‘Succession’ Creator Jesse Armstrong Hoped He’d ‘Get Argued Out of’ Ending Series at Season 4

variety.com:

Ethan Shanfeld Jesse Armstrong saddened millions of fans in February when he announced that the upcoming season of “Succession” would be its last.

According to the creator and showrunner of the HBO corporate drama, the ending of Season 4 felt “natural,” but he nonetheless secretly hoped someone would talk him out of wrapping up the series, which is seemingly at its peak. “The word that comes to mind for me is ‘natural.’ I hope people, when they see this season, will feel that it has a natural shape to it,” Armstrong told Variety on the red carpet at the Season 4 premiere, which took place March 20 at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center. “That’s how I pitched it to my writers’ room, kind of hoping I’d get argued out of it so we’d see a way to do more seasons, because I love working with these people.

I think there’s a feeling of completeness and rightness to the shape of the show.” When asked whether he wrote multiple endings to the 10-episode final season, Armstrong said, “I had the last scene pretty early.

We talked about how the show would end a lot, and I never wavered from that. I wavered on what were the best lines, the best way to express it — but that ending from the first draft is the one you’ll see when the episode comes out.” In terms of his favorite series finales, Armstrong said he “loves” the ending of “Six Feet Under” and the “controversial” farewell of “The Sopranos,” though he said he wasn’t directly inspired by the final episodes of his HBO predecessors. “Each show is different. ‘Six Feet Under,’ ‘Sopranos,’ some of the shows I most admire have radically different ways of concluding,” he added. “It’s got to feel right for that story.