NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: The Ringer (by Khal Davenport).
Succession is all about power—who has the most, who can wield it the best, and who is disastrously blinded by it. So, as we did last season, every week during Succession’s fourth and final installment, The Ringer will check in on how the hierarchy at Waystar Royco shifts with each passing episode. Even after Logan made a deal with GoJo (and screwed over his kids), it’s still safe to say everything is in disarray—and to steal a line from another HBO series, chaos can be a ladder.
1. Jeryd Mencken
The pending president-elect was a smooth operator this week. There’s a slyness to his moves, and getting to see Justin Kirk fill in the blanks of Mencken’s personality has been interesting. Mencken has mastered the game—he praised Kendall for his eulogy as he was walking out of the funeral, but he made sure to put Kendall in his place during the repast. And while Kendall and Roman have been banking on Mencken to spike the GoJo deal over “regulatory” concerns, the conversation with Matsson and Shiv opens up another path—one where the deal proceeds so long as Matsson hires a U.S. CEO. Mencken was noncommittal about whether he’d support that—and with Daniel Jiménez challenging the Wisconsin vote, Mencken’s victory is not yet assured—but all eyes are on the would-be king. By the end of the episode, it became clear that the Roy children believe he holds their fates in his hands.
2. Lukas Matsson
Matsson was the other face that everyone was looking toward. Shiv told Lukas to news dump his bogus numbers on the day of her father’s funeral, primarily due to the unrest over the election spilling into the streets (more on that later). Wisely, Shiv knew that any news dropping on a day like that would be buried, giving her and Lukas more time to determine their next step while figuring out how to get Mencken to not block the GoJo deal. And figure it out they did; as stated earlier, Lukas delivered some reassuring news to Shiv at the end of the episode, although he did not confirm anything regarding Shiv being a lock for the position of CEO of Waystar GoJo’s U.S. division. Anything can truly happen, but a number of things can’t happen unless Lukas Matsson says so.
Click here to read the full article