Succession: Every Character Ending, Ranked – TVLine

It’s been more than two years since the end of “Succession,” and we still can’t get over how perfect its series finale was. The critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning HBO drama wrapped up its run in the spring of 2023 with a triumphant final outing, which largely focused on the Roy family’s attempts to stave off an inevitable tech takeover of their business in the wake of a sudden tragedy.

We’re doing our best not to spoil too much yet, but on the off-chance that you haven’t seen the show we consider to be one of the best TV dramas ever made, we have to warn you that major spoilers for the entirety of “Succession” lie below. We’re getting to the bottom of all the betrayals, deaths, victories, and defeats that defined every character’s end throughout all four seasons, ranking them all by how dramatically satisfying they were in the context of their individual character arcs.

Of all the ways “Succession” chose to send off its characters, only one can be considered truly confusing: the one written for Grace Roy. Grace was played by Molly Griggs in just three episodes of Season 1.

She was initially written to be Roman’s wife and the mother of his child in the pilot episode “Celebration,” but was later retconned as his long-term girlfriend. She disappears after the episode “Thanksgiving,” in which she and Roman get into an apparently relationship-ending fight over his ego and, to a lesser extent, his sexuality.

The same fate befell Roman’s other serious girlfriend, Tabitha Hayes (Caitlin FitzGerald). Though she had a bit more of a presence in Seasons 1 and 2, her relationship with Roman fizzles off-screen before Season 3, presumably because of Roman’s confusing sexual disinterest in her — and his growing fixation on Gerri.

When Larry Pine’s Sandy Furness was introduced in Season 1, he was set up to be a powerful and threatening adversary for the Roys, whose strategic cunning surpassed Kendall’s and even rivaled Logan’s. It is ultimately revealed at Tom Wambsgans’ bachelor party that he had used Stewy Hosseini as a means of stealing a seat on the company’s board with the intent to take over Waystar Royco from within. By the time these plans fully come to fruition in Season 3, however, Sandy is revealed to have succumbed to an unconfirmed illness. He is thereafter only able to operate through a proxy — his daughter, Sandi (Hope Davis).

Though sudden, this twist does seem to be taking inspiration from the real-life story of Sumner Redstone, a figure whose life heavily influenced “Succession.” In 2018, Sumner was deemed medically incompetent, leaving his daughter, Shari, to assume his responsibilities. “Succession” borrows the skepticism some had about the maneuver, with it never being truly clear if Sandi is acting on her father’s wishes or her own. Either way, Shiv effectively absorbs Sandy and Sandi into the Waystar board officially as a means of preventing a risky shareholder vote, after which both characters disappear to the sidelines. In the finale, Sandi casts two “yes” votes in favor of selling Waystar to GoJo, expressing a desire to be free from the company once and for all.

For a brief moment, estranged wife Rava Roy (Natalie Gold) appeared to be the ultimate prize Kendall was after on his quest for power. If he could become “the man” again, perhaps he could reunite his own family once more. Rava is uninterested and slow to trust Kendall after his many relapses into drug and alcohol abuse, keeping him at a relatively friendly arm’s length, though she does let him use her home as a temporary PR headquarters during Season 3.

Whatever slight chance Rava and Kendall had at reunification is completely destroyed in Season 4. With Waystar’s news network ATN helping to stoke racial tensions on behalf of the openly fascist, right-wing presidential candidate Jeryd Mencken, Rava becomes genuinely fearful for the world her ex-husband is building for their biracial children. She appears to be taking steps to fully cut him off from her life in the aftermath of ATN fraudulently calling the election in Mencken’s favor, going as far as skipping Logan’s funeral. Though it’s a fine resolution to the Kendall-Rava storyline, her end mostly serves to underscore Kendall’s self-annihilation rather than define her own journey.

When Gil Eavis (Eric Bogosian) was merely a promising progressive candidate for the U.S. Senate — and when Nate Sofrelli (Ashley Zuckerman) was merely his idealistic yet kinda sleazy campaign manager — his movement represented the last real hope for any of the Roys to work on the side of the angels. Both that hope and the movement overall were corrupted by Logan and Gil at Shiv’s wedding, when the two made a clandestine deal to ease off on one another in exchange for favorable treatment.

This peace lasted for a while, though Gil shattered it in his last on-screen appearance in Season 2, in which he grills the Roys and their associates over the cruise disaster during a congressional hearing. Unfortunately, Gil is not in Season 4, though it’s revealed that he and Nate are both part of the Daniel Jiménez campaign, with Gil joining the ticket as his pick for VP. It’s satisfying to see the pair return as adversaries for Shiv and the Roys, but the fact that only Nate gets screen time dulls the storyline somewhat.

