SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “With Open Eyes,” the series finale of HBO’s “Succession,” now streaming on Max.
“Succession” has come to an end, and the finale answered the central question of the show: who will take over Waystar Royco?
Thanks to a last-minute change of mind from Shiv (Sarah Snook) during the tense boardroom vote, GoJo now owns the media company and GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) has appointed Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) as its American CEO.
While in practice the deal will likely, by Matsson’s own admissions, involve a lot of dirty work with very little input, Tom is delighted to take the crown. According to series creator Jesse Armstrong, it was a natural choice.
“The idea of Tom being the eventual successor, that was something I thought was the right ending for a while,” Armstrong said in the “Controlling the Narrative” featurette on the Max streaming service. ‘Even though he’s not exactly the most powerful monarch you’ll ever meet – his power comes from Matsson. Those figures who float upwards and make themselves receptive to powerful people are there.”
Earlier in the episode, Shiv accidentally sold Matsson to Tom in a memorable exchange where she told the CEO that her husband is such a yes nod that he will “honestly suck the biggest dick in the room”.
Later in “Controlling the Narrative”, Armstrong discussed the future of the central siblings.
“I thought about all their stories,” Armstrong said. ‘You know, they don’t stop. They will continue. But it’s kind of where this show loses interest in them because they’ve lost what they wanted, which was to succeed — which, you know, was this award that their father gave.
“In a reductive, brutal way, Roman ends up right where he started,” he continued. ‘He’s still that guy. And he might have easily been a playboy jerk with some nasty instincts and some pretty funny jokes. He could have stayed in a bar like that guy. And this has been a bit of a detour in his life, I would say.
“Shiv is still in play, I would say, in a rather frightening, frozen, emotionally barren place,” Armstrong said. “But she has this kind of non-win, non-defeat. I mean, there’s going to be some movement there. There’s still a lot of that game to finish, but we’ll leave it at that. And it feels like it’s going to be emotionally difficult for them to move forward given the things they’ve said about each other.
“For Kendall, this will always be the central event of his life, the central days of his life, the central few years of his life,” Armstrong continued. “Maybe he can go ahead and start a business, or do something. But the chances of him getting the kind of corporate status his father achieved are very slim. And I think that will characterize his whole life.”