Succession Creator Explains Why [Spoiler] Was the Only Choice for CEO, Hints at Where the Roys Go From Here

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Sunday’s Succession series finale.

Succession just crowned a new CEO, with Tom Wambsgans rising to take the role in the series finale as the Waystar board voted through the GoJo deal over Kendall’s objections, thanks to Shiv’s deciding vote. (Read our full recap here.) Tom’s ascension may come as a surprise, but series creator Jesse Armstrong says it was always in the cards.

“The idea of Tom being the eventual successor, that had been something I had thought was the right ending for quite a while now,” Armstrong says in a behind-the-scenes featurette, which you can watch above. He concedes that Tom is “not exactly the most powerful monarch you’ll ever meet… His power comes from Matsson.” But “those figures who drift upwards and make themselves amenable to powerful people are around.” (And know how to keep themselves around.)

As for the Roys, Armstrong offers us a peek at where they might be heading after the finale. “They’ve lost what they’ve wanted, which was to succeed their father,” he points out, noting that “Roman ends up exactly where he started,” i.e. “a playboy jerk with some slightly nasty instincts and some quite funny jokes,” drinking at a bar and chalking this up as merely “a bit of a detour in his life.” Shiv, he cautions, is “in a rather terrifying, frozen, emotionally barren place” with Tom. “She’s got this sort of non-victory, non-defeat… It feels like it’s going to be hard for them to progress emotionally, given the things that they’ve said to each other.”

For Kendall, last seen wandering through the park in a daze after his stunning defeat, this battle to run Waystar is “the central event of his life,” Armstrong says. “Maybe he could go on and start a company or do a thing, but the chances of him achieving the sort of corporate status that his dad achieved are very low, and I think that will mark his whole life.”

How’d you like Succession‘s final episode? Grade the finale — and Season 4 as a whole — in our polls, and then give us your thoughts in the comments.

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