The Pierces are a major antagonist throughout Season 2 of “Succession,” their declining left-leaning media empire becoming something of an obsession for Logan as he attempts to steel his own, right-leaning empire against Sandy and Stewy’s bid for power. The multi-billion dollar deal falls apart once matriarch Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones) begins to rightly suspect that her CEO, Rhea Jarrell, has been secretly colluding with Logan.

They return in Season 4 looking to sell Pierce Global Media to Waystar Royco once again, only for the recently ousted Roy children to swoop in with an exorbitant, stupidly overpriced offer of $10 billion. It’s a perfectly plausible end to the storyline, though it almost borders on straining credulity that Nan would even consider selling PGM to any of the Roys — especially Logan — after what they put her through.

Like Sandy Furness, Lawrence Yee (Rob Yang) was set up as a major series antagonist in Season 1 of “Succession.” In the pilot, particularly, the tense sale of his new media company, Vaulter, to Waystar Royco teases further conflict between him and Kendall, with him promising to invade Logan’s “chicken coop” and eat the Roys one by one.

Yang is credited as part of the main cast in both Seasons 1 and 2 of “Succession,” but his presence on the series immediately diminishes as it instead chooses to focus on conflict within the family instead of without. Lawrence’s only major maneuver in Season 1 was abstaining from the vote of no confidence against Logan — a move that Kendall rightly predicted would come back to haunt Vaulter. It actually wound up being Kendall himself who carried out Logan’s inevitable order to gut the company, telling Lawrence in his final episode to find another coop to raid.

In a show full of powerful scumbags, Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed) admirably fought to be both the most powerful and the most scummy. He succeeded on one of those counts, at least.

After betraying Kendall throughout most of Season 1 (most notably by abstaining from the vote of no confidence against Logan) and remaining a definitively untrustworthy if reliably selfish frenemy for the remainder of the show, he does attempt to come through for Kendall in the end by voting against the GoJo sale in the “Succession” series finale. It’s a surprisingly sweet moment that’s subtle yet satisfying — even if it’s perfectly undercut by Stewy immediately and excitedly kissing Tom’s ring after Kendall loses. It isn’t out of line to speculate that, given Stewy’s eagerness to speak with the new CEO, that he had some kind of scheme in mind that would benefit from having Kendall indebted to him.

Poor, poor Kerry. Zoë Winters’ dedicated secretary was first introduced in Season 2, during which she appeared to be just one of the many devoted suits in Logan’s orbit. That devotion would prove unexpectedly passionate as the show continued, however, when she was revealed to be Logan’s lover.

This uncomfortable and often darkly amusing storyline saw Kerry go from quiet professional to surprisingly powerful executive liaison, only for Logan’s sudden death to lay her career and mental state low. Having already endured weeks of ridicule over an embarrassing audition tape to be one of ATN’s news anchors, Kerry becomes an exiled pariah in the aftermath of his demise. Her arc largely comes to a close at Logan’s wake, where his ex-wife, Marcia, has her removed from the premises. This fate seems too cruel even for Kerry — which is why we’re grateful she got to be a part of one of the series’ all-time funniest moments at Logan’s funeral, when Caroline deviously orchestrates a meeting between Logan’s wives and mistresses.

We doubt the public relations rivalry brewing at Waystar Royco was the reason viewers returned to “Succession” week-to-week, but it remains one of the more trackable underlying plot threads through the series’ later seasons. Communications executive Hugo Baker (Fisher Stevens) and PR head Karolina Novotney (Dagmara Dominczyk) butted heads frequently throughout the series, with Logan interchangeably favoring Karolina’s clean, calculated approach and Hugo’s morally malleable attitude.

Hugo’s fate is sealed when a family member sells Waystar stock prior to Logan’s death, opening him up to allegations of insider trading. Kendall uses this to blackmail him into providing comms support for his play against GoJo, which unfortunately leaves him stranded on the losing side in the finale. He tries valiantly to ingratiate himself with Tom, but the new CEO merely asks, “Where’s Karolina?” and dismisses him with a limp flick of the wrist. It’s a hilariously brutal moment that elegantly confirms who ultimately won this rivalry.

Danny Huston is a treasure no matter where he pops up on television, and his brief stint on “Succession” was no exception. Throughout Season 2, he portrayed Jamie Laird, the steady and enigmatic personal financial advisor to Logan Roy, who was among the most trusted figures in the media giant’s orbit.

