Succession finale review: The Roys get the fates they deserve in a superb ending

Roman (Kieran Culkin), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Connor (Alan Ruck) are useless, pampered, entitled nepo-babies, born into wealth earned by their monstrous father Logan (Brian Cox), who considered all of them disappointments.

​Even after his death, freed from the pressure of his towering, terrifying presence, they’re destined to remain failures, in business and as functioning human beings. Move their dinner plates a foot to the right and they’d most likely starve to death.

Logan’s brutal but honest assessment of his children back in episode two of this fourth and final season — “You are not serious people” — turned out to be painfully accurate.

The greybeards of Waystar RoyCo — Frank (Peter Friedman), Karl (David Rasche) and the rest — knew this. They’d always known it, which is why they’d played the longest of long games.

Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard), the weirdo Swedish CEO of Gojo, who desperately wanted to get his hands on Waystar RoyCo, knew it too.

Earlier in the season, he told Kendall to his face that he considered him and his siblings to be nothing more than “a tribute act” to their old man.

Shiv — betrayed by her husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and then by Matsson, who, as Roman put it, played her “like a pregnant cello” by stringing her along into believing she’d be appointed the American CEO necessary to seal the deal and then offered the job to someone else, the someone else she least wanted it to be — also knew it.

At the very last minute, with her own ambitions up in smoke and the board vote on the Gojo buyout tied at 6-6, she broke her promise to her brothers and used her casting vote to accept the offer, scuppering Kendall’s grand plan (like all his grand plans, hasty and half-baked) to keep hold of the company with him as sole CEO.

The only one who couldn’t see the truth, the only one who couldn’t let reality penetrate the fog of self-delusion that’s surrounded him his entire life, was Kendall, the hollowest head unfit to wear the hollow crown.

“I’m the oldest boy!” he bellowed pathetically (poor Connor, forgotten again!), confirming his sister’s claim that he wasn’t up to the job of running Waystar RoyCo.

The sight of Kendall and Roman physically fighting (ineptly, naturally) like two kids having a scuffle in a playground was an apt metaphor for the essential childishness of the Roy men who were born not bearing the name Logan. In the end, Matsson selected Tom to be CEO. I have to confess to feeling a little smug. Since the beginning of the season, I’d privately thought Tom would be the one. In a murder mystery, the character who seems least likely to be the killer, usually turns out to be the killer.

Tom is sneaky, bitchy, conniving and prone to betraying everyone, including his wife, to survive. He’s a human cockroach. He’s manipulative, but he’s also malleable, which makes him the perfect CEO for Matsson, who told him he doesn’t want a partner, he wants a frontman. Meanwhile, gormless Greg (Nicholas Braun) came unstuck playing the percentages, sucking up to Matsson while also leaking the news to Kendall that Shiv wouldn’t be the Swede’s CEO.

After a hilarious slapping session in the bathroom, Tom’s little smile to Greg meant he’d forgiven him. He’d be keeping him on, although at a much-reduced salary. What would he be without his fellow “Disgusting Brother”?

Succession ended for good with Shiv, who’d spent her life in the shadows of her father and her brothers, now living in the shadow of the husband she’d never regarded as her equal. In the limo with Tom, she coldly took his hand, an acceptance of her fate.

Kendall was to be found where he’s often been found: near a body of water, staring blankly at a future that’s just evaporated. Roman was last seen in a bar, sipping a cocktail and smiling faintly. Relief, perhaps, at being free at last of the burden of expectation?

As for our expectations, the finale lived up to all of them.