Get up-to-date on Succession: a full recap of the first three series
Like Logan Roy’s media business empire or trying to spell Tom Wambsgans out loud, Succession is complicated. With a fourth and final series of Jesse Armstrong’s serpentine family saga about to begin, here’s a rough guide to the story so far.
Series One
Series one began on global media mogul Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) 80th birthday. The plan had been to use the occasion to hand over the reins of his company, Waystar Royco, to his eldest son, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), but in finest King Lear fashion, Logan begins to have doubts about Kendall’s killer instinct – so announces he is staying on for a few more years. He pits three of his four children – Kendall, his daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook) and onanist reprobate Roman (Kieran Culkin) – against each other in a battle for succession. (His eldest, Connor, played by Alan Ruck, is deemed so feckless as to not even be worthy of consideration.)
Logan then has a stroke, and the Roy vultures descend. Kendall and Roman wind up as CEO and COO of Waystar Royco but at their moment of triumph, Gerri (J Smith-Cameron), Waystar’s long-time legal counsel, reveals to Kendall that the company is enmired in debt. A panicked Kendall goes to his Harvard buddy and private-equity bro Stewy (Arian Moayed) to raise finance, and strikes a deal that gives Stewy a seat on the Waystar board. A still slurring Logan summarises Kendall’s acumen succinctly: “f---ing idiot.”
As Logan recovers from his stroke – a protracted process that included a memorable “accident” on the floor of Kendall’s office – he first undermines, and then supplants his own son, announcing in the same speech that a) his daughter was getting married to the roundly useless Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and b) “I’m back” as CEO.
Meanwhile, scandal spreads like infection. Tom sends his patsy, Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), to shred documents relating to serious past misdeeds in Waystar’s cruises division, Brightstar. Kendall tries to raise a vote of no confidence against his dad, but the jousting for the ousting winds up with Roman flaking at the last minute and Logan surviving.
And then things get really nasty – Logan’s news network runs a story that Kendall, who had been clean for three years, is back on drugs. This is the kind of sharp practice that actually pushes Kendall back on to drugs, leading to one of the few touching moments of the entire series to date, when Roman goes to rescue his brother from a drug dive.
In different ways, the different children round on their father. Shiv, at this point a Washington DC policy wonk, goes to work for a presidential candidate, Gil Eavis, who hates Logan. Kendall, via Stewy, joins forces with another long-time enemy of Logan’s, Sandy Furness (Larry Pine), to work on a hostile takeover.
At Shiv’s wedding to Tom, everything explodes, including Logan's temper when Kendall tells him about the takeover plans, and Roman’s telecoms satellite launch, proving he really wasn’t capable of launching anything, and Waystar’s future, when Shiv forces Tom to tell her about the cover-up in the Brightstar division.
The whole Roy family rounds on Kendall when they find out about his hostile takeover, leading to Ken heading out to drown his sorrows on an ill-fated drive with a young waiter who had some drugs. Instead, they crash into a lake and the waiter drowns, in spite of Kendall’s attempts to save him. The body is found, along with Kendall’s room key, meaning Kendall looks to be in big trouble – until Logan tells him that he’s had the whole thing covered up. Just at the moment when the son had been about to topple the father, the father leverages a bit of soft power and reminds him who’s boss.
Series Two
Logan’s stand-off parenting continues when he secretly promises Shiv that she will be the next CEO while promoting Tom (with Greg always in tow) to head of the company’s global news network, ATN. Roman takes advice from Gerri on how to muscle his way in to leadership contention – and then begins some weird, quasi-Oedipal extreme flirting with her. And Connor, just being Connor, considers a Presidential run on a platform of abolishing taxation entirely.
Logan’s corporate playbook contains only one play – all-out attack – and so he looks to buy a rival media company, one owned by an old-school, considerably more high-minded and moralistic family, the Pierces. As a minor point of due diligence, the Pierces want to know who will lead the new joint venture, at which point Shiv stands up and announces that it will be her. Logan’s trademark volcano face suggests it might not.
But the deal implodes on the publication of those Brightstar cruise line revelations, which Tom has managed to cover up as effectively as a wine-stain on a sheepskin rug. Waystar’s share price plummets and the old series one Stewy/Sandy takeover is back on the cards.
Tom, showing some previously unseen business nous, realises that he is being lined up as a scapegoat for the cruise debacle, and so gets Greg to burn all the incriminating documents. Not for the first time, however, Greg tucks the smoking gun in his back pocket just in case, keeping copies of a few of the documents.
At Waystar's 50th anniversary party, Kendall honours his father with the career-defining, and simultaneously career-ending, “L to the OG” rap, while it emerges that Logan plans to install Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), the Pierce’s CEO, as his successor. And Shiv’s fine with that – because she knows that the full cruise-ship papers scandal is about to come out and Rhea will be landed with the fallout.