Jamie’s mission was clear: find a path toward avoiding the impending shareholder vote by inflating the company’s financials with a flashy acquisition like PGM. When the deal fell through, he worked with Roman and Karl to find an outside investor to potentially take Waystar private. Ultimately, Roman unexpectedly urges his father not to trust the investor, forcing them to make the immense and inevitable “blood sacrifice” needed to win back public trust. This is a shrewd but undermining act that injures Jamie’s ego as much as his bottom line. Though Logan tries to smooth things over, Jamie stages a delightfully ominous and dramatic exit, quoting Shakespeare before abandoning the Roys for good.

Holly Hunter’s Rhea Jarrell only stuck around “Succession” for a single season. The CEO of PGM originally met with Logan as an intermediary, speaking on behalf of Nan Pierce herself when she told him Nan had no intentions of selling her company to someone she despised so passionately. Rhea’s own intentions and passions, however, were far more complicated.

When it became clear Logan intended to grossly overpay for PGM, she began working with him behind Nan’s back to ensure the deal closed. During this time, the two became lovers. He felt so strongly for her, in fact, that he let the affair ruin his marriage with Marcia and offered her the chance to be Waystar’s CEO after she was ousted by Pierce. Her arc throughout the season is tremendously effective, but it’s her chilling realization of Logan’s true nature during the Waystar hearings that sticks with us years later.

Emotionally manipulative, pathologically narcissistic, endlessly self-pitying yet deceptively witty, Harriet Walter’s Lady Caroline Collingwood is one of the most underrated characters on the show. Her last major maneuver serves as the climax of Season 3, in which she betrays her own children to secure favors from Logan for herself and her new husband.

She still plays a supporting role in Season 4, however, with many memorable moments, including the aforementioned funeral incident with Kerry, Marcia, and Sally Anne, which encapsulates Walter’s impeccable ability to play Caroline’s reflexive manipulation and desire for human connection all at once. This is on full display throughout the finale as Caroline makes a solid case that the sale of Waystar is best for the children’s emotional well-being — just before inviting her husband in to pitch them on a “creamy” business proposition.

As “Succession” progressed and the alliances in Logan’s inner circle became even more twisted, threatened, and protective, Waystar board chairman and ex-COO Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) and CFO Karl Müller (David Rasche) seemingly grew closer than ever. Together, they came to represent the old guard of not only Waystar Royco, but the corporate world at large.

Aging and exhausted by years of power struggles, public crises, and personal financial problems that would be greatly relieved by a sudden influx of cash, Frank and Karl were excitedly in favor of selling Waystar to GoJo (likely already imagining themselves gliding into retirement on multimillion-dollar golden parachutes). After Kendall’s vote fails, their baser instincts kick in if only for a moment as they consider one last ride under Tom’s leadership.

However serious this discussion is, it matters not. As Tom hilariously tells Greg mere moments later, he intends to fire them both immediately.

It’s safe to say that most people try to live their lives so that, at their funeral, no one delivers a eulogy like the one Ewan Roy (James Cromwell) delivered at his own brother’s. Standing before Logan’s friends and family, he spoke with the toughest of love about the “meagerness” of his brother’s character, and how that meagerness compelled him to spread his selfishness, insecurities, and fears throughout the world. Soberingly, Ewan admits that he recognized the same weakness in himself — the difference was, he cared to try and do better.

This moment in and of itself would’ve been a sterling send-off for Ewan, but, being on the board of Waystar, he inevitably needed to be included in its final vote. In another moment of simple poetry similar to Stewy’s choice, Ewan reverses his spiteful Season 1 vote and chooses to back Kendall, which also serves to subtly signal to the audience that Ewan recognizes in Lukas Matsson an evil even greater than his own family.

One of the most noxiously evil and terrifying characters in the entire series, Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) insidiously crept into the world of “Succession” in the Season 3 episode “What It Takes.” He found a quick and obvious friend in Roman at the Future Freedom Summit, who thus championed him as the prime Republican Party candidate for the then-upcoming election.

We see this race come to its conclusion in real time in Season 4’s “America Decides,” in which it is depicted as dangerously close, likely corrupted by voter suppression tactics, and nearly impossible to call correctly without weeks of investigations and due diligence. Nonetheless, Tom and ATN — at the behest of Waystar CEOs Kendall and Roman — jump the gun and call the race for Mencken, setting him up to deliver a deeply disturbing victory speech that stands out as one of the series’ darkest moments. Even if the election is recalled in favor of the Jiménez-Eavis ticket, it’s clear the damage has been done.

