Succession recap: Iceman cometh as Roys rock up in Norway
As their father is being prepared for burial, the Roys are trying to seal a deal with Matsson.
It’s off to Sweden – sorry, Norway – for another comically dark instalment of Succession, as the Roys continue to struggle with the fallout from the death of family patriarch Logan.
Kendall, Shiv and Roman have been summoned to a glacial getaway retreat by GoJo and its odd-ball boss, Lukas Matsson, who makes his introductions while hiding inside a vast tech-bro hoodie and spends most of his face-time with the Roys goading them as they try to keep their dad’s empire from turning to dust.
The trip to Scandinavia is doubly significant because it is the first outing by Kendall and Roman as the new “dream team” running Waystar. True, they’ve been installed on a strictly interim basis until the GoJo takeover is pushed through. Nonetheless, the power shift is not lost on third wheel Shiv, who finds herself quietly excluded from the important meanings and the important group emails.
They’re supposed all be in this together - or so went the pitch Kendall and Roman made to Shiv. However, she is painfully aware that things are not panning out as expected.
The episode looks back as much as it looks forward. It opens with Kendall in a town car, en route to Waystar HQ. This is a mirror image of the very first instalment of Succession, in which Kendall was heading to the office to close a deal with an oily tech mogul.
That agreement went south quickly – and Kendall proved just how out of depth he was (“Should I call your dad?” wondered one of his flunkies). Second time around, he’s determined to show he’s just a daddy’s boy. But already there are obstacles. Such as a wildly over-budget movie produced by Waystar’s Hollywood subsidiary. The film is called Kalispitron: Hibernation and sounds like all the worst Marvel films rolled into one.
There’s no time to get bogged down, though. The Roys and their retinue are off to Norway in the hope of convincing GoJo to raise their offer for the business. Kendall and Roman also reveal to Shiv that they’re perfectly happy to erase, in the corporate sense, her estranged ex, Tom (also tagging along).
Logan’s former right-hand flunkies Karl and Frank are, meanwhile, rolling up their socks in preparation for the flight. They reveal that the cause of Logan’s death was a pulmonary embolism – a fate they are eager to avoid.
Having touched down, the mind games begin. Matsson will raise the offer – but only if the Roys agreed to bundle Logan’s Fox News-style cable network, ATN. This was the old man’s most cherished possession – by including it in the Waystar Royco yardsale, they would be getting blood from a stone at the cost of betraying the old man’s legacy.
Speaking of blood, it turns out that Matsson is even stranger than the Roys – or the viewer – initially suspected. In a late-night tete-a-tete with Shiv, he reveals that he used to be in a relationship with GoJo’s head of communications – and that when they broke up, he sent her blocks of frozen blood.
That kind of behaviour makes the Roys look almost normal. As does Roman’s understandable outburst when, while out hiking, he rants at Matsson for dragging the siblings across half the world when they are grieving for their father (back in New York, Connor is sending selfies of Logan as he is being prepared for burial).
They storm off - only for Matsson to up his offer for Waystar Royco. All it took was Roman acting like a human being for the Roys to triumph. Matsson had described the siblings as a “covers act” – but Logan would surely have been proud of Roman.
That warm feeling is offset as GoJo sends through its kill list of executives to be sacked under the new regime. As expected it includes Karl, Frank and Hugo. But not Gerri – or Tom? Did Shiv plead for him to be spared when discussing blocks of blood with Matsson? All will be revealed as Succession chugs onwards towards what will surely be a devastating denouement.
