Succession finale review: One of the best shows about sibling warfare

There are movies and shows about siblings and then there are the Roy siblings of Succession. On the face of it, the show is a story about an aging patriarch of a right-leaning media conglomerate who would rather let the world end than have any of his inadequate kids take over his legacy. To him, letting them having the reins is as good as tarnishing it. Yet that is also an incomplete assessment of the show’s scope. Over the course of four sensational seasons, its creator Jesse Armstrong has taken Succession to dizzying heights and directions. It has been a show about stunted affluence, and one about the erosion of humanity, revolving on people who mistake violence for love in the boardroom and inside bedrooms. It is also a dark comedy about American corporate culture as a never-ending circus, of the lengths people with endless money will go to cause human suffering but obfuscate themselves from any real-life consequences.

Still, as the finale kept coming closer, it became even more clear that Succession is really a deeply disturbing tale about a blazer-adorned, dysfunctional group of 30-something siblings who treat feelings like a giant liability. The Roy siblings have lived their entire lives unable to think with either their minds or hearts, choosing to instead sacrifice themselves at the whims and fancies of their abusive father, knowing fully well that his approval isn’t elusive, rather it is an illusion. And yet, day after day, they keep telling themselves and each other that it is a matter of time before they mould themselves in a way that lives up to the standards set by their father, turning them into a rightful heir.

Among other things, the first season of the show began with one question: Would Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) — technically Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) middle son but really his eldest son — ever be the one running Waystar Royco? Several seasons and a couple of years later, Armstrong ensured that the breathless Succession finale constructed itself on driving home that answer. But getting there wouldn’t have been possible without Roman (Kieran Culkin) or Siobhan Roy (Sarah Snook), the two other Roy siblings who end up deciding Kendall’s fate with way more authority and urgency than Logan ever could.

Over the course of four seasons, Succession has dropped enough hints on the very many ways Logan Roy’s abusive caregiving held his kids hostage even after they became fully-functioning adults. But it’s really in the finale that Armstong underlined the lengths that the Roy siblings can go to simultaneously cause irreparable damage to each other and free each other from a lifetime of suffering. In the frantic feature-length finale, Roman and Siobhan hold the key to snatching Kendall’s reign of Waystar Royco right from under his nose. Whether their stunning last-minute three-way faceoff was based out of love or violence depends on how we choose to interpret it. But throughout these 90 minutes, one thing is for sure: corporate violence is the only love-language that the Roy siblings know and understand.

In many ways then, Logan Roy’s real legacy wasn’t leaving his kids with Waystar Royco but rather, ensnaring them in a cycle where any keen understanding of what constitutes brutality and what really is tenderness became warped to an extent that they become one or the other. We see this time and again during the four seasons: the siblings coming together at the most unexpected moments, a group hug always following some kind of self-sabotage or emotional trauma. It’s as if these three siblings don’t exactly know how to be there for each other without first destroying each other. The only way these siblings can recognise love is if they allow themselves to be hurt by the other first. That’s really the inheritance that they have to live with: an expression of love that will never feel like it.

In what is undeniably a highlight, the Succession finale sees each of the three siblings free the other from the traumatic burden of their past: Kendall frees Roman from the idea that he should want to be involved in the family business; Shiv and Roman free Kendall from his own delusion of legacy; and Roman lets Shiv finally have the last word, letting her at last not feel as if she is a puppet in everyone else’s hands. But none of the Roy Siblings arrive at these moments of absolution through selflessness. Instead, the road is marked with varying degrees of violence that they unleash on one another. Roman’s stitches come undone. Kendall gets into a physical fight with Roman and is about to hurt Siobhan.

Perhaps that is why Succession will go down in history as one of the best shows about sibling warfare — this is a show that offers an unadorned portrait of trauma-bonding, one that reminds us that the cycle of abuse doesn’t always rest on a person, rather it rests on a mentality. As long as the Roy siblings will love each other, they will continue to hurt each other and it is only if they cause imaginable harm to each other can they love each other. Their hugs have always been a trap. All we needed was to have our eyes wide open to witness that.

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