‘The writers were clearly out of ideas’: your verdicts on the Succession finale
Spoiler alert: this article is for people who have watched Succession season four. Don’t read on unless you’ve seen the finale, episode 10.
‘Roman licking Peter’s cheese was hysterical’
I loved the way the siblings’ relationship as children was echoed here. Roman licking Peter’s cheese was hysterical. There was a nice continuation of the theme from season three where Tom ultimately double-crosses his wife and her brothers to get what he wants. The conflict was so evident in that scene with Matsson. Has Shiv also won? In a way, she has beaten her brothers and proved herself a worthy successor – the irony being her husband wears the crown. She will always be punished for trying to undermine him. Nicky Davis, 51, Shoreham-by-Sea
‘Lovely to finally get some real LGBTQ+ representation’
For some reason, I’m left with a cautiously optimistic feeling about the Roy siblings’ futures after the final episode. Kendall has been liberated from the white whale he’s been chasing all his life. Roman no longer has to live in the shadow of his older siblings, striving for affection and approval. Shiv finally has the self-belief to trust her better judgment, and may even have laid the groundwork to repair her relationship with Tom in the process of asserting it. In the wake of Logan’s death and their resulting grief, all his children are faced with an opportunity to recover from the long-term effects of his abuse. Besides, is it really a tragedy when they’ve each just made $2bn? After watching Kendall and Roman consistently tell Shiv she was too inexperienced to be CEO all season, it felt right that she should be the one to hold the mirror up to Kendall and plunge the knife in his heart. Also lovely to finally see the show get some real LGBTQ+ representation in the form of Stewy allegedly kissing boys while on molly. Grounds for a spinoff ? Pav, 27, London
‘It stretched a three-season story over four seasons’
So said Logan Roy to his children: “I love you, but you’re not serious people.” What seemed at the time like standard emotional manipulation now reads as his most prophetic and honest line. However, Kendall, Shiv and Roman didn’t heed the message. The finale danced erratically through moments of panic, rage, sibling love and sadness, but ultimately delivered all the characters to their natural conclusions.
I previously predicted that Kendall would become like his father, and he did – though instead of inheriting the company, he inherited the cold loneliness. Shiv, relegated to bitter wife; Roman, promoted to jesterphilosopher: “We are bullshit … We’re nothing.” Yes, Tom had been roundly foreshadowed as vassal-puppet material since the first episode, but spending the final season bouncing from one ridicule to another now feels like the writers overselling his ineptitude in order to make his eventual success a greater surprise. Perhaps no one matched Kendall’s obsessive drive, but only Wambsgans was willing to sell his soul. Succession stretched a threeseason story over four seasons, and was never as vicious in its criticism as it needed to be. But I’m sad to say goodbye to these characters. Zac, Manchester
‘Quite dreary’
Quite dreary: the same old conversations that have been playing out over four seasons repeated almost verbatim. Writers were clearly out of ideas some time ago: what was season three about? I really enjoyed the first two seasons (and this season had some good moments – election night episode in particular). I’m glad it’s finally been brought to a close. LS, London
‘I think this was a truthful ending’
I am sad Succession has ended, but am glad, too. How something goes out – whether it be a series, a civilisation, a society, or individual – probably tells you the most about it. Series that just make their point and move on are the most powerful in my experience, and that is what Succession did. I think this was a truthful ending because it combined the financial direction of travel with the foibles of human nature. On the one hand, the overall economic winds were prevailing for the GoJo deal so anyone who stood against it wasn’t going to make it. Tech, the future, defeating legacy media. On the other hand, Shiv’s final decision reflects how irrationality can dominate human behaviour even when it causes selfinjury. The fundamental drives as to why people make a choice are dark, deep and unfathomable sometimes, as we saw with her final decision. Gaverne Bennett, 54, London
‘It all came down to Shiv’
It all came down to Shiv in the end. She finally accepted that it couldn’t be her (could it have been different if she hadn’t been visibly pregnant?), but found herself playing kingmaker. She chose Tom – because that was the best option for her and her child who will be the next generation to succeed. Hopefully, by then, being a woman will not be a bar to succeeding in business. Julie, 63, Jersey
‘Underwhelming’
It was underwhelming, exposing just how little the show had to say. The pattern of betrayals, brutal arguments and wounding words was done so many times, their impact was lessened. Had it played absurdist, or more darkly funny, it would have been wonderful – their being trapped in a cycle of endless backstabbing and failure – but going for the grand, sweeping tragedy thing fell flat when we’ve seen them do it all a ton of times, and with basically no consequences or tangible stakes. The conclusion felt like the right one – and it remains a good series – but it could have got to the same place within three seasons and would have been all the better for it. Tobias, 37, Paris
‘The high moments made the painful tension worthwhile’
It had to end bleakly; there was no doubt. The happiness on the way to tragedy was what won it for me – siblings swimming in the sea and causing trouble in the kitchen. These high moments have made the sometimes painful tension worthwhile. Greg and Tom’s fight in the toilet, followed by Tom bringing out his stickers was priceless. Roman’s relief martini was perfect. Kendall is bereft now, but he’ll do something new. Shiv is the one who has lost – tied to a man she doesn’t respect, destined to be as unhappy as her own mother. She made it happen, but the misery will get her. Careful what you wish for. Helena, 38, London
‘I feel bereaved’
We only started watching Succession about two months ago but managed to catch up with everyone this week. I feel bereaved now it’s finished. We are probably going to be talking about Kendall, Roman, Shiv, Logan et al for a few more weeks. As someone who had a tricky relationship with a dominant and charismatic father, I could at times really empathise with the sibs. I loved the way that the least likely characters came out on top: Tom with the big job, Greg on retention and even Connor, off to the far ends of Europe, happy to let Willa fill the lofty penthouse with all the tasteless tat that money can buy. It’s only Roman, Shiv and Kendall that look lost and terrified, still looking for some magical way of earning Logan’s approval. A really beautiful ending that found the perfect answer to the question that Logan could never answer: who, out of the family, could follow him? The answer was, of course, none of them.
