Succession Season 4 Episode 5 Review: Reaches The Halfway Point And Stages A Necessarily Interlocutory Chapter
Cast: Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, Matthew Macfadyen, Nicholas Braun, Alexander Skarsgard
Creator: Jesse Armstrong
Streaming Platform: HBO
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
Succession is relentless. The television show created by Jesse Armstrong, which consists of four stations (the one currently in progress is, as we have already widely anticipated, the final one) arrives at the so-called halfway point of season 4 with the fifth episode of ten announced. With the substantial “Kill List” we have practically reached the exact half of the final season of the HBO TV series, without however glimpsing a semblance of a sense of closure, just five episodes from the promised ending. Is there anything to worry about?
In our review of Succession Season 4 Episode 5, tying us hand in glove with two Hamletic doubts that are increasingly gripping us during the vision of this season finale: isn’t that just five dates away from the big wrap? How will Armstrong and his team of excellent screenwriters succeed in weaving once and for all the threads of such an intense war on fratricidal power that has been developing since 2018? We are certainly not talking about a drop in quality, yet the fear that we will reach a hasty conclusion begins to overcome…
Succession Season 4 Episode 5 Review: The Story Plot
The fifth episode of the fourth and final season of Succession has the evocative title of “Kill List” and is directed by Andrij Parekh, while the script was entrusted to four hands by the duo formed by Jon Brown and Ted Cohen, always obviously supervised by the showrunner Jesse Armstrong. An interlocutory episode which, in addition to marking the mathematically exact turning point of the season (the current one will consist of ten television appointments), also marks a sudden change of setting: from the United States to the blinding natural beauty of the Norwegian fjords.
Yes, because the three Roy brothers (Kendall, Roman, and Siobahn), after the tragic death of their father Logan, are forced to fly with the entire Board of Directors of Waystar Royco. in Europe to meet once and for all the very young technology and new communications magnate Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) to confirm or cancel the agreement to incorporate the Waystar into Swedish’s futuristic GoJo. A negotiation that will prove to be decidedly tense, however, is between attacks and counterattacks, buying and selling strategies, and low blows.
Succession Season 4 Episode 5 Review and Analysis
An unprecedented negotiation for the Armstrong series, which for the first time, after the exciting events of the fourth episode, sees the dual alliance between Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) and his brother Roman (Kieran Culkin), appointed directors, form even more operatives of the company of the late interim patriarch. Among them, however, the increasingly enigmatic and complex figure of Siobahn (Sarah Snook) stands out, officially cut off from the administrative direction of the Waystar but practically informed of every strategic move by her two brothers. A real contemporary Lady Macbeth, therefore capable of influencing the positive or negative outcomes of the negotiation with Matsson by unofficially staying… in the shadows.
A negotiation, the one with the Swedish tycoon, which in the course of the fifth episode directed by Parekh becomes more and more an ideological clash between an America with a late imperial conception (“We don’t give a shit about the fate of France!” Tom will say played by Matthew Mcfadyen) and a Europe perched on a system of socio-economic ideas and values tailored to the citizen. The Collectivism of the “Old Continent” against the strong individualism of the New World, therefore, the latter is perfectly emblematic of the system of values and relationships that have always distinguished the Roy family.
So then, in an ideological battle between two cultures eager to feed on economic power, who will win in the end? We won’t reveal it to you, yet the heart of this fifth episode (only apparently interlocutory) seems to beat in one of the very last sequences of “Kill List”, in very close dialogue with no holds barred between Skarsgard’s Lukas Matsson and the resolute Roman played from Culkin: could it have been precisely the pressure of the northern European tycoon that decreed the emotional stress (and therefore cardiac arrest) of Logan Roy about to give his beloved Waystar to the Swedish company?
No matter where the truth lies, this inference alone is enough for Roman to wholeheartedly hate Matsson’s calculating coldness, regardless of the outcome of the Waystar-GoJo negotiation. A watershed moment therefore for the final season of Succession which, with only five appointments to go, keeps us glued to the chair once again, eager to find out what will happen to the Roy family, but at the same time confronts us with a Hamletic doubt: will only five episodes be enough to unravel the entire narrative skein of a series consisting of four intense seasons? We, however, always cautiously confident, begin to have some fears. Despite it all.
Succession Season 4 Episode 5 Review: The Last Words
With Succession Season 4 Episode 5, the fourth and final season of Succession, the popular HBO show created by Jesse Armstrong reaches the halfway point and stages a necessarily interlocutory chapter closely linked to two questions: will they be able to satisfactorily close all the storylines in the remaining five episodes? What will become of Waystar Royco?
