‘Succession’ Season 3 Episode 2 Recap: “Mass In Time Of War”

The Roy family’s very long day stretches on into Succession Season 3 Episode 2, picking up where we left off, and with the family still spread out across multiple continents. Logan has little to do in his hotel room except order his top teamsters around and monitor Shiv and Roman’s movements. Eventually, Marcia — whom we haven’t seen since she left Logan in “Dundee” back in Season 2 — shows up at the hotel, murmuring, “Those fucking kids of yours.” Having found common ground in irritation at Logan’s fractious heirs, however, is only the first step of a possible reconciliation: Logan leaves Hugo to negotiate terms for Marcia’s return to Logan’s side. She doesn’t care if, officially, Logan and Rhea didn’t actually sleep together: “She’s a whore, and it’s not my problem if she wouldn’t finish him.” This is a crisis, so one must appreciate Marcia’s leaving no ambiguity about her position! In order to return to public appearances as Logan’s wife, Marcia wants more financial security for herself and her children…and with that, she also wanders off to comfort Logan while her deputy deals with Hugo.

In New York, we see where Shiv went after Roman gave her the news that she’d lost out on CEO: straight to Rava’s. Shiv opens with some pro forma acknowledgement that Kendall had grounds to turn on their dad, what with his being the Blood Sacrifice and all, to which Kendall replies by speaking her likely fears out loud: “You tell yourself you’re a good person, but you’re not a good person….Right now, I’m the real you.” The idea that either of them thinks there are any good people in this conversation is adorable. Before long, Roman and Connor have also joined them (the latter having bravely flown back from Croatia “scheduled,” as in commercial — it’s a miracle he survived!!!).

Kendall makes his pitch: all four Roy children team up and take Logan down. He comes at the argument from the corporate competition angle first: Microsoft and Amazon are aging; information will be “more precious than water” in the years ahead (spoken like someone who’s never had to reach more than two feet for Pellegrino, or sent a peon to get him one). But there’s also the ethical angle: Logan, through ATN, has been “part of a rotten cabal” that has gravely weakened American democracy. When Kendall tries to convince a wavering Roman by asking how he feels about Logan passing Roman over for Gerri, Roman mumbles that he thinks she’s a good choice. “You love showing your pee-pee to everyone, but someday, you know, you’re actually going to have to fuck something,” drawls Shiv, because the Roy kids can’t have a conversation that doesn’t end in vicious insults. After Roman has stormed out, Shiv asks Kendall whether she went too far, and because Kendall has such a finely tuned sense of decency, he backs her up, joking that Roman’s probably jerking off in a pair of Rava’s panties. (We don’t see this happen, but we don’t know it doesn’t!)

When Roman returns, denying that he was hurt. Kendall switches tack, reminding everyone that they knew what Logan’s perv cronies were doing; now the kids will have to seek absolution for it to cleanse the Waystar brand. Except…Shiv and Roman both claim they didn’t know. Kendall and Connor try to get them to admit they did: Shiv wasn’t to get into the pool with Mo and his buddies; Roman was aware of a pipeline of cruise dancers being coerced into sexual acts on vague promises of show business careers. As Shiv and Roman cling to their remaining shreds of plausible deniability, Kendall gets a text, and claims he’s going to hug his children…

…but downstairs on the street, there’s just Stewy, waiting next to a car containing Sandy’s daughter Sandi (Hope Davis). Remember the proxy battle? That’s still happening. Kendall points out that Sandy’s backing him will bring about Sandy’s ultimate goal of beating Logan, plus Kendall’s team won’t sideline Sandy on the board. With Logan out of the way, they can avoid a contested vote at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting. Seems promising, and also reminds us all how many high-level business decisions in our world are, like this, probably driven by pettiness and spite!

Back upstairs, Kendall winds up his case: in a post-Logan world, Kendall would be interim CEO on paper only, and he and the other kids could carve up the Waystar spoils as they see fit. (Shiv, of course, tries to demand that she be named CEO, and, of course, has to be reminded AGAIN that she’s never actually worked in the company; plus her reputation as a bleeding-heart Democratic operative precedes her to “the market.”) So Shiv takes off to consult with Tom, who seems to agree that the four children uniting against Logan would topple him, and maybe Shiv could end up CEO someday. Roman consults with Gerri.

