Succession Season 4 Episode 9 Recap

On the way to the funeral, Kendall turns monstrous on his family. He’s helping to elect the Donald Trump of this universe and now his family wants to leave town? He tells Rava, his estranged wife, that she is “too in line” and that she is going to “get an emergency court order” to prevent him from leaving town with the children. He is even considering a divorce and preparing for custody hearings. The marbles are not only lost, but smashed to pieces. When his assistant informs him that she wants to leave too, he yells that “everyone is being fucking dumb!”

On the way to the service, Shiv (Sarah Snook), recently distracted (again) with her siblings, finally reveals to her siblings that she is pregnant. Roman jokingly responds with comments like “Is it mine?” and “If I see you breastfeeding, I’ll have to masturbate.” Brute man. Kendall calls for a “funeral truce”, asking that “today be just today”. But just as he predicted last episode, no one is going to really take this opportunity to stop being petty to process their pain. Not even cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun)! He wants Roman to introduce him to Mencken. Sad.

On the other hand, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) is spiraling because he is number one on the assassination list as ATN president. Marcia (Hiam Abbass) and Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) hold hands, Roman makes the Freudian incest joke #2 episode, and Shiv once again buries himself deeper in the mud trying to convince Matsson ( Alexander Skarsgård) that he appointed her as the national executive director. Still trusting the tech billionaire, she plans for Matsson to convince Mencken to keep the deal. Mencken doesn’t like WayStar RoyCo selling a guy out of the country. In addition, he reached an agreement with Kendall and Roman to block the deal for positive coverage on ATN. As a solution, Shiv suggests that making her US CEO would keep the company “American,” though that’s something of a semantic loophole. Whatever it takes to win.

Come back Marcia! Will her mysteries ever be revealed?

As we eventually learn, the point of those extra 14 minutes was to accommodate everyone who would be making a speech at the funeral. We start with Ewan Roy (James Cromwell), who talks about being stranded on a submarine before abruptly transitioning to scorn. He describes Logan as an evil figure who “darkened the skies a little, closed the hearts of men, and fed that dark flame.” Sorry everyone, dad was not a nice guy. Roman then collapses on the podium after seeing the coffin. The compliment that he practiced perfectly? Impossible. Kendall speaks for him, propping up his father’s success as a businessman. Citing company, money, and “life’s great geysers,” he paints Logan as a man who chose “comfort” above all else. To achieve great wealth, he only needed to be cold, cunning, and ruthless. Even Shiv summons some final words about how his dad certainly did go all out, more or less. Only they know if the Roy brothers really believe anything they said.

After the funeral, Roman meets the protest, calls the protesters morons and shakes his face. He is very self destructive but I guess everyone grieves differently. After all, Kendall, on her high horse, had just made fun of him for thinking he could be like her father. “You thought you were dad and you screwed it up,” Kendall tells Roman about his younger sister not being able to shore her way out of this deal. Oh.

Unfortunately, that’s kind of like… that. Sure, we got the full Logan Roy sendoff that we didn’t get from his offscreen death in episode three, but we didn’t get much of what happens from here. There was a Kendall/Roman/Mencken alliance and now there’s a (maybe?) Shiv/Matsson/Mencken alliance. Rough. What happened to going “reverse viking”? Kendall decides for who knows how many times since the debut of this series that he wants to be the solo CEO and rule the world. (“Wow, wow.”) HBO is known for its jam-packed penultimate episodes, but while the Roy brothers may have closure, I don’t. I still can’t imagine how this will end. GoJo deal blocked, our company, end credits? I have a secret (now public!) wish that the Roy family kill each other. Village-style. Maybe they still could. Try to get to a good place before next Sunday, dear reader, because the series finale of Succession. Take a deep breath.

assistant editor

Josh Rosenberg is an assistant editor at Esquire and maintains a steady diet of one movie a day. Previous work of his can be found on Spin, CBR and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.