*This article contains spoilers*
Man's first steps on the moon, the death of Princess Diana, season four episode three of Succession – we know a pivotal moment in history when we see one. If you haven't watched it yet, turn away now, keep off social media and avoid the culture tabs of all digital media sites for the next few months. 'Our father Logan Roy was pronounced dead on arrival.'
We knew this was likely to be coming for a number of reasons, but they still managed to surprise us by placing Logan's death so early on in the series and calling the episode 'Connor's wedding'. Since the show's conception, the original idea was to have the patriarch of Waystar Royco, Logan Roy, die in the first season and for the plot to follow which child would succeed him. However, Brian Cox and the four kids' dynamic was so incredible that the show changed its course so that Logan could stick around.
But when Jesse Armstrong spoke to The New Yorker about this being the fourth and final season of the show, he explained that there was 'pretty definitively the end'. In TV terms, that means someone dies. In Succession terms, that person had to be Logan. And the moment hit us – in a 30-minute one-take sequence – harder than all of Logan's insults put together.
Mark Mylod, the show's executive producer, directed the episode and spoke to Vulture about how they went about it. The fate of (one of) the best ever TV show was in their hands – the heaviness of which was not lost on them. Firstly, on deciding that Logan would die on episode three, the show's creator Jesse Armstrong took Brian Cox (who plays Logan) out for lunch to tell him. Mark said, 'Obviously someone with Brian's experience took it very well. But he was sad. And it took him a long while to come to grips with it. This was a long period of our lives in terms of duration and intensity.'
As for the death sequence itself, it was shot on a 35-mm film camera and they hid three magazines around the set so they could keep shooting in one agonising half-hour take. Even scenes where Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfayden) is on the phone to Shiv (Sarah Snook), Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) from the plane involved Matthew speaking to them live from London, where it was 2am, just so that his real voice could be used in the scene.
In the episode, Logan and the Waystar team are on a private jet en route to Sweden to salvage the GoJo deal, while the rest of the family are on a boat in New York for Connor and Willa's wedding. When Tom calls the siblings to inform them of what's happening – that Logan collapsed in the jet toilet and his heart had stopped – the action unfolds in a deliberately painful and disjointed way, where information is muddled, unconfirmed and passed between characters on the phone as the reality of his death sets in in real time.
Mark told Variety, 'In terms of the structure of how we handle and tell the story of this huge character's death, it just seems so interesting and fresh to focus on the frustration of trying to get the information. Our story revolves around a media empire; it revolves around information and eyeballs. And this idea of the irony of not being able to get that information, apart from the wonderful device of putting the audience somewhat into the heads of the characters and their frustration of: "is this really happening? what's happening?"'.
He added that 'the camera needed to be a sadist' and that they needed 'to stick the lens right in those poor people's faces'. 'There was a whole half-hour chunk of real-time story, from the moment the characters first go upstairs and the call comes in from Tom, through to Kendall going outside and talking to Frank, where it felt like it had to be literally real-time.'
As for Logan's body, '90% of the time it was a stunt double down there' with one shot of Brian laying on the floor where they stuck a shot of his head onto the stunt double's torso.
For Succession fans, it feels like THE definitive, climactic episode, but for the crew it didn't take any longer than usual to film. 'Technically, it wasn't a hard episode,' Mark added, but in terms of its substance the producer admitted that him and Jesse 'were in bits after that first take'. And so too were the actors. Even the three-way hug between Shiv, Kendall and Roman near the end of the episode was unscripted. 'They just fell into' it, Mark said. And now we're crying all over again.
Season four of Succession is available to watch on HBO Max, Sky and Now TV.