Warning: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of Succession, “With Open Eyes.”
“Big, big day on the old salami line,” announced Fisher Stevens‘ communications chief Hugo Baker two-thirds of the way through Sunday night’s feature-length series finale of Succession. He could not have spoken truer words.
The closing minutes of creator Jesse Armstrong’s saga about the Roy family found Matthew Macfadyen‘s executive Tom Wambsgans become the U.S. CEO of Waystar Royco after its board voted through the sale of the company to Alexander Skarsgård tech magnate Lukas Matsson. Earlier in the episode Sarah Snook‘s Shiv Roy had decided to side with her two brothers, Jeremy Strong‘s Kendall and Kieran Culkin‘s Roman, to block the deal after learning that Matsson did not plan on making her CEO. At the board meeting, Shiv had second thoughts and ultimately voted against the deal, following a heated huddle with her siblings during which she suggested that Kendall could not become CEO himself because he had killed someone.
Macall Polay/HBO Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy on ‘Succession’
At the end of the episode, the pregnant Shiv was seen apparently reconciling with Tom while Roman hit a bar, and a distraught Kendall wandered off, shadowed by his father’s old chief of security, Scott Nicholson’s Colin.
We also discovered the corporate futures of several other Waystar Royco employees. Tom decided to keep both Nicholas Braun‘s treacherous Greg and J. Smith-Cameron‘s legal counsel Gerri Kellman while declaring both Peter Friedman‘s Frank and David Rasche‘s Carl to be “dead.”
Hugo got some apparent bad news too. When he tried to chummy up with his new boss, Tom immediately asked about the whereabouts of Waystar Royco publicity chief Karolina Novotney, played by Dagmara Dominczyk.
Big, big day on the old salami line, indeed.
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