Is there anyone who isn’t hiding a body on Succession? Even Shiv (Sarah Snook), who is by far the most innocent of the bunch, seems to be harboring the news of her pregnancy. Succession has always featured characters with some hellish secrets, but by Episode 5 of this final season, it seems like everyone has something to conceal.
Though Sunday night’s new episode has the most enticing title of the season, “Kill List,” it’s also the slowest and most tedious so far. That’s not to say it is boring—is any episode of Succession?—but in the canon of Succession’s travel episodes, it sets itself apart as a rare, quieter installment. Gone are the days of New Mexico in “Austerlitz,” the sunny cruise of “This Is Not For Tears,” and the Italian countryside of “All the Bells Say.” Without Logan (Brian Cox), business trips are trickier, unrelenting, and fatal (in a more business sense, in reference to that “kill list”).
The kids journey to Norway to settle their deal with Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) of GoJo, a sports-oriented streaming service offering to buy out most of Waystar Royco. The deal is simple: They’re asking over $144 per share for all of Waystar Royco, minus ATN, which the sibling alliance plans to partner with their newly acquired Pierce General media to run. “Pierce ATN” is what would happen if, say, Rupert Murdoch bought Warner Media and paired their CNN with Fox News, a mind-boggling (and hilarious) concept.
Business pros Frank (Peter Friedman), Gerri (J. Smith Cameron), and Karl (David Rasche) attempt to prep new CEO Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and COO Roman (Kieran Culkin) on how to secure the deal with Matsson, but the idiot brothers won’t listen. Kendall can’t even be bothered to talk the plan over with any of his allies. Instead, he simply writes “144” on a piece of paper in Sharpie and holds it up to display his headspace going into the meeting.
As Logan said, his kids “are not serious people.” This shows in the way they interact with Logan’s former staff (now, questionably, their staff), with each other, and especially with Matsson, who rakes them over the coals. Compared to Matsson, Kendall and Roman are schoolboys with the crusts neatly chopped off their sandwiches. And in comparison to their father, one might argue that Kendall and Roman are worthless specs of dust—only the dust is harmless, whereas these boys are an active threat to the company. All they know is to repeat “fuck off” and demand more money—poor business tactics that ultimately lose them ATN.
“I prefer to do this with your dad. He was a prick, but at least he knew what he wanted,” Matsson roasts the pair as they plead for his sympathy in the deal. “I think he’d be embarrassed with you now. His two big boys, playing Scooby Doo.”
All considered, this overall sale is probably a good thing. Shiv has been doing some digging online (maybe instead of political consulting and business, she should’ve considered journalism), which reveals that ATN may have struck some sort of deal with alt-right presidential candidate Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk), allowing him to voice whatever he wants on the “ethical” “news” channel. Shiv blames Roman, who may or may not be trying to push that under the rug. ATN head Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) is also hiding something about the company, which we learned two episodes ago when he told Greg (Nicholas Braun) to delete a vague document from his computer. So many secrets to follow!
And Shiv’s not done digging. After being neglected for a shot at running the company, she’s doing some backseat driving, steering Kendall and Roman in the right (or wrong?) direction in a comms sense. Investigative journalists have found some dirt on the brothers, claiming they covered up years of their father’s mistreatment of women, staff, sexual harassment cases, and fraud—you name it. Still, Kendall and Roman ignore her, moving full speed ahead with their new positions at the company.
This is a good time to resurface another secret lurking within the family: Kendall’s murder from Season 1. He killed a caterer, remember that? Logan seemed to be the only thing standing between that bombshell and the rest of the world. In Season 3, there’s mention of a podcast investigating the lies of the Roy family that promises to tell the truth about what happened to that caterer. Now that Kendall is the Waystar CEO, it seems like only a matter of time before some journalist leaks what really went down and Kendall finally faces the consequences.
But by far the award for biggest skeleton in the closet goes to Matsson. Over a sultry chat with Shiv, the freaky Scandinavian billionaire reveals that he’s been sending vats of his own blood to his comms director, for whom he has some bizarre infatuation. Shiv is unfazed by this. She promises Matsson that her team—namely, Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) and Gerri—can clean up his mess. Shiv and Matsson may seem like an unlikely pairing, but they have an intense, somewhat sexual energy.
The end of the episode leads to the sale of Waystar to Matsson’s GoJo, including ATN. “Send me a photo of your brothers’ faces,” Matsson whispers to Shiv on the phone while the team flies back to America. Wielding everything bonkers flirtations with Tom to her budding alliance (affair?) with Matsson, Shiv has seized control from her brothers once more. When Matsson finally sends over his “kill list” (a list of people he plans to remove from Waystar in the acquisition), the only people who will stay with the company are people Shiv listed as those who can clean up the whole “vats of blood” dilemma. Matsson is under Shiv’s spell, though her father never was.
Keeping Up With the Roys
Even though they may not be in the main plot, we still want to highlight the most blazing burns and spiciest moments of Succession. Here they are from this episode:
- “Here comes the March of the Penguins,” Kendall says as Karl, Gerri, Frank, and Karolina waddle into his office. Logan was mean, but he rarely roasted his team of his execs. Woof.
- While Roman chats on the phone with Connor (Alan Ruck) about dressing their father in a kilt for his funeral, Kendall decides to chime in. He takes the same notepad he used for the “144” shtick and pens “MORON” onto the paper to show to Roman, implying that Connor is the fool. Blunt. Simple. Cruel. I love it.
- “First, maybe stop sending her your blood,” Shiv bluntly recommends to Matsson after he asks for her assistance in his ongoing dilemma. It’s not a roast, but something about the way Snook reads this line—like, uh, duh?—makes it a dig.
- Shiv and Tom fire roasts at each other like they’re flirtations in this episode, but by far the most brutal is when Tom asks about Matsson. “He’s very broad,” she tells Tom, pulling her hands out to show how wide his body is. “You know, I used to think you were broad, too.”
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