Succession’s resident couple, Shiv ‘scorpion’ Roy and Tom ‘Pontius Pilate’ Wambsgans, have never exactly been relationship goals. Their romance is almost entirely rooted in convenience, transaction, and opportunity. But in those rare moments of affection – particularly in times of crisis – it’s hard not to feel like an optimistic child of divorce and hope they’ll work things out. As of episodes seven and eight, all hope is gone.
Succession refuses to offer any neat or aspirational relationship models – whether that be between siblings, colleagues, parents and children or married couples. Compassionate and meaningful connections do not really exist within the world of the show – everyone is a means to an end. This extends to the characters’ own relationships with themselves and is perhaps most apparent in Shiv and Tom’s marriage, where any sense of love, loyalty or closeness is lukewarm at best.
We first meet the couple in the very first episode. Shiv is media mogul Logan Roy’s only daughter and Tom is her sycophantic soon-to-be fiancé. While it’s fair to say the Roys don’t seem to care much about anything, there are very few signs Shiv genuinely cares about Tom. She’s still sleeping with her ex, she’s disinterested in her wedding plans, and he’s a bit of a beg. For a while, the disparity between their efforts is painful. Shiv is a product of a dog-eat-dog world where human emotions are most useful as punchlines, and Tom just wants to be in on the joke.
The dial begins to shift in season two when Shiv first throws her husband under the bus and offers him up as bait in the cruise ship scandal. It's at this stage, in episode 10, that we witness the couple’s first real confrontation. They sit side by side on the beach and Tom addresses his feelings while throwing stones like a child whose been told he's not allowed another Calippo. He says, ‘I don’t think it was cool what you did’, in reference to Shiv asking to open up their relationship on their wedding night. He attempts to tell his wife that he's not happy and is met with indifference, making the start of the end. For married Tom, this was as good as it was ever going to get.
It's only at the end of season three that he finally sees the wood for the trees and tips Logan off about the siblings’ coup to shun him from the company – and so the game of betrayal tennis begins. Up until season two, his role as an accessory in Shiv’s life was news to him, and up until season three, the notion that he’d ever have a problem with it was news to her too. By the start of season four, the couple have separated.
While we made our peace with their separation (there wasn't much to mourn), season four teases us with a toxic rekindling in the wake of Logan’s sudden death – one that again seems more rooted in companionship and power play than anything else. Through flirtatious games of ‘bitey’ – where they bite each other until one of them is in too much pain – to barbed gifts of a scorpion trapped in glass (‘you kill me, and I kill you’) as a symbol of their dynamic, things gear up for a sinister turn.
This all comes to a head at the tailgate party in episode seven, hosted at the couple’s 'ludicrously capacious' apartment, where Shiv humiliates Tom for the final time. After telling guests at the party that he's likely to lose his job at ATN following the Matsson deal, the couple have an explosive argument on their balcony. In stark contrast to their tiff on the beach, this fight features direct eye contact, high decibels and harmful words that can’t be unsaid. Shiv calls him a hick and a masochist and says he only married her for power, and Tom says she’s incapable of love and probably shouldn’t ever have children. After months of suppressing and refusing to be honest about their feelings, they have nothing left to lose.
Tom and Shiv are both so desperate to earn the respect of everyone around them that they fail to reserve any for themselves or each other. They’re almost each other’s capitalist beards at this point. But after reaching the blind spot of acute rage that comes from suppressing your emotions, it's entirely believable that they'd lose all control over what they’re saying, but it's no less painful to watch. The foundations of Shiv and Tom’s relationship were never stable, but by now they have eroded entirely.
In episode eight, against all odds, Shiv has a small modicum of fight left in her. She apologises to Tom for what she said on the balcony, but he doesn't say it back. She then tells him she’s pregnant with his child – a secret she has so far kept entirely to herself – after he accused her of ‘partly’ killing her own father. He doesn’t believe her. Instead, dead behind the eyes, he asks if it’s even true or if it’s just another manipulation tactic. And in one scene it turns out the prophet scorpion was right all along – Shiv killed Tom by a thousand cuts, so he stuck the whole knife in in one go.