Shiv’s Decision Defines ‘Succession’ and Fulfills the Roy Siblings’ Destiny
The ‘Succession’ series finale showed what the relationship among Shiv, Kendall, and Roman could have been. It also left no doubt about what drove Logan’s children above all else.
It was, in some ways, the position Shiv Roy had always foreseen for herself: The future of her father’s company was in her hands. With the rest of the Waystar Royco board deadlocked on the GoJo deal, Shiv had the deciding vote. The corporate gladiators arrayed around her knew their hopes hung on her thumb: Up would approve the sale to Lukas Matsson and Co., and down would destroy it. All eyes, including those of her older siblings, turned toward Shiv. The mostly male board, and the patriarchal world where women leaders are unwelcome, awaited her word—the last word. This was the sort of power she’d been promised, and that she’d tenaciously pursued.
Except that this clout came with a catch: Shiv had the power to decide which man would get to sit at the head of the table, but not the power to place herself there. As long as she could make like her name and stab either her husband or brother in the back, her wishes had weight. But as soon as she crowned one of them king, the conch would pass from her fingers forever: She would go from having final say to having very little say. No wonder she needed time to think. It’s not that she wasn’t ready for the moment. She just wasn’t ready for the moment to end.
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The ensuing scene was the signature moment of Succession’s series finale. The night before the board vote, the “troika” of Shiv, Kendall, and Roman channel their inner children as they raid their mother’s refrigerator, keep her houseguest awake, lick Peter’s special cheese, and fix Kendall a “meal fit for a king.” It’s a sweet glimpse of the bond they could have had if they hadn’t been born Roys—and on Succession, any hint of sweetness guarantees that the chaser will be sour. When the three siblings angrily reconvene in a conference room the next day, once again raising their voices enough to be overheard, they shatter any illusion that they could put their pasts behind them—and, in the process, dash Kendall’s dream of becoming CEO. Like the golden crown Khal Drogo gives Viserys, Kendall’s crown of milk and hot sauce is the only one he’ll wear.
“It’s fucking nuts!” Kendall shouts, when Shiv reveals that she’s switching sides for the second time in the episode and voting against keeping Waystar in the family and in favor of selling to GoJo. “It doesn’t even make any sense!” Ken’s consternation mirrored the sentiments of a subset of the audience. In the immediate aftermath of the finale, some viewers questioned why Logan’s daughter had betrayed her brothers again. Did Shiv, in Succession parlance, “fuck it”? Or did she make the right call?
As with most decisions in Succession, there wasn’t really a right call to make—or, for that matter, a reason to think that the character in question could be capable of making one. In the context of the series, Shiv’s flip-flop made perfect sense, as did the rest of the bile that bubbled up in the finale. For four seasons, Logan’s children waged a war they couldn’t win—and in the end, they all lost in tragic, fitting fashion. Which is why the finale’s only real winner was Succession itself. The series ended well because it didn’t end well for the Roys.
Initially, Shiv says she won’t vote for Kendall because she doesn’t think he’d be good at the job. “Where’s the logic?” an incredulous Kendall asks—but based on his history, where’s the lie? Kendall did a convincing impression of a successful CEO at times throughout the series, but his stewardship was as much of a mirage as his Living+ projections. (Even when he’s making a case for his candidacy, he describes himself as a cog.) Plus, he has an actual skeleton in his closet, as Shiv cruelly, predictably points out. “You can’t [be CEO], because you killed someone,” she says, holding Kendall’s Season 1 secret over his head just like Logan did. When a crying Kendall confided in his siblings about what happened with the waiter in the Season 3 finale, Shiv extended her hand to comfort him, a rare moment of tender physical contact. Now she’s sticking a knife in the same spot she patted.
Of course, Ken isn’t wrong to doubt Shiv’s stated rationale. In all likelihood, Matsson would be a better leader, but that’s not why she blocks Ken. She leaves little doubt about her main motivation: “I love you, but I cannot fucking stomach you,” she confesses, in a moment of actual honesty. Logan couldn’t stand to see any of his kids succeed him, and none of them can stand to see the others take the top spot over them. (Even the thought of voting for Kendall brings Roman to tears; “I fucking hate you,” Roman blubbers, while Ken holds him as if he might snap his brother’s neck.) Shiv’s spite for Ken is stronger than her spite for Matsson and his chosen stooge, Tom (Shiv’s husband and Waystar’s CEO-to-be); her vote wasn’t so much a change of heart as it was an acknowledgment of what was in her heart, and her brothers’ hearts, all along. The siblings’ mini-melee in the conference room reflects their relationship better than their embrace after Logan’s death—and though Shiv and Roman aren’t killers, their jokes about murdering Kendall contain a kernel of truth.
