NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: bbc.com (by Caryn James).
The added thrill of a series' last season is knowing that anything goes. Empires and marriages can crumble or rebuild, characters can disappear or return out of nowhere. The fourth and final instalment of Succession teases all those possibilities for the scheming media mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his just-as-duplicitous children. All I can reveal without spoilers is that creator Jesse Armstrong has structured the season for maximum jaw-dropping effect. And that's just in the four episodes HBO made available to critics.
They reflect the show's bold ambition, and suggest why it is more than just a popular television show. Succession has become a cultural touchstone, a shorthand reference for business manoeuvres, excessive wealth and family dysfunction. The deft combination of a business plot – detailed, savvy and often prescient – with sibling rivalries and love-hate parent-child relationships is the essential genius of the series. Its off-screen resonance is a major sign of its brilliance.
This season finds an ideal balance once more, capturing the emotion underneath the outsized lives of the Roy family as they flit around in private planes and wrangle over Logan's plan to sell old-school Waystar to a forward-looking media company, Gojo. The previous season ended with Kendall, Shiv and Roman conspiring to stop the sale, only to be outflanked because Shiv's husband gave Logan a heads-up. So, betrayals all around. The new season picks up 48 hours before the board of directors' vote on the sale, and we immediately wonder if that patricidal little trio, still trying to prevent it, can possibly hold together. They are headed for what Shiv calls "a coronation demolition derby".
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