There are two shows that exist within the world of Succession. On the one hand, there’s the comedy/profoundly stupid high jinks side of things, exemplified by Tom and Greg’s mentor-mentee relationship (“You can’t make a Tomlette without breaking some Greggs!”). On the other, there’s the cutthroat, tragic, sociopathic side best exemplified by Logan, who controls Waystar Royco with gravitas, even when he’s subjecting subordinates to an objectively absurd game of Boar on the Floor. It’s as if Brian Cox (playing Logan) is on a totally different series from Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun (Tom and Greg).
But while these characters will sometimes cross over from their respective corners of comedy and drama—Tom sometimes shares tender moments with Shiv; Logan’s favorite phrase is “fuck off” and he once called Greg an “Ichabod Crane fuck,” which is one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard—they don’t induce the same kind of whiplash as Succession’s resident sadboy, Kendall Roy. The character vacillates between extreme ends of the comedic and dramatic spectrum. He opened the first season rapping along to the Beastie Boys in the back of his car—hilarious and cringe-worthy in equal measure—and wrapped up the finale falling apart in his father’s arms after accidentally killing a young man in the English countryside. At his most mockable, Kendall represents the sort of tryhard business bro who earnestly refers to a website as a “portfolio of online brands and digital video content,” but he’s also the most human Roy, the character who’s most able to elicit audience sympathy. Against my better judgment I have a certain predilection toward self-loathing individuals, so I am absolutely Team Kendall. (It goes without saying that everyone on Succession is abhorrent, but it’s only natural to develop some rooting interests while watching a show.)
Being on Team Kendall—if you’re new, I just want to say, uh, yo—is a tricky proposition. You want him to somehow recover from a complete psychological collapse and get out from under Logan’s thumb knowing that, when Kendall actually does get some of his mojo back, he’s the type of dude who will whisk an aspiring actress away to Scotland and then cut ties with her because she says “awesome” too many times. More than loving any of the character’s defining traits, though, the key to being on Team Kendall is worshipping at the altar of Jeremy Strong, a Swiss Army knife of an actor who captures the character’s pathos and occasional levity in heart-wrenching fashion.
On a show filled to the brim with bravura performances, Strong inhabits a space so haunting, tragic, and insular—and sometimes, yes, really funny—that you actually begin to worry about his well-being. But the reward of going through such an emotional gantlet with Kendall, however, is experiencing one of the best television performances I’ve ever seen. (It’s worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Carrie Coon on The Leftovers, which is obviously the highest compliment a thespian can receive.)
The nuances of Strong’s ineffable work are most clearly defined when looking at the way Kendall changes his behavior depending on his interlocutor. Forced to spend more time with his dad this season, Kendall almost exclusively cowers in fear of retaliation and becomes a stuttering, memeable mess. And when Logan makes his son accompany him on a visit to the family of the man that Kendall accidentally killed, it’s wild how Strong resembles nothing if not a frightened little boy:
Kendall is, for the most part, emotionally inhibited around his siblings, but in Season 2, he begins to show some sincere vulnerability, breaking down in Shiv’s arms when confronted about his weird, stilted behavior. Strong strains through each word and choked-back sob, with Kendall desperately yearning to bare his anguish; it’s hard to watch. “I would just ask that you take care of me,” Kendall pleads, “because if Dad didn’t need me right now, I don’t exactly know what I would be for.” It’s a devastating admission of a man so devoid of, well, anything that he starts shoplifting from bodegas to feel the tiniest bit alive.
And yet, Kendall can still feel comfortable being a peak fuccboi in the right company. Just days after he accidentally killed a person—stumbling around Waystar HQ to do Logan’s bidding when he isn’t repeating the mantra, “I saw their plan. Dad’s plan was better”—Kendall acts most like his usual self around Cousin Greg, at one point referring to himself as “Techno Gatsby” while throwing a house party at Greg’s new penthouse, seemingly without his consent. (Strong’s proficiency at embodying a tragic figure is rivaled only by his impressive capacity to portray an asshole.) There are very clear power structures on Succession, and it’s not a great sign for hapless Greg that Kendall, even at rock bottom, won’t treat him with much respect or empathy (though at least Kendall did lend Greg that penthouse until the market bounces back!).
But with so much time spent at his father’s beck and call atop the Waystar empire, Kendall rarely gets to flex that dude-bro ego. The Logan-Kendall dynamic this season has Stockholm syndrome–esque qualities to it; as Roman puts it, Kendall has a difficult time deciding whether he wants to to worship their dad or try to kill him—sometimes, the entirety of the love-hate spectrum is traversed within a couple of episodes. A week after Logan made him meet the family of the man he accidentally killed, Kendall performs a rap about how awesome his dad is. (“Since I stan dad I’m alive and well,” he dishes at one point, a traumatic sequence of words.) In all honesty, Strong’s flow through most of “L to the OG” isn’t that terrible—it’s just, contextually, the rap is a pitiful and completely unnecessary display of fealty.
The way Strong has approached Kendall since he became the Number One Boy evokes Alfie Allen’s evolution in Game of Thrones from Theon to Reek. (Strong, for his part, is delighted by the Kendall-Reek analogy.) The Reek torture scenes were gratuitous and redundant, but there was no denying that Allen handled a tricky Thrones tightrope with aplomb—moving seamlessly from the Westerosi embodiment of toxic masculinity to a traumatized shell of a person. Of course, once he escaped from Ramsay Bolton, he didn’t become the Theon of old: the experience made him seek redemption from the Starks. Were Kendall to escape his father’s grip—which may require Logan to die—the evidence doesn’t necessarily point to a similar redemption arc. Kendall might be capable of empathy, but his warped sense of self-worth still condones extremely shitty behavior, especially to people under his socioeconomic strata. (Again, he dumped the actress from Willa’s play for saying “awesome” more than once, not even 24 hours after referring to them as the “Lewis and Clark of fucking.”)
Kendall is, in other words, all over the damn place—and you can envision a lesser actor becoming overburdened by the emotional roller coaster of the role. But Jeremy Strong deftly toggling between portraying a character in emotional agony, snorting lines of coke, stuttering like a nervous child, and performatively acting like everything is fine carries the kind of tragic authenticity that helps give Succession emotional stakes. It’s a pathetic portrait of a life that barely qualifies as living, and it’s a testament to Strong’s indelible performance that Kendall’s fatalist cycle remains captivating television. With the walls closing in on Logan and the Roys’ future at Waystar heading into the Season 2 finale, the patriarch tells Shiv that it’s time for a “blood sacrifice.” The leading candidates for said sacrifice appear to be Tom and Kendall. Beyond the darkness that the show would have to embrace to sacrifice Kendall after everything he’s endured this season, it could also mean depriving us of more amazing work from Strong. Even for Succession’s high standards, that would be the biggest tragedy of all.
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.