Meanwhile Gil Eavis, Shiv’s old senator boss, calls the Roy family to testify before the Senate. Predictably, Logan tries to throw Kendall under a bus but he’s overshadowed by Tom’s staggering one-man blooper reel. Even that, Logan reckons, won’t appease shareholders – they need a Roy to fall on their sword for the Brightstar scandal to go away.
And so to the Roy yacht, to determine who should take the rap. Long story short – Logan decides to dump on an already completely broken Kendall. K-Roy flies back to New York to take one for the team… and literally rips up the script. Instead of taking the blame, he turns on his father, blaming him for all wrongdoing, saying he has the documents to prove it (thanks Cousin Greg!) and basically lobs a grenade underneath the whole tottering Waystar woodpile. Yet, in doing so, Ken finally gets a half-smile of acceptance from his dad – maybe this kid has some Roy blood in him after all. Let the battle commence.
Series Three
The third series picked up straight after the second, with a pending Department of Justice investigation into Waystar, Team Kendall and Greg working out their media strategy, and the rest of the clan deciding whether to stick with a now-damaged Dad, or go in to full attack mode on big brother. Time to lawyer up, set up war rooms and pick a side.
All of the Roys, naturally, are on their own side – the who-should-be-the-next-CEO scramble continues (where the answer is quite clearly, none of them) with a series of volte faces and front-stabbings winding up with Gerri in the hot seat as an interim measure.
Simmering away is the Cousin Greg and world’s-most-confused fifth columnist, Tom, B-plot. Greg wants to not go to jail. And Tom? It’s not quite clear what he wants, which is a sure-fire sign that he’s up to something. He suggests to Shiv that he offer himself up as a sacrificial lamb, take a prison stretch and save Logan. And Shiv – his wife, remember – thinks this is a dandy old plan. Tom, however, files that kind thought.
The siblings have always talked about stitching the other one up, but never actually done it... until Shiv, livid after Kendall hijacks her first Town Hall presentation with a blast of Nirvana on the loudspeakers, releases an open letter saying that Kendall is a junkie and a serial liar. It’s gloves-off time – and the FBI have just raided Waystar HQ with warrants and document boxes.
FBI raids generally don’t play well with investors – bad optics, as well as just bad – and one of those investors, Josh Aaronson (Adrien Brody), needs some convincing. As luck would have it, both Kendall and Logan arrive at Josh’s Hamptons pile to persuade him that their team is the one to back.
Things come to a head at the shareholder meeting where Logan wants – or says he wants – to put it to a vote. But then he also has a UTI and has gone a bit “piss mad” so his team aren’t sure if he knows what he’s doing. In the event, a deal is done at the eleventh hour and Sandy/Stewy get their chunk of the Royco pie (and everyone keeps their private jets, or PJs, which is by far the most important thing).
Which leaves Kendall out on a limb, particularly as his DOJ testimony isn’t going well and Waystar is looking like it might wiggle out of the Brightstar controversy after all. Only Tom might face jail time. Yet that’s the same Tom who’s been meeting with Kendall on the sly. Logan, for his part, takes the opportunity to wish his first-born a happy birthday with a card that says “cash out and f--k off” for two billion dollars.
As always with Logan, when things get tough for Waystar he goes shopping, trying to buy other companies and some relevance. Lukas Matsson’s (Alexander Skarsgård) streaming giant GoJo is his next target.
And so they all head off to Chiantishire for another fabulous Roy reunion in the countryside. The occasion is the siblings’ mother’s (Harriet Walter) second marriage, but the behind-the-scenes politicking is where the real action’s at, including Kendall going for dinner with Logan and conceding that he just wants to take the money and “be a ghost”.
Roman, meanwhile, is proving himself to be a half-decent corporate operator, managing a takeover/merger with Matsson… until the moment he sends a dick pic meant for Gerri to his own father. Matsson has shifted gears, however – now he doesn’t want to be bought by or join with Waystar, because he wants to take it over and buy Logan out. Roman would be part of the team; the others, probably not. But then Logan sends Roman away while he talks to Matsson, sidelining all of his children once again.
Shiv and Roman corral around Kendall, in the depths of a breakdown, admitting that he caused the death of the waiter in series one. The prospect of their dad selling Waystar to Matsson and cutting them all out breeds a sudden unity, and with Kendall instantly renewed, a plan forms in the back of the car – if they stick together, they can stop Logan, via a “supermajority clause”. Except that when they arrive at Logan’s he’s been tipped off that they’re coming. Shiv told silly old Tom Wambsgans what they were up to… and Tom has been in cahoots with Logan all along. Logan was able to swiftly negotiate removal of the supermajority clause from his divorce settlement with Caroline – in exchange Logan will help Caroline's new husband, British CEO Peter Munion (Pip Torrens), to gain a title (“Get the dipshits in Downing Street to make him Lord Seatsniffer of Pantyhose”). The kids are screwed. Again.
Season four of Succession begins at 2am/9pm on Sky Atlantic and NOW on Monday 27 March
