Our nervous systems have barely kept up with the drama in season three of Succession. And the final two episodes in Tuscany had us sweating like we were also under the Italian sun.
As it turns out, the shocking conclusion to the series (don’t worry - no spoilers) was so unexpected that even the cast and crew didn’t know what the final cut would be.
According to Hunter Harris from Vulture{
Each ending reportedly centred around a different member of the Roy family, with Kendall [Jeremy Strong], Roman [Kieran], and Shiv [Sarah Snook] all potential candidates to discover the final shock moment.
Harris reported: ‘When I watched them film the episode’s final scene, they tried the last moment a few different ways… When we talked in the summer, Snook wasn’t sure what the ultimate selection would be, but she had hopes for a cliff-hanger.’
The uncertainty kept the marketing team, and those attempting to solve the season’s ending, on their toes as the show’s promo materials shifted each character’s position on all of the posters to hint at various power pairings and where loyalties might lie at the end of the show. All in all, they released four variations of the same image.
In the final episode, titled All The Bells Say - a line pulled from John Berryman’s poem Dream Song 29, like previous season finales – the plot follows on from the episode called Chiantishire, when the family’s figurehead Logan Roy [Brian Cox] attempts to reach an agreement with the tech mogul Lukas Matsson [Alexander Skarsgard].
Logan is negotiating with Lukas over the acquirement of his valuable streaming service GoJo by Waystar Royco, until Roman accidentally sends an explicit image to his dad and undermines his confidence in the deal.
Meanwhile, Shiv has been dealing with her awkward relationship with her husband Tom Wambsgans [Matthew Macfayden]—a dynamic that bubbles to its most shocking at the tail end of the finale.
Speaking to Variety of her final plot line, Snook said: ‘Part of me, as an actor, is always wondering what is more interesting to the audience to see, not just what we’re going through in the character… At the end of an episode, having something that narratively projects into the next season sets it up quite nicely.’
Succession was confirmed to be commissioned for its fourth season in October, with plenty of dramatic loose ends for Snook to tie up in character. However, the show’s creator Jesse Armstrong has warned the Roy family drama won’t continue indefinitely.
He told Variety in an interview ahead of season three: ‘All I know is there's a promise in the Succession title, and it can't go on forever.' He continued, 'It's important for me, I think, as a showrunner to have a [series finale] pitch for my fellow collaborators, especially the writers. But it's not immutable. That's up for discussion. But I do have a pitch for how I think it goes.'
If the unpredictability of the season three finale has shown us anything, it’s that Armstrong’s ideas are always open to evolution. However, Succession’s writer and executive producer Georgia Pritchett is more willing to be resolute.
She told The Times that Armstrong has a ‘good end in sight’ but admitted: ‘I think the maximum [number] would be five seasons, but possibly more like four.’ But you never know—they might change their minds.
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The Big Clue We Missed That Succession Series 3 Was Always Going To End This Way