Spoilers: Succession finale says goodbye to America’s most profane, and profound, show

Spoiler alert: This article contains heavy spoilers for the Succession series finale – episode ten, season four.

Succession delivered an 88-minute series finale, drawing four seasons of Roy family warfare to a close in heartbreaking, hyperactive style.

The series finale arrived with nothing less than the fate of the family, and the country itself, on creator Jesse Armstrong’s shoulders.

The Emmy-juggernaut delivered answers to the legacy of Waystar RoyCo, as TV’s most profane and profound drama said goodnight, and “f… off”, one last time.

The show that coined so many meme-spawning, history-making phrases shoehorned in a few more all-timers for its season finale.

Anything could happen going into the 10th episode. The birth of a Wambsgland? A surprise boar-on-the-floor rematch? Roman + Gerri’s DMs leaked? Conheads bearing him aloft to the White House? Anything, no matter how awful, felt possible for Monday night’s episode.

Ultimately, Armstrong delivered a virtuoso piece of screenwriting: a beautifully clean, profoundly entertaining close that was both surprising and inevitable.

Goodbye to the greatest show of the Trump era. Hello to one nation under Wambsgans.

So, Tom comes out on top.

It was Tom, our clumsy interloper, from a striving and parochial family, who got what he wanted. McFadyen has been open in interviews about Tom’s soulless drive and awful ambition – tonight, it reached a nadir as Matsson bragged about taking Shiv. And Tom took it all to appease his ego and ambition.

We find Tom offering to quite literally “sing for his supper” to Matsson over some chewy cod. His best assets? He’s simple and sh.. gobbling, apparently, and offers the most hollow laugh perhaps ever captured on television.

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Matsson makes it clear he’s offering the scraps to Tom, and Tom is glad for his banquet of crumbs.

“Why don’t I get the guy who put the baby inside her, instead of the baby lady,” Matsson’s CEO strategy seems to boil down to, in what is the most wince-inducing, misogynist word salad ever committed to screen.

The prophecy, it turns out, was correct. Greg ends up castrated, married to Tom – our modern Emperor Nero and his slave Sporus – just as Tom predicted.

Series finales tend to be wrought affairs, torn between a fan service conclusion (Dexter) and a plagal cadence kind of ending (The Sopranos).

This episode was neither, instead issuing straight into our veins a high-adrenaline, palm-sweaty finale that set Waystar Royco on its terrible trajectory.

Where are the Roys?

At the outset, Kendall is bleeding both board and shareholder support for his Waystar/GoJo veto.

Meanwhile, at Matsson’s HQ, Shiv is furiously tallying numbers in her and Gojo’s favour. Roman? Supposedly being pity spanked in a jerk dungeon. Shiv decides to chase Roman’s vote one last time, to avoid the new era of Waystar looking like “Lady Macbeth: Part II”.

Tom is with Greg, naturally, both swimming about their corporate fishbowls like the business molluscs they are – both gaming for their spot in the GoJo aftermath.

We should Czehsclovakia it, Tom says to Shiv of their “Shivorce”.

“Are there many positives about the nightmare we’ve shared?” Hell of a line to save your marriage, Shiv Roy.

As the Roys find themselves bonding together over negronis at sunset, we see them start to abandon the facade of being serious people. These Roys are loose, freer, tuning into their younger selves, without Logan to bark orders, and without another move to make.

It is, of course, a total mirage – a fantastical vision of the siblings and the people they could have been to one another without the crushing weight of their father’s empire.

It’s heartbreaking to see how the love they have for one another cannot heal the ills at the heart of their relationships.

As Shiv discovers Matsson’s betrayal, and Kendall relishes the chance to go “reverse Viking”, they are off to war again against GoJo – this time anointing Kendall once and for all as Logan Roy’s No. 1 boy.

The most dangerous family in America

There’s nothing more dangerous than a Roy with nothing left to lose. We saw that in all tonight, from Con’s abandonment of Willa to Caroline’s bid to keep them captive in her Caribbean stronghold, under the influence of Peter’s cheesy breath and even more foul sales pitches.

Kendall’s every impulse this season – tanking the Gojo deal, dishing on Shiv, calling Mencken’s candidacy early – is swayed by an errant belief that it’s what Logan would have done. His killer instincts were shown to be more suicidal than anything else.

Roman was reduced to rubble, retreating more than ever into his boyishness – sitting on the floor, knees crossed, wearing stripey shirts that were more Pumpkin Patch than Loro Piana.

Shiv had daggers in her throat and knives in her eyes as she watched the men spin her around several times before she entered any boardroom – first Kendall, then Matsson, then Tom.

Tonight, Shiv’s carapace of steely nerves was at last unmasked for all the personal anguish and upset she had endured.

The final tableau of her and Tom, suggesting that she is now trapped – without power, without agency, without any of the political will she first broke apart from the family to gain – was an icily sad way to abandon Snook’s character.

These violent delights have violent ends

Not since Vito Genovese’s kiss of death have we seen such awful fratricide committed on screen, as Kendall deliberately breaks and bloodies Roman’s stitches to mar his chances at making a last-ditch attempt for CEO.

They arrive at the boardroom for the final vote against the GoJo deal, where Shiv’s will withers under the boardroom spotlights. Roman literally licks his wounds, Kendall tries to channel Logan with one last rabble-rousing speech.

But in one final, awful tableau, the Roy siblings reveal that they have no faith in one another. That was Logan’s prophecy – he made sure to play them off against one another, and, still now, it’s what they do best.

The Roys have stripped themselves of their humanity so many times this season that we recognise them through their threadbare gestures of love towards one another – even these now are gone.

As they lose the company and Tom rises to CEO, with Matsson, and presumably Mencken, creating their awful “anarcho-capitalist parmigiana” together, we are offered three final moments with our three siblings.

Roman, at a bar, alone, delivering a mangled smile as his open wound bleeds out. He tries to arrange his facial expressions into something steely, then his face tried to find the joke. But nothing’s funny any more.

Shiv and Tom drive out, unrecognisable by now to one another, with Shiv trapped in a loveless marriage, with no power, no more pretences at moral or political superiority.The poison drips through after all.

Kendall stalks the boardwalk alone at dusk, Colin trailing behind, as Britell’s dramatic score arrives one final time, with just as much terrible gravitas.

The series’ final shot is an awful mimicry of the opening credits (the one of Logan, framed from behind, towering over the boardroom table).

Instead, it’s his son –the man who would be king, looking out at his kingdom of dust, just another lone figure on the park bench.

It’s been hard, loving this family. It’ll be harder saying goodbye.