tom Wambsgans is now wearing the crown, the winner of the Succession game is undoubtedly Shiv Roy. Terrified of seeing her brother Kendall rise to power and witness the reign of a son too like his father Logan, Shiv tries to save the soul of the company and its relatives by voting against Ken and in favor of the handover to the couple Lukas/Tom. A twist fully in narrative coherence with the female character written by Armstrong: with her high treason, Siobhan frees Kendall and Roman from the invisible chains of the thirst for power and the memory of the father, sacrificing her position as woman and wife of the new CEO within the company for the sake of the blood of his blood.
An unexpected but necessary betrayal, which definitively cuts ties with the cumbersome ghost of the deceased patriarch to give the three brothers a new chapter in their lives: Roman smiles (perhaps relieved) in front of a cocktail drunk at the counter of a bar, Shiv mechanically shakes Tom’s hand towards a future wife and mother once again cornered by a man; and Kendall, who stripped of any claim to power (and the support of the two blood relatives), can do nothing but wander lost and hopeless in a New York park, with dull eyes fixed on the horizon of the sea. The Roy family’s fortune ends here, for the sake of their souls and with a painful and ready-heavy grand finale that we’ll be talking about with enthusiasm for years to come.
Succession Season 4 Episode 10 Review: The Last Words
Succession Season 4 Episode 10 is also the grand finale of the entire HBO series created by Jesse Armstrong. A heart-pounding conclusion that lines up for the last time the progeny of Logan Roy, in a fratricidal war to the last vote for the possession of the deceased father’s company. Who will wear the crown in the end? The family and life revolve around this nucleus made up of blood ties. The family, a source of conflict and joy. In Succession Season 4 Episode 10, the family is important: in fact, it has been since the beginning of the series.