Lyn Lockwood, 52, Sheffield ‘The final scene was marvellous’
The final scene, of Kendall in the park with just Colin (representing his guilt over the waiter) was marvellous. Kendall trying to pretend the waiter never happened was the saddest moment for me. It was one of the few honest moments he shared with his siblings. And Shiv! She has always loved Tom, I have always said it. But then she had to choose between being the sister or the wife. Considering the circumstances, she made the better choice, but in doing so continued the cycle and became Caroline. She will never be able to look past Tom taking what she saw as her rightful place, so Tom’s victory as CEO isn’t a triumph, even for him. Connor got the best deal; he had time before Logan’s death where he got to be the only child again. And Kendall insisting that he’s the eldest boy, when he’s just a 40-year-old man clinging to a promise made when he was in primary school … Logan was right: he is stunted. Tom is a suit, a puppet. Roman knows they are all hollow. Even Greg was claimed like secondhand furniture. My goodness, I think we’re going to spend decades talking about this episode. It’s a classic. Emily, 24, York
Perhaps no one matched Kendall’s obsessive drive, but only Wambsgans was willing to sell his soul
Zac
of the pandemic are unspeakably profound because of individual circumstances: mental illness, bereavement, grief, isolation, overwork, financial difficulties. But what about the more general effects on those of us who didn’t live through a specific horror? Are we all just supposed to forget this happened? Is that healthy?
The temptation to “put things behind us” when we can’t pinpoint a particular trauma (and sometimes even when we can) is huge, explains Prof Lucy Easthope, the author of When the Dust Settles: Stories ofLove, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster. “Disasters shake our confidence,” she says. “You will be asking yourself: ‘What did I really know about anything?’ I am seeing a lot of these emotions – especially in senior professional men – where the sense of self is shaken. These are the kinds of people who think that they have everything under control, that if they just get up an hour earlier to do their emails then they will be ‘bossing it’. But a pandemic is no different to a tsunami or any other disaster in terms of our emotional and psychological response to it.”
She adds: “After a drought, you see interruptions in the rings of a tree. Lots of adults will be experiencing implications they will try to bury. If you do that, they will come back to bite you on the arse – that’s not a technical term.”
There is resistance to the idea that a pandemic will produce a similar response to other historical disasters, Easthope explains, “but we know it has the same effect. We were in a heightened state of cortisol and adrenaline long-term, checking the news to see what we could do, checking how many in our community had died.” (Side note: I did this around the clock.) “Already, we are seeing typical after-effects: increase of respiratory issues, fatigue, exhaustion, depression, rashes, gastric effects.” These are all delayed responses to disaster, she says.
Her estimate is that populations begin to recover from major disasters around the 30-year point. She adds: “Our grandchildren will wonder about how we didn’t give it the respect it deserves.”
No surprise, then, that our superficial confidence is knocked. Dr Julia Samuel, a psychotherapist and the author of Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving, is a self-confessed robust person, with hard-fought reserves of resilience, yet she admits that even she felt “used up” by the end of the third lockdown. She is usually able to maintain a positive attitude because “what I’m good at is making sure that I do the small, simple things: dancing in my kitchen; exercising; going for a walk or for a coffee with a friend. They sound silly, but these things are the antidote and they must be done consciously. Otherwise, we hold stress in our bodies.”
Samuel’s concern, though, is not so much for the general population as the outliers. “People with existing difficulties – whether related to mental health, finances or family – have had everything made worse by the pandemic. And their ability to get support is diminished because the demand is so great.”
This is particularly acute for young people and for teenage girls: “I hear it in my therapy room and it’s reflected in the research: adolescent girls were particularly badly affected by not going to school and having those interactions like drinking milkshakes in Starbucks or just mucking about.”
I think most people understand and agree with this. Dr Ian Williams is a GP and the author of the graphic novel series The Bad Doctor. He argues that, yes, of course, we ought to find a way to stop Covid fallout from biting us on the arse, to process it and maintain our sense of ourselves, but there is one problem: “There is an absence of consensus about what the experience was and what it meant. That, in itself, is almost a reason to argue to just forget about it. There’s certainly a lot of anger and suspicion, and that has really divided people.
