Introduction
The final episode of the first season of HBO’s Succession is a masterpiece in the art of the season finale. Storylines are wrapped up and new storylines are introduced. Its emotional impact also cannot be understated. The secluded nature of the episode, taking place in one location makes for some truly tense viewing.
Plot
This episode takes place at Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) and Tom Wambsgans’s (Mathew Macfadyen) wedding in England. Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) is planning to reveal his plans to take over control of Waystar Royco, their father Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) media company. Kendall reveals his plans and Logan gathers the other children including Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck) to form a defence plan from Kendall’s ‘bear hug’. On their wedding night, Shiv reveals to Tom that she would prefer an open relationship and admits an affair she had; he is initially shocked by her announcement but agrees and kicks the man she had an affair with out of the wedding.
Wedding
During the wedding, Kendall is searching for anyone who can provide him with cocaine after his business partner refuses to give him any so he can stay focused. He later finds a waiter whom Logan had ejected from the wedding in the car park smoking weed and asks if he can get him powder. The waiter snorts some powder, but Kendall is disappointed when it is revealed to be ketamine, although the waiter tells Kendall he can get him cocaine from a friend nearby. So Kendall, who had already had a few drinks, offers to drive the waiter’s car but ends up swerving into a lake to avoid hitting a deer.
Kendall escapes but the young waiter is killed in the crash. Kendall sneaks back to his room and breaks in as he loses his room key in the crash, disposes of the soaked clothes, and returns to the party trying to forget the incident. When all seems well, Logan tells Kendall at breakfast the next morning that the police have found Kendall’s room key at the site of the crash and that he was spotted looking soaked on the mansion’s grounds. Logan offers to cover the incident up, but only if Kendall drops his plans to take over the company, which he agrees to, and the episode ends with Kendall crying in his father’s arms.
Review
This episode is an absolutely fantastic way to end the first season of Succession. Everything that happened in the season created the tense atmosphere of the wedding with all the characters coming together after Kendall betrayed Logan. After the takeover plans are revealed to Logan, the frantic nature of the episode is ramped up and the tension is palpable to a point where it feels like it could explode at any moment.
Every main character is played to perfection, notably Jeremy Strong’s performance is fantastic: just when Kendall feels confident and strong after telling his dad his plans, everything is flipped on its head with the car crash, and you see Kendall as almost a shell of a human in a true broken state. Although there was a strong sense that something big was going to happen at the end of the episode, the car crash still caught me wildly off guard to a point where I wasn’t sure if I was watching a dream sequence; the sense of “did that really just happen?” has never been so strong when watching an episode of TV before.
Cinematography
The cinematography and the visuals in this episode are also stellar, notably the scene after the crash when Kendall has returned and dances with his daughter to the tune of ‘I Want to Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me’ by Whitney Houston. The funky lighting on the dancefloor with Kendall’s unusual joyous nature (possibly him trying his hardest to forget about the crash) really leads you to believe that he has gotten away with it and that the credits will roll, only to be greeted with the final scene of Logan telling Kendall he knows what happened which rips away any happiness and normality straight from Kendall’s grasp.
Season finales really don’t get much better than this.
