Note: This essay contains spoilers for Succession.
What is it about ghost stories that have captivated us for centuries? Why do we sit rapt with attention, allowing ourselves to be engulfed by horror and tragedy that we know we cannot change or stop? Perhaps we cling onto the hope that it will be different this time — that an ending of peace and comfort is possible. Things that are haunted are teeming with life, and with life comes possibility. It’s through ghosts and hauntings that we can humanize even death. The fourth and final season of HBO’s tragicomedy Succession proved that, in more ways than one, this story has always been haunted. While the death of patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) provides the most obvious window into that specter-filled house, it becomes all the more enticing when you realize that these characters were cursed long before Logan ever stepped foot on that plane for the last time.
Succession essentially takes place in a state of purgatory following the series premiere, “Celebration,” and leading up to the season four shocker “Connor’s Wedding.” From the minute Logan suffers his initial stroke and lives, the undercurrent running through every episode is “When is Logan going to die? More importantly, what happens when he does?” Both the show’s characters and its audience watch every health scare, every wince, with bated breath. Logan’s inevitable death is built into the foundation of Succession — there is no successor without someone to succeed. His presence was always omniscient, like there wasn’t a room he couldn’t materialize in at the most inopportune times for his children. Logan was haunting his family long before his actual demise.
It’s easy to argue that Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is the most haunted of the children. He’s haunted by the waiter whose death he caused, by his father, by his own conflicting desires and obligations, by his name on a piece of paper. Kendall is all at once isolated and never alone, tormented by the looming fact that Logan knows about the skeleton in his closet. At times it’s as if he delights in tormenting Kendall. He promises Kendall the world in the booth of a luncheonette when he’s a child and tears it away on the eve of seeing it through because he “changed his mind.” On Kendall’s birthday he tells him to take the money and run, and when Kendall tries to take him up on it, he slyly takes it back. “That was for fun,” Logan muses. “Maybe I want to keep you close. You can do the mail, keep you rattling around.” Kendall can never escape. You walk into a room and turn the light on and the ghost turns it off.
The difference that the second half of the series provides is that, eventually, Kendall is no longer the only one who can see the ghost. After Logan refuses to let Kendall out of the company, Kendall almost drowns. In his most vulnerable state, he confesses to Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) that he was driving the car that the waiter was in when he died. In the final moments of the third season, the three take a united stand against their father, finally ready to go into battle alongside their brother. When they defend Kendall in the face of Logan’s wrath, it doesn’t matter that their business interests are partially motivating them. What matters is that, in the moment, they can see Kendall and Logan’s relationship for what it is — they can see that they, too, are haunted.
It’s a show of solidarity that lasts into the final season and, to their credit, the Roy siblings make an attempt to break free of their cursed existence — even if all that means is showing a united front. After Logan’s death, there is no one on Earth who knows them better than each other. Whereas that was a saving grace at the end of season three, it’s a blight on the path they attempt to forge in the wake of the loss of Logan. At the end of the day the most devastating betrayals in the final episodes come from a deep place of resentment towards one another, a resentment that their father had spent their whole lives stoking. Kendall helps elect a fascist to power because his sister lied to him. Shiv helps place the CEO crown on Kendall’s head and then smashes it to pieces because she can’t stomach the thought of him winning when she can’t. They’re haunted by the bitterness that Logan left lingering around them when he died, and ultimately even their desire to love one another cannot triumph over the old wounds.
There was never going to be a happy ending for them — with or without Logan. Once he’s gone the siblings keep finding ways to seek out the phantom. Shortly after Kendall tells Stewy (Arian Moayed) in “Honeymoon States” that he and his siblings “can’t live in a haunted house,” he’s told Connor (Alan Ruck) is moving into their dad’s apartment. “Let’s all move in,” Roman jokes. “Grow old together, share a bed like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” In “Living+” Kendall projects a hologram of Logan on the stage during the biggest moment in his stint as co-CEO and talks to him like he’s still in the room running the show. Perhaps most chilling of all is the scene in “Church and State,” in which while in Logan’s mausoleum the siblings realize there is room for more coffins — exactly four more. They contemplate moving in there too, unable (or unwilling) to picture even the afterlife without their father watching over them.
When the show drew to a close, the three protagonists had been smashed to pieces. Even when the bogeyman was gone, the idea of him was enough to heave the darkest parts of Kendall, Shiv, and Roman to the surface. It elicited violence and self-sabotage, and it’s why any thought that they were acting out of devotion to one another is ill-suited for this story. The thing with ghost stories is that they’re almost always the same. It’s never about changing a cycle — it’s about reveling in the cataclysm of it all. The poison does drip through.
Succession was always a haunted house. It was maddening and enchanting, part Shakespearean, part Biblical, and yet could only be constructed in our current cultural landscape. There are secrets and stories lurking in the shadows and behind locked doors that we’ll never find keys to, and the show is all the better for it. The audience comes away haunted by all that they’ll never know, gathered around a fire and seeking out just one more ghost story.
