With the confirmation that Succession season 4 will close the chapter on HBO’s award-winning Murdoch family satire/modern adaptation of King Lear, the latest trailer certainly has an air of finality about it, and gets our freak juices flowing for this very evening.
After three seasons of backstabbing, backflips, and a whole lot of emotional violence, the internal power struggle within the Roy clan has culminated in this very moment. In season 4, the sale of media conglomerate Waystar Royco to tech visionary Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) inches closer by the day.
Naturally, the prospect of this seismic acquisition provokes the usual bouts of existential angst and further familial division between the Roy kids – mainly Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Siobhan (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin); Connor’s (Alan Ruck) doing his own thing as usual – and patriarch Logan (Brian Cox).
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“I’m going to build something bigger, faster, wilder. I want to kill the opposition, cut their throats – we are pirates,” Cox’s Logan Roy can be heard saying to the ATN newsroom in the preview.
To which the troops respond by chanting Logan’s name, a never Greg (Nicholas Braun) looking on as he goes with the rabid flow.
Creator Jesse Armstrong’s only recently announced the series would be wrapping it up during his interview with The New Yorker.
When prompted about why he decided this was the right moment to exit stage left, Armstrong explained: “You know, there’s a promise in the title of Succession. I’ve never thought this could go on forever.”
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“The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From season 2, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?”
“I got together with a few of my fellow writers before we started the writing of season 4, in about November-December, 2021, and I sort of said, “Look, I think this maybe should be it. But what do you think?” And we played out various scenarios.”
“We could do a couple of short seasons or two more seasons. Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks.”
“Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference.”
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Armstrong added: “I went into the writing room for season 4 sort of saying, “I think this is what we’re doing, but let’s also keep it open.” I like operating the writing room by coming in with a sort of proposition, and then being genuinely open to alternative ways of going.”
“And the decision to end solidified through the writing and even when we started filming: I said to the cast, “I’m not 100% sure, but I think this is it.” Because I didn’t want to bullshit them, either.”
“We don’t want it to overstay its welcome, like Billions; that’s past its sell-by date. That will not happen with our show,” Brian Cox (hilariously) told The Times
Succession season 4, the end of the beloved black comedy as we know it, has set a release date: March 27th, 2023 (tonight) – check out the final trailer above.
