‘Succession’ ended with its fourth season and went out with a bang, but that wasn’t always the plan, according to Jesse Armstrong.
The final season of Succession placed the Roy family in the position they never wanted to be in, but one they were destined for from the pilot — needing to find an immediate successor to Logan Roy (Brian Cox) as the Chief Executive Officer of Waystar Royco. While the fourth and final season did a good job of bringing the main characters to a comfortable position to end the story, Jesse Armstrong had a few options for how the final episodes following the Roy family were going to play out. In an article he wrote for Vulture, Armstrong talked about how he was considering structuring the conclusion to the series, before settling on what was actually seen on television. He said:
“So once season three was complete and aired, in December 2021, I got my fellow executive-producer–writers together. Lucy Prebble, Tony Roche, Jon Brown, and Will Tracy joined me at my office in Brixton to look at the alternative future-season shapes I’d written up on the walls: one final season of ten episodes, or two of six or eight episodes.”
When it was time to prepare for production on the final season of Succession, it was decided by Armstrong and HBO that the series would conclude with one ten-episode installment. And audiences were taken by surprise when Logan Roy finally keeled over in the third episode of Season 4, setting the stage for an intense power struggle during the second half of the season. After all, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Shiv (Sarah Snook) weren’t going to quietly allow someone else to take the spot they’ve coveted all their lives.
In the middle of their fighting, Shiv tried to take advantage of the fact that Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) wanted to take over her family’s company. By forming an alliance with the foreign executive, Shiv thought she already had a foot inside the door in the case of a potential acquisition. But what she never counted on, was Matsson double-crossing her, leaving her out of the list that included the names of the few people who could fill shoes as big as Logan’s.
Who Becomes New CEO of Waystar Royco?
When it was the time for Succession to come to its inevitable end, there was only one answer for who would keep the company in Armstrong’s mind. It was a decision he had made all the way back when the second season was in the process of being filmed. Tom Wamsbgans (Matthew Macfadyen) had always roamed in the shadows of Waystar, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. In the end, his willingness to betray Shiv allowed Matsson to trust him, making him the new leader of one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world.
