A review of the series finale of HBO’s “Succession,” titled “With Open Eyes”
Succeeding in business is all about the right relationships, we’ve heard. If that is true, then we should have known Kendall, Roman and Shiv were never going to pull out a victory at the end of “Succession,” whether individually or as a team.
Jesse Armstrong dangled the possibility of either scenario in front of our noses many times throughout the final season, which made for a fetching distraction and a whole lot of empty betting about who would “win” the twisted competition to inherit Daddy’s company Waystar Royco.
Logan (Brian Cox) coaxed Roman (Kieran Culkin) back to his fatherly embrace one more time before croaking; then Roman weaseled his way into the newsroom, seemingly to tilt the election in favor of an autocratic bigot. But he cracked in the presence of his father – his embalmed dad, certainly, but more than that, the heart of his legacy, spelled out by his uncle Ewan (James Cromwell). Standing in the presence of a giant, Rome caved with a whimper, as he always does.
Shiv (Sarah Snook) was always kept out of company business, ensuring that nobody would take her seriously, not to mention her opposing political viewpoint to her father and brothers. To Logan she was always Pinky, a nickname that’s loving and belittling in equal measure; to her brothers, she was always someone to be easily manipulated, then dismissed.
But Kendall sad, pathetic Kendall, was the son who his father most closely molded in his image and the one who took the brunt of Logan’s self-hatred, psychologically speaking. One of the saddest moments in series finale “With Open Eyes” is when Kendall, on the verge of losing the board vote, bleats, “I’m the eldest boy.” It’s his final argument to a sister he never respected and a brother he claimed to love but always subdued when he had the chance.
By that point, even Roman was done with the pretense of family unity and claiming that blocking Waystar’s sale to GoJo and Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) was about anything other than Kendall’s quest for meaning and importance. He and Shiv remind Kendall that he killed someone, a fact Kendall conveniently and unconvincingly decides that he made up.
So it is appropriate that Roman – and Culkin, closing the book on a stellar performance – delivers the line that sums up the entire tragedy of “Succession” and the Roy siblings.
“We are bulls**t,” he tells Kendall. “. . . We’re nothing.”
“With Open Eyes” would be an appropriate title for the series finale if the phrase weren’t lifted from “Dream Song 29,” ending a tradition stretching back to the first season of naming every finale after a part of the John Berryman poem. “Dream Song 29” is about guilt and the subject’s inability to perceive reality as it is, which would make it seem directly related to Kendall. (Part of the work references hacking up a body and hiding the pieces.)
But the literal meaning of the title speaks plainly, in that Shiv and Roman are, at long last, done playing their father’s game. Some of this comes from a place of emotional defeat and fatigue, and some of it stems from their realization that they are separately and together a lost cause. Kendall’s ex-wife can’t stand him. Shiv’s marriage is a disaster. And all the dad promises in the world can’t prevent them from backstabbing each other.
“I love you. Really, I love you,” Shiv tells Kendall moments before she kills his dream of attaining absolute power. “But I cannot f**king stomach you.”
The Roys were not raised to win.
At an hour and 35 minutes, “With Open Eyes” is the longest “Succession” episode and one that operates as a victory lap and a nostalgic farewell for the fans, and the cast.
