Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Succession” Season 4, Episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding.”
The most recent episode of HBO’s Succession, “Connor’s Wedding,” is one of the greatest episodes of TV of all time. It instantly belongs among the best that Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and many others have offered. It sets the show on a new course while still feeling familiar. In many ways, even though there are 7 episodes left, it could well be seen as the climax of the show, and here’s why.
The central tension of Succession, as I wrote about in my piece on season 1, is between family and business. Waystar RoyCo is first and foremost a business, but it one run by Logan Roy and his children, Kendall, Shiv, and Roman. Shiv’s husband Tom and the Roys’ cousin Greg are also in the mix, occupying different levels within the family business. And it is always both. Every action is done with a mind toward business, and without being completely separate from family realities.
This is important: the stakes are always highest with family. There’s no reality where the Roys lose all their money and power. But there is a potential future where they could grow estranged or ruin their family relationships past repair. A business deal can fall through, but another one will come along. But as we see with Logan and his estranged brother Ewan (occasionally, not in this episode), once pulled apart, family ties do not easily tie back together again.
In this episode, Logan Roy dies, suddenly, probably of a heart attack. The central figure of the show for 33 hours of television is gone in a moment. It provides a rare time when all the Roys, these people worth billions of dollars, are fully and entirely human. For quite a bit of this episode, viewers are able to fully identify with them, because death is the great equalizer. It’s a powerful sequence highlighting the cost of weaving “family” and “business” so tightly together.
I want to go beat by beat through this sequence, taking apart what makes it work so incredibly well. This is a sequence so impactful that a few minutes in I stopped, rewound about 8 minutes, and watched it again to catch how we’d gotten here. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that before. So, because it deserves this kind of analysis, here is my breakdown of a sizable section of “Connor’s Wedding.”
I’m starting this section at about the 12-minute mark. Roman was asked by his father to fire the longtime company stalwart Gerri, he does it, it goes poorly, and he calls dad to talk about how it went. He gets a voicemail box. Roman’s final words to Logan are a question—”Are you a cunt?”—and that is it. Everything is normal, barbs and crass language flying as always. Kendall comes up, pokes Roman, and they go into the boat, past Connor’s bride-to-be Willa, and are led up to a second-floor room to just hang out and talk business. They meet up with Shiv on the way too. Business as usual.
Then Shiv gets a call from Tom. They’re in a fight and in the midst of a likely divorce, so she doesn’t answer. Tom calls a second time, no answer. Connor is briefly there too, believing dad will pop by. The others know dad is enroute to Europe and won’t be popping by. With glances, they decide that Shiv will be the “wedding grinch” and tell Connor dad isn’t coming, so Shiv leaves.
Now there’s a third call. This time Tom calls Roman, something he rarely does. The preamble is over, and the sequence begins in earnest. Roman answers, “Hello. Fucky-sucky brigade, how can I help you.” Tom doesn’t respond with a witty barb of his own—the first hint something is off, though not one you’re likely to pick up on the first viewing—and instead says, “Hey Roman. Hey, uh, your dad is very sick.”
Right now, skepticism is warranted. “Very sick” could mean a lot of things and could easily be one of Logan’s many mind games. Viewers are right to be wary. Roman walks back to Kendall and puts the phone on speaker. They can now both here Tom’s disjointed comments about Logan being sick or seriously hurt. Importantly, the camera hasn’t yet cut away from Kendall and Roman. It’s been a one-sided call. Tom says that it “seems very very bad” and only now do we have a cut to the plane.
In the plane we see Tom standing across the room, in a posture that he would likely use if this were a joke of some kind. Skepticism remains justified. He’s not on screen long before we cut back to Kendall and Roman, then another cut back to Tom. This time we’re in tight on his face, the background blurry. Tom is either lying or telling the truth, but we’re now locked in fully on him. Another quick cut to the brothers and then back to the same shot of Tom when he says simply, “They’re doing chest compressions.”
It’s suddenly clear, I would hope, that this is not some kind of joke or mind game. Possibly other viewers still thought it a joke at this point, but this was where I thought “Oh, this is real.” As many who’ve lost loved ones know, chest compressions are the last of last resorts. At a late stage like this, they involve breaking ribs in hopes of restarting the heart, and they almost never revive the patient (this information from memory a dozen years ago; it could have changed slightly). It’s a very serious thing.
There’s lots of panicked chatter back and forth about if he’s breathing or not. Tom gives the phone to Karl, further driving home the seriousness of the matter. Frank then suggests that they speak to Logan as their “last chance.” It’s obvious to Frank and Karl, older men that have known Logan a long time, that this is serious, and death is immanent. Kendall is concerned with the medical treatment Logan is receiving, and Roman is just in denial.
