Succession, HBO’s drama about the corrosively wealthy Roy family, will premiere it’s fourth season next month. And as creator Jesse Armstrong revealed to The New Yorker, that’ll be it. “It’s pretty definitively the end.”
Armstrong and his team didn’t come to this conclusion lightly. He went into the season 4 writer’s room not quite sure if this would be the end, but eventually it became clear that this would be a natural stopping point for the story. “There’s a promise in the title of Succession,” he said. “I’ve never thought this could go on forever. The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From Season 2, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?”
I got together with a few of my fellow-writers before we started the writing of Season 4, in about November, December, 2021, and I sort of said, “Look, I think this maybe should be it. But what do you think?” And we played out various scenarios: We could do a couple of short seasons, or two more seasons. Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks. Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference. I went into the writing room for Season 4 sort of saying, “I think this is what we’re doing, but let’s also keep it open.” I like operating the writing room by coming in with a sort of proposition, and then being genuinely open to alternative ways of going. And the decision to end solidified through the writing and even when we started filming: I said to the cast, “I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but I think this is it.” Because I didn’t want to bullshit them, either.
Succession creator isn’t ruling out a return after the ending
Sounds like a good idea to me. As Armstrong points out, it’s never fun when a show stays on the air so long that it loses some of what made it appealing in the first place. “[T]he ending needs to work on its own merits,” he said. “I hope that no one ever thinks that we are outstaying our welcome—that we’re going to do a dud season, or be stretching it out. I hope those concerns never occur to people. I know they do when I’m watching other people’s shows, even ones I admire and like.”
Is he talking about The Walking Dead? Game of Thrones? No comment.
All that said, Armstrong is clearly attached to this world, and he’s not ruling out the possibility of returning in some form down the line. “I do think that this succession story that we were telling is complete,” he said. “This is the muscular season to exhaust all our reserves of interest, and I think there’s some pain in all these characters that’s really strong. But the feeling that there could be something else in an allied world, or allied characters, or some of the same characters—that’s also strong in me.”
I have caveated the end of the show, when I’ve talked to some of my collaborators, like: Maybe there’s another part of this world we could come back to, if there was an appetite? Maybe there’s something else that could be done, that harnessed what’s been good about the way we’ve worked on this. So that is another true feeling.
Succession season 4 premieres on HBO on March 26.
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