Her expression seems to indicate that this would be very bad for Logan (and her, of course, as his puppet), but she doesn’t think that course would end in any Roy kid taking over; Sandy would just outmaneuver them. She advises Roman to stick with her rather than make her a powerful enemy, and rather than linger to let her threats get him off, Roman returns to the conversation…

…to which Logan has sent donuts, lest Kendall think he wasn’t aware of their conspiracy. Roman and Shiv have to tell Connor not to eat one, since there’s a non-zero chance Logan hasn’t also arranged for it to be poisoned. Once he’s replaced his pastry, Connor tells Kendall he’s out. Kendall bitterly turns on him immediately: “You’re irrelevant….You’re not wanted.” Roman then joins Connor.

It was clear Shiv had been leaning Kendall before it was going to come down to two Roy kids against the other two plus their father, so she bails too. She’s already on her way out as Kendall calls her a “fucking twat,” to which she shoots back, “I was the only one you wanted.”

In Sarajevo, with Marcia by his side, Logan seems fairly serene even before Roman calls to assure him that Shiv is on his side, and only went to Rava’s to try to talk Kendall down. In that case, Logan is ready to chance his highly choreographed return to the U.S. At the private airstrip, staked out by paparazzi, Logan exits the plane alone, so it seems Marcia and Hugo still haven’t come to terms. Roman is the only child waiting for Logan on the tarmac, and is greeted with a playful air punch and a hug. Logan then blows straight past Gerri’s proffered handshake — which she turns into a wave, directing him on to other underlings — before Logan joins Shiv in her car (kicking Tom to the front seat first so that Logan himself can ride in the back with his daughter). Logan grumbles a little that Shiv didn’t hug him, before telling her intends to get her into the company as a president before the shareholders’ meeting; he wants her to be his eyes and ears, with Gerri absorbing all the blows she might otherwise be subject to.

It’s been a rough couple of days, but Captain Cuddles and Pinky are together again.

Margin Calls

• “Dad”: In the premiere, when Shiv gets a phone call from “Dad,” no profile photo comes up. But in “Mass In Time Of War,” he’s represented with a shot of Saddam Hussein.

We’re supposed to think Shiv was annoyed enough by Logan that she took time out during this crisis to assign a mean photo to him, in a joke for…Shiv herself?

• The Trojan Horse: The effectiveness of Stewy’s gift of a Trojan horse is underscored by Kendall’s description to his siblings about carving up the company in a post-Logan context: “We’re looking at 323 BC….Alexander’s dead. I take Asia. [Roman] take[s] Egypt. Shiv takes Europe. Con, the rest of the world.” Stewy knows Kendall’s a classicist!
• Greg: Intuiting that Kendall will sacrifice him as soon as he needs to, Greg realizes he needs his own legal counsel, not someone Gerri picks out “for him” who’s actually going to be representing Waystar. After getting his grandfather Ewan to pay for his representation, however, Greg’s also going to have to accept being a Trojan horse himself, as Ewan’s lawyer Pugh (Peter Riegert) uses Greg’s case to “expose the structural contradictions of capitalism as reified in the architecture of corporate America.” Good plan, but as far as Greg’s concerned: eep.
• Tom & Shiv: After Tom answers another of her “I love you”s with “Thank you,” Shiv tries to nail Tom down: does he love her? He says he does. Talk is cheap!
• Kendall’s Manslaughter: Waiting for Roman’s update, Marcia reminds Logan, “You do have things you could say, no, to stop [Kendall]?” Logan replies, “You drop some bombs, you get burned too, you know?” It’s the second reference in as many episodes to Kendall’s pivotal Season 1 crime, and Logan’s comments suggest that the only reason he hasn’t used it against Kendall yet is that he hasn’t thought he needed to. That may change in a hurry.

Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.

Watch Succession Season 3 Episode 2 on HBO Max