“What sort of national conversation could we have? Should it be political? Led by the NHS? Or by psychiatrists? I don’t know what it would look like because everything is so polarised. Are we talking about a cross-party commission of truth and reconciliation? Would that be a healing process? Personally, I’m kind of over it. We have other apocalyptic things to worry about now.”
My anecdotal research suggests that it’s no longer fun or sexy to mention the pandemic in social situations, but there are people who warm to the idea that we need to guard our recovered confidence carefully. I have had a number of people tell me that they have found solace in doing things more intentionally (an echo of Samuel’s idea): they have specifically created space for socialising and friendships, rather than just allowing those things to happen, as they might have done before the pandemic.
Kolarele Sonaike, a barrister and communications coach, formed a Zoom group during Covid of about eight “dad friends”; they have continued it as a fixed, non-negotiable weekly thing, sometimes online, sometimes in real life. The group is a big confidencebooster, he says: “It’s built-in now; we are regularly going to take time out of our week to do this. It’s guys being guys. We emote, we laugh, there are tears. The only rule is that outside the group we never talk about what was discussed inside the group. Seeing the challenges and difficulties that other people have … I can’t say it’s ‘curative’, but I think it keeps you sane.”
He says what he realised most during the pandemic was: “When you look back on life, you don’t want to say: ‘I worked 50 hours a week.’ You want to be able to say: ‘I had a laugh with friends.’” Maybe that is what proper confidence is: putting really obvious, human stuff at the heart of your life.
Jane Lindsey is an artist who runs an online community that she started during the pandemic. As the pandemic eased up, the group became more stressed, not less, she says: “And lots of people were assuming their anxieties were unusual, given the whole ‘back to normal’ vibe.” In the group, she could share her fears, such as anxiety about getting on a train again. “It built a kind of: ‘Yes, it’s scary but we can do this,’ response. It’s this long-term wobbliness. That makes me feel that it’s important it remains part of a national conversation. Not dwelled upon endlessly, perhaps, but as a reassurance that it was a period of cataclysmic change that continues to affect us long-term. And that feelings of anxiety, fear and uncertainty are normal – but don’t need to be limiting.”
What helped me regain confidence through all this was finding out about “loose ties”, also known as “weak ties”. We all have an important circle of inner friendships which, during an unusual event like a lockdown, can be easily maintained on the phone or by video call. But we also have an outer circle of acquaintances who we see “infrequently or fleetingly”.
This comes from Prof Mark Granovetter’s work in the 1970s and in particular his 1973 paper The Strength of Weak Ties. For new information and ideas, “weak ties are more important to us than strong ones”, he writes. There is increasing evidence that they also boost our wellbeing.
Just knowing about this phenomenon made me feel less needy and desperate and more reassured and grounded. I still feel a pang of regret about many of the loose-tie friends I haven’t seen since late 2019 or early 2020. People who were work friends I used to see fairly often, but have fallen by the wayside. Or acquaintances who I might have looked forward to seeing often in 2020 and 2021, but who have moved on and whom I’ll probably never see again. It’s reassuring to know that the cultivation of these ties – and the missing of them – is just part of being human.
I haven’t found an official post-Covid global confidence audit anywhere, but the World Health Organization has been releasing disturbing figures about the pandemic’s effect on mental health. In March 2022, it announced a “25% increase of anxiety and depression worldwide”. It’s hard to know how much of this is the mental effects of the pandemic and how much is a result of physical illness and long Covid, global inequality (itself intertwined with Covid responses) and the increasing acceptability of reporting these kinds of anxieties.
Slowly, I have gone back to something close to how I was before, although I still find I instinctively shrink from certain invitations and commitments. (To be fair, I usually call myself out on this and go to things anyway. No surrender.) As children, a lot of us learn that the world outside is a scary and life-threatening place. I believed that as a child, but I also wanted to defy it. As an adult, until the pandemic, I happily defied it all the time. Now, that feeling of “not safe” – revived during the pandemic because it was essentially true – has resurfaced and may not go away in the same sense ever again. The emotional historian Thomas Dixon talks about “a more resilient and perhaps more reserved, emotional style”. Maybe that is what this emerging, more reticent, confidence is.
Prof Easthope has spoken recently about the importance in disaster situations of “being told the truth even when it’s unbearable”. This factor connects strongly to my own inconsequential, low-key, low-impact experience. I just wanted to know the reality of the situation so that I could accept it.
But there were (and still are) constant disagreements over lockdowns, masks and government responses. There is still no consensus on the unbearable truth. My personal confidence has returned because – largely – confidence is situational and the current situation requires and allows me to be out in the world, interacting with people and getting on with it. But beneath the surface – almost as a sort of inner twitch of the eye – I can feel the pandemic in the rear-view mirror. Even as it recedes from view, like a defeated zombie that has finally stopped attacking, I wonder if it’s really dead and buried or merely dormant. I am confident again. But I have more of an eye than ever before as to what might bite me on the arse.
Happy High Status: How to Be Effortlessly Confident by Viv Groskop (Torva) is out on 29 June. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
My anecdotal research suggests that it’s no longer fun or sexy to mention the pandemic in social situations