This ends the first stage of this sequence. It’s about 6 minutes since Roman was leaving the voicemail earlier, and the time since has played out in real time. Everything has happened very quickly, especially for a show where deals often take half a season to get done.
The next stage of the sequence concerns the kids’ last goodbyes with emphasis throughout on how ill-equipped they are for such a moment. Many, if not most of us, have experienced the sudden death of loved ones or calls about serious family situations. It’s a hard moment to know how to navigate. But the show makes it clear that the Roys are especially bad at navigating this moment. We can, and should, contrast this episode with the second episode of season 1. After a previous heart attack, Logan is on life support, and I think was in a coma. During this episode, Kendall, Shiv, and Roman move about calmly and rationally. This makes sense as Logan there was in a hospital where death would likely be coming gradually. Here it’s not, everything is panicked, and they aren’t handling things well.
Roman goes first, assuring Logan, and himself mostly, that “you’re going to be okay.” He calls him a “very good dad,” which he definitely isn’t, and says “you did a good job” before giving up, exacerbated, and saying “I don’t know how to do that.” His world of jargon and one-liners fails him when it comes to saying something true and sincere in a moment of crisis. Kendall similarly says, “Hang in there” and “I love you” even as he follows this with “I can’t forgive you.” Kendall at least conveys something honest in this moment, even if he is also struggling with words. Throughout this part, we’ve cut between Kendall and the plane where we see a woman giving chest compressions and Frank looking grim. He’s fully aware of the situation.
Interestingly, and importantly, we don’t see Logan. There’s a lot of interpretive space to this decision. On one level this allows him to die with, perhaps, more dignity. It could also be suggesting that, as Logan is now dead, his role in the show has already faded. But I think the most likely example is this. Throughout the episode, and for much of the show but especially here, we are very aligned with the Roys. We’ve experienced this phone call—which has lasted maybe 5 minutes so far—mostly from their side. They don’t get the closure of seeing him and being able to say goodbye, so viewers don’t experience that moment either.
We follow Kendall downstairs as he goes to get Shiv. Downstairs, of course, it’s a wedding cruise, with everyone laughing and having a good time. Kendall walks zombie-like through the party, finds Shiv, and gets her back to the room. Kendall’s sense of language has failed him too, as he stammers what little information he knows. They walk briskly through the party and back up the room. Reality sets in faster for Shiv who’s told be Roman that they think Logan is already dead. It’s been only 10 minutes since Roman left his voicemail. Like Kendall, Shiv stammers out an “I love you” while also trying to make sense of her feelings toward Logan’s intense mistreatment of the family.
And then, for the first and only time, we see a shot of Logan, phone by his ear, dead.
This is the end of the sequence for my purposes here, just over 12 minutes after it began. In the aftermath of this Kendall tries to get the best doctors on the case, using money to solve the problem. Roman remains in flat denial of his father being dead. They tell Connor, and he has to then further wrestle with if the wedding should continue. The others on the plane take tentative steps to how they will break this news in a very short time. When the plane lands, it will be obvious. Others like Greg are told, and the pieces are put in motion, shifting from family back into business. But this is one time that this is, at least somewhat, relatable. No, the deaths I’ve experienced in my family have not shaken the stock market, but the shift from “family” to “business” is a quick one. There are death certificates and wills and plans made about memorial services. People take time off work, buy plane tickets, put pieces in motion. The scale is far bigger with the Roys, as it always is, but the feeling is similar.
15 minutes ago you joked on deck and now everything has changed.
This finely crafted sequence perfectly captures the themes of the show while leaving viewers thinking about the chaos of what they’ve witnessed. Did any of the Roy children say something their father heard? It should further be recalled that Shiv leaving them was basically random, her going off to tell Connor that dad wouldn’t be making it to the wedding. This could have been any of them and then one of the others wouldn’t have been there to have their words heard or maybe not. And, of course, Shiv could have answered the phone, if not on the first ring, then maybe the second. Had Shiv answered the first call, they would have had another 72 seconds. That’s not much but it might have given them space to actually say something. Or not.
There’s no way to know. Death is a great unknown. Even if you are religious, and the Roys are not, there’s still much mystery about what lies after death. And it comes for all. You can’t throw money at it or deny it away. It’s there, and it often comes at the most inconvenient times.
For these 12 minutes, and maybe a few more after the fact, the Roys were truly just like all of us, completely overwhelmed by the sudden finality of death. In a show where the stakes are often so low, and the world of the show so far removed from that of its viewers, the moment of commonality hit especially hard. We’ve all been there, panicked, confused and scared. When 12 minutes feels simultaneously like a few hours and a few seconds. That confusion is a part of the fundamental human experience, and the way Succession tapped into made it into one of the few truly powerful moments that TV can provide.
