Succession was a tragicomedy that was Shakespearean in scope right up until the searing finale. In Shakespeare’s classics, the antihero is undone by his or her ‘tragic flaw’ – the small thing that lives inside them that makes achieving their aims impossible – the thing that, ultimately, makes them the orchestrator of their own downfall. For Hamlet, it was indecision; for Macbeth, ambition; for Othello, jealousy. And as for the Roys, it was the fact that, at the end of the day, they just couldn’t stomach each other.

At least that seems to be the general consensus about the final showdown that saw Shiv (Sarah Snook) flip on her brother at the last minute. As journalist Jack King notes in GQ, in the end, it isn’t that Shiv feels bad for Ken (Jeremy Strong) or wants to side with Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) for her own gain – it’s that “Shiv can’t bear to watch Ken play with his toys, and she’d rather throw them out of the corporate pram”. Shiv says it herself: “I love you. I really… I love you, but I can’t fucking stomach you.” 

Structurally, Succession has always been unusually cyclical. The Succession cycle goes something like this: one of the siblings concocts a devious plan to steal the CEO spot at Waystar Royco once and for all. To get past the final hurdle – the board of directors – they enlist the support of others, usually their siblings. They ride on a high, convinced the throne is theirs, only to come crashing down when it all falls apart in the final moments. Instead of growing and learning and developing, the central characters lean towards growth and then boomerang right back to where they started. It happened to Kendall in season one when his allies got cold feet in the board meeting. It happened in season three when the siblings joined forces only to be stabbed in the back by Tom. It happened at the beginning of season four when Shiv was sidelined by her brothers from taking an interim CEO position.

In the finale, the same cycle is set into motion one last time. The meeting of the board of directors is fast approaching. A vote will determine whether the deal with Lukas Matsson’s  GoJo will go through. If it doesn’t, the siblings will retain control of the company. If it does, Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) will take charge, installing Shiv as the CEO – or so she thinks. When her brothers find out that Matsson has another CEO in mind, she flips, lending her crucial vote to Kendall and Roman (Kieran Culkin). But now it’s decision time: if the siblings all vote against the deal, they’ll need to pick one incumbent CEO from their ranks to solidify their position with the board. Miraculously, Shiv and Roman concede that Kendall is best suited for the role. The impossible seems to have happened – but after four seasons on this corporate roller coaster, we know the bottom will drop.

In the board meeting, Shiv is the last to cast her vote. Kendall is moments away from getting what he has wanted since he was seven years old. But then, a cloud passes across her face and she leaves the room. In a nearby glass-walled office (because, after all, their petty squabbling has always been on full display to the rest of the company) their last heated fight ensues. Ken begs Shiv not to change her mind, but it’s too late. The idea of Kendall succeeding her father makes her sick to her stomach, and Roman soon turns on Ken, too. “They just can’t tolerate seeing Kendall win in a sense,” Strong said on the Succession podcast. “I think what they perceive as his grandiosity and self-importance and putting his feet up on Dad’s desk, they can’t stomach it. It’s what Shiv says.” But, of course, it’s not just Ken. None of them can tolerate any of the others.     

But why? Why is the idea of one of their siblings taking over so abhorrent to the Roys?

Perhaps it all comes back to the Logan of it all. Their father, Logan Roy, was a media titan – a corporate beast who struck fear and awe into the hearts of all who worked for him. His children, all desperate to prove they can step into his shoes, simply don’t possess his raw power. Sure, they can perform his machismo, imitate his bravado and roar, “Fuck off!” with all their might – but they are not, as Logan himself put it in their final meeting before his death, “serious people”.

And they know it. Deep down, they know that they aren’t and never will be their dad. But rather than accepting this identity-crushing fact about themselves, they displace it onto the other two. As far as Kendall is concerned, Shiv and Roman have never really been viable options. For Shiv, Kendall and Roman are the unserious ones. They can’t stomach each other because they can’t really stomach themselves either.

Only Roman, at the end, is able to accept the truth: They are all unserious options. “We are bullshit,” he says to Kendall. “It’s all fucking nothing. I’m telling you this because I know it. We’re nothing.”

And so, Shiv casts her vote and crowns Tom and Matsson as successors. She may not be able to stomach them either, but at least they’re not Kendall – Kendall whose particular brand of bullshit she can see straight through because, after all, it’s pretty similar to her own.

It’s a fitting denouement for the show. The Roys were never destined to sit on their father’s corporate throne, nor were they worthy of it – but if they had only been able to stomach each other, they might just have gotten away with it.

Images: HBO/Sky