There’s an argument to be made that Alexander Skarsgård’s tech entrepreneur Lukas Matsson is the ultimate winner of “Succession” overall. In the introduction to the book of teleplays from Season 4, series creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong describes the battle between old-school media corporations like Waystar and tech companies like GoJo as an asymmetrical beatdown, with the final season as a whole — and arguably the very fact that “Succession” ended as soon as it did — reflecting how imminent Armstrong saw the tech takeover of media coming to pass.

With that being the case, there was no other end for Matsson but domination, even despite his funky numbers and sketchy personal life. But while he does “win” the show (and in a way that feels both credible and dramatically satisfying), his victory is appropriately used as a backdrop for the ending of the series’ central storylines.

We have to admit to some worry about Gerri’s fate throughout Season 4. Especially in the aftermath of Logan’s discovery of her relationship with Roman (which is implied to be somewhere between calculated flirting and ignored sexual harassment), her firing at the beginning of “Connor’s Wedding” felt like a plausible but cruel way to end the character’s journey. Fortunately, her story didn’t end there.

As Waystar’s general counsel, Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) remains an invaluable asset to the family throughout the rest of the show while refusing to let the children — especially Roman — off the hook for Logan’s disrespect. She plays her cards smartly and strongly, allying herself with the GoJo deal without getting too greedy or power-hungry, which ultimately sets her up to be folded into Tom’s new regime. She was by no means a saint, but if anyone deserves to see life after the Roys, it’s Gerri.

As soon as it was clear that Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) was serious about running for office, he instantly shot to the top of our list of the worst human beings on this show. He frustratingly represents the sort of privileged narcissist who can throw enough money around to gain power, despite lacking any real skills, education, ideas, or even goals beyond those that immediately suit him personally.

The final season sees him make his push for the presidency, with his now-wife Willa (Justine Lupe) hesitantly by his side. Their relationship only gets more openly and depressingly transactional with each milestone, including when Connor impulsively buys Logan’s home for them to live (read: be trapped) in. The unavoidable failure of his campaign gains the couple some potential political capital with Mencken, but Shiv implies with confidence that the election will likely be overturned, leaving Connor and Willa to deservedly face how empty their future together is.

Greg the Egg (Nicholas Braun) was the obvious underdog of the Roys, the cousin of Kendall, Shiv, Roman, and Connor by way of his grandfather Ewan. Despite Ewan’s wishes that Greg protect himself from the rot of the family business (something that would’ve netted Greg a handsome inheritance with which he could likely retire upon his grandfather’s passing), the disgusting brother chose to break into the firm so that he could play the game of drones (usually at the lowest possible level).

After spending most of the season — and indeed most of the series — firmly and fraternally allied with Tom, Greg chokes at the last second and double-crosses his toxic boss to Shiv, in the hopes that alerting her to Matsson’s betrayal would create a new Waystar regime with a more powerful position for him. Tom is infuriated by this, but chooses in the wake of his victory to defend Greg against Matsson, securing him a spot in the company. The enviability of this fate is debatable, as it not only ensures Greg’s further moral decline but will almost certainly keep him in a humiliating position for the foreseeable future. It’s a perfect ending for a perfectly disgusting man.

While Matsson may win “Succession” in terms of its central contest for power, another argument could be made that Marcia (Hiam Abbass) ended the series in the best position, personally speaking. She hadn’t been seen much on the show since Season 2, which saw her make the strong decision to leave Logan over the disrespect of his relationship with Rhea Jarrell.

When she first appears in Season 4 for Logan’s wake in “Honeymoon States,” it’s clear she still wields some power over Logan’s world even after his death, with her easily dismissing Kerry and quickly selling Logan’s apartment (which went to her after his passing) to Connor for $63 million. She also shares that she remained in close contact with Logan up until his death, a claim we have little reason to doubt, considering he seemed to feel her absence with some pain after Season 2.

Overall, she exudes strength throughout the final season, displaying a sturdy grace (she even comforts Kerry at Logan’s funeral) that seems to prove the Roy children had always misread her as a power-hungry gold-digger. There is nothing Logan’s presence added or removed from her life — it was she who brought any meaning to his.

All three of the core Roy children get endings that rank among the best any TV characters have ever gotten, but Roman’s is the weakest of the bunch. Initially accepting that Kendall is the only clear choice for CEO, he indulges one final, heartbreaking act of masochism by asking Kendall to rough him up for the board meeting, so that it’s obvious to all through his bleeding scars that he was never meant to be a contender anyway.

