Succession recap: Tears flow but jousting continues at Logan's funeral
The Roy family stand by the coffin of Logan in Succession.
It’s all over, bar the backstabbing. With just one week left, Succession is hurtling towards its grand denouement. But while viewers prepare to say farewell, the Roys are giving a tearful send-off to the late Logan at a grandiose funeral mass in downtown Manhattan.
The episode isn’t about Logan. It’s about the Roy kids and how each has responded to the passing of the father who overshadowed them through life and continues to do so in death.
It’s Roman who feels the weight of the loss the heaviest. Before the funeral, he tries to fool himself by jauntily monologuing in his penthouse. “Here I am talking loudly about my father… do I perhaps remind you of him, just a little?”
But at the church, he loses it entirely and cannot even begin his eulogy, let alone finish it. In steps Kendall, reprising his notorious series two “Kendall rap” with a preposterous and heartfelt address.
“He made life happen. He made me and my three siblings. And yes, he had a terrible force to him. And a fierce ambition that could push you to the side.”
Shiv speaks, too. She tries to be complimentary about Logan. It is beyond her a little. “It was hard to be his daughter. He was hard on women,” she says. “He couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head.”
All the Roys are in shock. Shiv reveals to Kendall and Roman that she is pregnant in the car to church. Meanwhile, at the ceremony, Logan’s widow Marcia is flanked by Kerry, her late husband’s mistress (aside from Roman, only Kerry weeps for Logan).
Roman’s tears are a surprise – as is the heartfelt address by Logan’s semi-estranged brother Ewan. He recalls how he and his sibling were sent across from Scotland during the Second World War, their ship almost sunk by U-Boats.
He continues that Logan was blamed for passing on the polio that claimed his younger sister. It’s his Rosebud moment, a story that humanises an American Monster. Was it his sister’s death and his guilt that spurred him on to conquer the world? Whatever the motivation, the results were a tragedy, says his brother.
“He was mean,” says Ewan. “And he fed a mean meagreness in men.”
There is nothing meagre about the mausoleum where Logan has decreed he should be interred - and which, hilariously, he has bought for a knockdown $5 million from a dotcom pet food magnate. “Wow. Cat food Ozymandias,” says Shiv.
With Logan buried, the Roys snap back to the here and now. Jeryd Mencken’s claim that he won the election has unleashed chaos in New York (leading Kendall’s ex, Rava, to skip the funeral). Still, the Roys feel they hold all the cards. Kendall and Roman expect Mencken to fulfil his promise to block the GoJo take-over of Waystar Rocyo by burying it in regulatory red tape.
But Shiv, who sees a place for herself at the side of GoJo’s ever-creepier tech bro wiz Lukas Matsson, wants the deal to go through. She also advises Matsson to take advantage of the impending breakdown in American democracy to release that report about GoJo inflating subscriber numbers in India.
Knives are drawn when Matsson and Shiv successfully pitch to Mencken a proposal to have GoJo take over but with an American CEO (yes, Shiv). It puts Shiv in direct conflict with Kendall, who wants his father’s throne. Overwhelmed, Roman walks into a crowd of rioters, seeking forgiveness in pain. He is swallowed by the chaos he has created – a brutal metaphor for what the Roys have done to America.
