Goodbye, ‘Succession’: A Pre-Finale Ode to the Great Show of Our Time
Alison Herman TV Critic At the close of its fourth and final season, “Succession” occupies a place eerily analogous to that of fearsome patriarch Logan Roy. After Logan’s sudden, shocking death in the third episode, his colleagues and children (who were also his colleagues) had to scramble for an answer to the question that’s haunted the entire series: What — or rather, who — now? “Succession” itself is set to leave a Logan-sized hole in the cultural landscape, with its fan base asking the same question. The future is impossible to predict, as “Succession” so beautifully showed with its anticlimactic, out-of-nowhere take on Logan’s demise. Ahead of the May 28 series finale, however, we can look back on what made the show such an era-defining, Emmy-dominating hit. “Succession” is hardly the first to explore the inner lives of the ultrarich. But at the end of its run, it stands out as the least glamorous and most realistic of the genre. It’s also the most effective as social commentary: By zooming in on the Roys’ claustrophobic bubble and toxic family dynamic, “Succession” speaks to the world they helped shape in their image.