The psychology that Kieran Culkin, Jesse Armstrong, and director Mark Mylod are able to distill so subtly is beyond impressive. Even more brilliant is the turn they then allow Roman to enjoy, when he gets to see through his brother’s flailing that he’s no better or worse than himself — in fact, the entire world they’ve built their lives around is “bulls***.” We last see him drinking in a bar, a feeling of dread seeming to wash over his nihilistic freedom as he perhaps realizes that his glass is far easier to fill than his future.

The “promise of the premise” is a casual term in scriptwriting that basically serves to illuminate an implicit contract between the storyteller and their audience. In other words, it makes explicit what questions the story promises to answer when it begins.

For “Succession” to succeed, it needed to answer the promise of its title in a satisfying way. The writers could have tried to subvert expectations with a potentially realistic shock, such as Waystar choosing an outside hire as the next CEO (maybe Stewy or even Rhea) to show how meaningless all those years of fighting were. But this just makes the choice of Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) all the more impressive.

It’s a perfectly credible answer, based on countless examples of milquetoast middlemen rising to the top of corporate ladders by licking the right boots and even marrying one of the boot wearers. It’s also poetic and tragic (both for Tom — who might’ve had a chance at developing a stronger moral spine outside the Roys — and those around him), and leaves Tom’s arc perfectly structured. But what makes it all the more satisfying is that Tom had been there from the very beginning, defined from the pilot as one of the players jockeying for the top job. His fate makes the full story of “Succession” smart, surprising, plausible, and dramatically cathartic in a way prestige TV is often too scared to attempt.

It’s incredibly tempting to place Kendall at the very top of the list, if only for Jeremy Strong’s standout performance in the series finale. Having anchored the story for all four seasons as a tragic Shakespearean protagonist, who can only be described as a loathsome cross between Richard III and Macbeth, who nonetheless thinks of himself as a martyred Hamlet, Kendall is left scrambling for a proverbial horse in the mud when Shiv unexpectedly pulls her support during the GoJo vote.

When she brings up the fact that he technically killed someone — a bloody trauma which Kendall once seemed to feel would stain his hands and soul for all eternity — his decision to dismiss it as a deceitful maneuver is the most revealing moment for his character (perhaps any character) on the series. That Armstrong and Mylod leave him staring out at water (a consistent symbol for Kendall’s emotional state) — haunted by the ghost of Logan in the form of his bodyguard, Colin — implies that he will finally be left to face the hollowed husk he’s made of himself, a devastating fate that feels inevitable for the character.

Entire articles can and have been written about how brilliant the killing of Logan Roy (Brian Cox) was on “Succession.” In Season 4’s third episode, “Connor’s Wedding,” the powerful media mogul ascends the steps to his private jet and is never seen again thereafter, dying while trying to fish his phone out of a toilet. This is a manner of death that isn’t just gallows potty humor; bodily fluids had represented Logan’s inescapable human vulnerability since the series’ opening shot, a motif consistently and frequently reinforced throughout the series.

His sudden death will continue to be remembered as one of the most shocking moments in contemporary television history, but it deserves more credit than that. The shock itself underscores that not even Logan can escape death, or even arrange one with more gravitas or dignity. All his choices led to a lonely expiration in the worst kind of bathroom imaginable, surrounded by duplicitous servants rather than family — all of whom were attending the wedding he could’ve chosen to go to himself.

Once the children have made the decision to unite against Tom in the “Succession” finale, it does become difficult on first watch to imagine any plausible conflict developing thereafter, which is what makes Shiv’s turn such masterful storytelling. It’s sudden, but far from unearned.

When Kendall falsely asserts that he’s blocking the GoJo deal for his dad (an early hint at the sociopathic duplicity he’s seemingly chosen to embrace at this point, solidified when he denies killing the waiter), Sarah Snook expertly and wordlessly portrays Shiv’s defining realization of Kendall’s true nature. He represents everything she detests about the business, her family, perhaps even herself, and the idea of handing him a prize, especially in the wake of Mencken’s “victory,” validates a world she can no longer stomach.

And yet… when Tom offers her a car ride and a hand, she can’t help but numbly return. Shiv’s end masterfully showcases the character’s complex relationship with power — the dichotomy of despising its amoral implications while understanding its importance to her identity — which feels emblematic of the core themes of “Succession” as a series.