‘Succession’ Season 2 Finale Recap: Fall Out Roy

It was the “but” heard round the world. With that portentous conjunction, Kendall Roy went from dutifully toeing the company line, which was to end with him taking all the blame for Waystar Royco’s criminal cruises and cover-ups, to…well, the wrestling term for such an unauthorized and unscripted maneuver, which I adore, is “going into business for himself.” And business is booming.

Defying his marching orders and shocking everyone, we the audience included, Kendall torches his father Logan’s plans, as well as his reputation, in front of the entire world. “The truth,” says Kendall, correctly, “is that my father is a malignant presence, a bully, and a liar.” From there he goes on to say that a control freak like his awful father would never in a million years be unaware of payouts and coverups going on at his own company, and that the rot in the cruise division goes all the way to the top. The closer? “This is the day his reign ends.” As another HBO show about rich assholes stabbing each other in the back would put it, Dracarys.

Succession‘s second season finale ends on a high point not just for the episode or the season but the entire series. Until now it’s seemed almost unthinkable that one of Logan Roy’s brood would defy him this dramatically after first agreeing not to. This is more shocking than Kendall’s first attempt to dethrone his dad, since we’d watched him build to that point over several episodes. Our only clues here were implicit and contextual: the presence of Cousin Greg, who kept copies of incriminating documents, by Kendall’s side; the Judas/Fredo kiss Kendall planted on his dad’s cheek when he agreed to be the fall guy required to placate congressional investigators and nervous shareholders alike. With so little fanfare beforehand, watching Kendall actually get up there on the world stage and call his dad out for what he is feels like watching a dog suddenly stand on its hind legs and speak fluent Latin.

But there was one other clue, if you were watching a timestamped version of the episode online: the running time. Quite astutely, the entire episode was constructed around the question of which family member(s) or top advisor(s) Logan would throw to the wolves. This being the Roys, they even made a lush family retreat out of it, swanning around the waters of Greece in a yacht the size of a football field. Yet when all was said and done, there was too much time leftover for Kendall to just do what he was told. Something fishy was bound to go down.

Not that the show didn’t do its best to hide it, as the cast hashed out the issue of the scapegoat for an hour. A breakfast turns into an impromptu circular firing squad as the various parties indicate—with due dispassion, of course—which other person they think should take the fall. (Logan suggests himself, which everyone shoots down, which Logan undoubtedly knew would happen.) Characters hash it out in small groups or pairs in between dealing with personal issues, like Logan forcing Kendall to kick his girlfriend Naomi Pierce off the boat, or Connor begging for money because his girlfriend Willa’s play bombed, or Shiv trying to get Tom to have a threesome with her as a sort of bribe for maintaining the open relationship status he never wanted to begin with, or Greg getting his foot fungus treated (by the third in the threesome), or Tom thinking out loud about a divorce (the threesome never happens, obviously).

With no foreign backer to take the company private (Roman’s hostage-crisis negotiation from last episode goes belly-up when Roman himself asserts that the deal will never go through) and with no willingness from Kendall’s old pal and current hostile takeover maven Stewy to play ball (he has the overwrought dick joke of the night: “You can threaten to stuff a million severed dicks into my ballbag”), it’s Shiv who makes the final call as to the sacrificial lamb. Faced with a choice between her husband and her brother, she tells her dad to defenestrate her brother. Kendall appears to take it all with sadness but acceptance, even when his father tells him he probably never would have made a good successor CEO because he’s not a killer.

Joke’s on you, Pop!

The best thing about the finale of the finale isn’t just the catharsis of watching one of Logan’s emotionally abused children (albeit one who committed vehicular homicide) strike back—it’s the show’s apparent recognition that actor Jeremy Strong is the best weapon in its arsenal. Egregious, playing-to-the-cheap-seats moments like Kendall’s rap tribute to his dad aside, Strong has always been stuck in a drama locked within the comedy framework. (On the flipside, Nicholas Braun and Matthew Macfadyen are pure comedy gold forced to toil inside a dramedy.) Giving him the series’ most dramatic moment to date makes perfect sense, and the fact that it’s a feelgood moment at that means it doesn’t sit quite so uncomfortably amid all the laugh lines as the car-accident storyline did last year.

So, y’know, there you have it: A show recognized one of its strengths and played to it, with great success. I still think dramedies are, by and large, the coward’s drama—drama with training wheels and an eject button, pretty much. The sledgehammer-subtle smile that crosses Logan’s face when he sees his wimpy son become a killer is Exhibit A in how weak this shit can get away with being. But aside from that, if you’re gonna make a dramedy, this episode is pretty much how it’s done.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Succession Season 2 Finale ("This Is Not For Tears") on HBO Go