Kendall tells Shiv that she’s voting against herself, but voting for herself isn’t an option; her name never appears on the ballot. A vote for Kendall clearly isn’t the same, despite his nonbinding offer to give Shiv full control of ATN. When Kendall declares, “I’m the eldest boy!”—reminiscent of Logan calling him his “no. 1 boy” in the Season 1 finale after pressuring him into submission—he is, in essence, arguing for male-line primogeniture. (Connor, as usual, is excluded from the discussion.) However much he may deny it, Ken sees Waystar as his birthright, and he won’t hesitate to push Shiv out of the picture again, just as he and Roman did when they formed the “Incredible Fսck Brother Bandwagon.” When Kendall puts his feet on Logan’s desk, bros it up with Stewy, and all but guarantees that he’ll “get him inside” as a chairman, Shiv understands that Waystar would remain a boys club under Kendall’s control, even though Logan is gone.
Which isn’t to say that she sides with Tom out of self-interest; Waystar will be a boys club under Matsson too. In theory, staying with Tom keeps Shiv close to power. In practice, she becomes the spouse of a puppet. “I’m not looking for a partner,” Matsson tells Tom early in the episode. “I’m looking for a front man.” He hires Tom because Shiv says he’ll “suck the biggest dick in the room.” (A test he passed by swallowing Matsson’s musings about his attraction to Shiv.) Tom may consider himself a winner, in that he’s eaten enough crap to quickly climb the corporate ladder, but in what world is it winning to embrace a future as a “pain sponge”? Sponges are dispensable, and Tom, who certainly seems wrung out, will likely last only as long as Matsson needs him to present a palatable face to American regulators and soak up the fallout from Waystar getting “IKEA’d to fuck.” The Disgusting Brothers’ tenure may be almost as brief as the Incredible Fuck Brothers’—unless Ebba is just biding her time until she torpedoes Matsson with salacious receipts.
Even though Tom is a figurehead as CEO, there’s still a real role reversal in the way his character arc ends. It’s apparent in the way he dismisses an obsequious Hugo, who attempts a patented Wambsgans-esque ass-kissing, or in his lukewarm response to Shiv’s request for a “real conversation,” which mirrors Shiv’s dismissal of his desire for a “real conversation” three episodes earlier. Distance from Logan’s bloodline once looked like an impediment to advancement within Waystar, but in the long run, greater proximity to his poison was far worse. In title, at least, Tom now holds the position Shiv always wanted, and Shiv—the scorpion with her stinger removed—is now the one whose connection to Waystar depends on her partner.
This marriage, though, is no more a partnership than Tom’s marriage of convenience with Matsson. The love sponge wound up with the pain sponge, and neither will be happy, as evidenced by our last look at Shiv and the ostensibly victorious Tom, their faces stony and their hands touching but not intertwined. It’s the ending of The Graduate with even fewer smiles, which suggests that the cycle of what Shiv described as “emotionally stunted” children may be starting anew. Like her mother, Caroline, Shiv is now locked in a largely loveless marriage, excluded from corporate power, and committed to raising a child she’s not sure she wants. “I’m not gonna see it,” Shiv told her mother in “Church and State,” referring to her future kid. “I’m just gonna do it the family way.” It’s another joke that resonates because it sounds somewhat serious.
That’s the happy ending, compared to Kendall’s last bow. Roman and Ken are finally free of Waystar, which may be for the best, but Kendall, at least, will be haunted by his failure to take his dad’s seat for more than one morning. (At least, like Logan, he has Colin to keep him company.) Every Roy, Roy relative, or product of the Roys’ patronage seems miserable or gets some kind of comeuppance. Connor pretends to be pleased that Willa wants to put an ocean between them. Greg is on the outs with Matsson and, as the sticker on his forehead indicates, is the property of Tom. Even Jeryd Mencken may not be White House bound.
Most Succession characters are, on a financial level, insulated from losing: The defeated Kendall we see in the last scene of the series, staring at the water instead of floating in it, stands to make billions on the Waystar sale. On an emotional level, though, they’re equally incapable of winning. At the dinner with Logan that Kendall, Roman, and Shiv watch via video, drinking in the sight of their dad listing losers at a gathering they weren’t invited to, Karl sums up their problem with a Robert Burns song:
The war’ly [wordly] race may riches chase
An’ riches still may fly them, O;
An’ tho’ at last they catch them fast,
Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them, O.
Burns presumed the riches chasers had hearts, which is more than Succession concedes. “You’re disgusting! You’re fucking heartless!” Kendall shouts at Shiv as she prepares to cast her fateful, fated vote. It takes one to know one. And Succession knew its damaged, doomed, and disgusting nest of vipers well, all the way to the inevitably bitter end. “We are bullshit,” Roman belatedly recognizes. Succession never BS’ed about that.
