Last week, the Roys fought their way out of the corner, with Kendall effectively rebutting Gil Eavis and Shiv convincing a victim not to testify. But at the end of the episode, Logan made it clear that his clan hadn’t quite won the fight yet, telling Shiv that they still needed to make a “blood sacrifice.” Our staffers make their best guesses at who that might be.
Tom
Miles Surrey: The only thing standing against Tom being Succession’s “blood sacrifice” is that it’s a little too obvious. All season—if not the entire series—Tom has been reduced to a Roy family punching bag, and try as he might to ingratiate himself into their inner circle, he’ll never be seen as their equal. That includes Shiv, whose support for her husband is as flimsy as a Jacob Wohl–led investigation. And if Season 1 was about Kendall trying so hard to usurp his father that he practically imploded, this season has shown the depressing depths Shiv will reach to appease her father—including convincing a victim not to testify against the Roy family.
Logan loves nothing more than to psychologically torment his children, and what better test of his daughter’s fealty than asking her to throw Tom to the wolves? Tom is, after all, actually responsible for covering up the cruise lines mess—and his own appearance in front of the Senate led a Waystar employee to describe him as a man with “two assholes.” And Cousin Greg stashed enough evidence to bury his twisted mentor, were he so willing. Tom is an indelible character—it helps that he looks like Peyton Manning having achieved his Final Business Form after franchising a few more Papa John’s—but his “sacrifice” would make for a compelling cautionary tale. Trying to become a Roy is an ill-fated pursuit that will only lead to self-destruction. This Fly Guy may learn it the hard way, by landing right in a prison cell.
Greg
Paolo Uggetti: Nothing would be crueler to us, the viewers, if it turns out that our beloved Greg “Gregory” “The Egg” Hirsch is the sacrificial lamb being led to the altar of his own making. In some ways, this has been set up all along. Greg came into the family as an outsider, and Tom used that leverage against him to make him a criminal caddy. But now that he’s part of the inner circle—goodbye to that $250 million from Ewan—his roots in the cabal are still not so deep. It makes him the perfect scapegoat, and unlike Tom, he’s literally a blood relative. Greg was the one who checked out the boxes with the disappearing files, and by keeping some of the files, he gave himself leverage but also left proof that he was the one closest to the destruction. I think Greg will get thrown under the bus, try to use his extra evidence to his benefit and then end up embroiling the rest of the Roys in the scandal anyway. No one will get out of this unscathed; Greg is just the first of the dominos that will fall.
Gerri
Kate Knibbs: As the face of the legal team, Gerri is logically the right person to nuke in order to convey that the company is treating this seriously while keeping the actual family safe. From a storytelling point of view, with the first season focused on Kendall and the second season focused on Shiv, we’re gearing up for Roman SZN next year. Gerri is Roman’s biggest ally right now and someone he actually cares about. Putting her in jeopardy would raise the stakes for the drollest Roy.
Kendall
Ben Lindbergh: Logan didn’t bail Kendall out of his manslaughter mess because of fatherly love. He covered up the crime for a few selfish reasons: to make Kendall drop out of the takeover bid, to avoid a family scandal, and—perhaps—to keep Kendall around as a potential patsy. Logan has delighted in torturing his son all season, first stranding him at the meeting with Stewy and Sandy, then ignoring his recommendation to preserve Vaulter, and later making him tag along to Andrew Dodds’s house just to see him squirm and remind him of the leverage he holds. Last week, when Gil asked Logan about the shadow logs, he immediately threw Kendall to the congressional wolves, just as Tom had tried to do with Bill. That casual verbal drive-by—“You can talk to him”—betrayed Logan’s true intentions.
Kendall is close enough to Logan to satisfy the public’s lust for blood, and now that Logan seems to have written him off as a possible successor, there’s little professional cost to cutting him out of the company. Plus, there’s no shortage of non-manslaughter-related dirt that could be used to discredit Kendall or keep him quiet: drug use, shoplifting, dick pics. For Logan, Kendall is the perfect fall guy. And for fans of Succession, seeing Kendall get used, abused, and discarded after acting like Logan’s lapdog all season would be a devastating, well-crafted twist.
