What a time for trauma, chaos, and a nation in peril.
Note: This article contains spoilers for several Succession episodes, particularly season four, episode nine, “Church and State.”
Last week’s episode of Succession took place inside the ATN headquarters on Election Day with barely a glimpse of the outside world. Now, in Church and State, the penultimate episode of the series, it’s the day of Logan’s funeral, and we see that New York is burning. In the aftermath of the fishy election of right-wing demagogue Jeryd Mencken, there are roving bands of protesters, stores boarding up their windows, gridlock in the streets, and police everywhere. Logan Roy is dead; the city is alive with fury.
This chaos has been building up for years, and we’ve been shown brief glimpses of how the world reacts to the right-wing, politically polarizing media empire the Roy family has created. In season one, activists disgruntled by ATN’s racist, misogynist coverage threw a water balloon of piss at Logan. A few episodes ago, a racist ATN fan physically attacked Kendall’s daughter. Now that slow buildup has erupted, propelled by a seething energy that the Roys — especially Logan — spent their lives stoking but can’t control. Logan isn’t even around to see what he’s wrought.
The last episode of Succession airs on May 28, which is hard to believe because the lives of these characters — and the world around them — are in shambles.
Given that Succession has always been most fascinated by the ambiguities, the blurry margins, of power and human greed, it now seems unlikely that it will tie up everything with a neat bow. Kendall and Shiv’s naked ambition to succeed their father as the sole leader of their company still hasn’t come to a head; the corporate GoJo-Waystar war to gobble up the other wages on. The question of who “wins” Succession has always been a half-serious, reductive way to describe what might happen in the series finale, but it’s become vanishingly difficult to imagine any of these broken, nasty people emerging with a sense of inner peace. It’s even harder to envision that the Roys will inherit a world that hasn’t been utterly polluted by their presence.
The antics of this family in the last few episodes have been a disquieting reminder that, beyond the fandom’s memes and jokes, there is actually no one to root for. That was never the point. The question is, what do we have left to learn about how their narrow, privileged world intersects with ours? Church and State zooms out and shows us more bluntly than ever before.Disarray and disorder after Mencken’s election
Kendall (Jeremy Strong) drives past disturbing, apocalyptic scenes of New York in post-election disarray — it’s never made explicit whether the protesters are for Daniel Jiménez or Jeryd Mencken, or a mix of both, though a TV chyron in the background of one scene reveals that at least some of them are Jiménez supporters. The vote results for Wisconsin, which lost a significant chunk of ballots in an election-night fire, can’t be certified until all the lost absentee ballots are counted. The pandemonium isn’t likely to resolve any time soon.
Ken calls Roman (Kieran Culkin), wondering if they should advise Mencken to tone down his rhetoric. Roman, who is delivering the big eulogy and has been practicing it in the creepiest daddy-issues way, is delighted by the discord — it’s great for ratings. Kendall, having witnessed the bedlam, is both concerned and guilty about it, yet can’t contain his anger when his ex-wife Rava (Natalie Gold) tells him she’s taking the kids and going upstate for fear of their safety, missing the funeral. Rava is firm; she’s already loading up the car. “This is my decision,” she says with finality.
Unable to stop her, he’s spitting mad. “You do not fuck with me today,” he shouts, pointing a menacing finger at Rava. He’s an echo of his father here, trying to bully someone into submission and jumping immediately to revenge when they don’t fold. Kendall threatens to get an emergency court order to stop her from taking his children out of the city. Later, he informs his assistant, Jess (Juliana Canfield), to set up a meeting with a family lawyer for next week. Perusing his schedule is how he discovers that Jess had blocked off time to inform him that she’s taking another job. “It just feels like time,” she tells him. Though he senses that ATN’s role in pushing Mencken as the president has something to do with her decision, Kendall takes Jess’s leaving as a deep betrayal, too. He snaps at her as if she’s one more child who won’t be attending Logan’s funeral, ungrateful of all that Ken has done for her.
