The ending of HBO’s Succession was a surprise to many fans, but star Brian Cox saw it coming.
During a post-Emmys panel moderated by Seth Meyers, the 77-year-old actor, who portrayed Waystar Royco CEO Logan Roy, said it was “obvious” that the series’ fourth season would be its last — though other cast members disagreed.
“We didn’t 100 percent know,” star Matthew Macfadyen, who played Waystar executive Tom Wambsgans, said during the panel on Tuesday, January 16, per People.
Cox playfully responded, “I don’t understand what you didn’t know. F–king dead or something. Christ, it was so f–king obvious.”
“We’re going to finish and I go, ‘Oh, we didn’t know,’” the Scottish actor added. “We went to the last read-through and we thought, ‘Oh, maybe there’s still life.’ It’s ridiculous.”
Following Logan’s shocking death midway through season 4, the remaining episodes saw the Roy siblings battling their grief while simultaneously vying over the family business. In the May 2023 finale episode, Waystar Royco was ultimately sold to another media conglomerate, GoJo.
“We do rewrite and rewrite all the way through [and we thought] that we could leave that escape door,” writer and creator Jesse Armstrong said of the decision to end the series. “And maybe that was psychological, because it was really, really hard actually ending it.”
He continued, “It was like, ‘We need the possibility of escape,’ almost to commit to the end.”
After a dramatic season 3 finale in which Logan’s children and potential successors Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook), Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) and Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) failed to stop their father from selling his media empire, Succession fans were left wondering how much longer the series could continue.
In February 2023, the month before season 4 premiered, Armstrong, 53, confirmed that the fourth season would be the show’s last.
“It’s been a bit tortured, and I felt unexpectedly nervous about talking to you because it’s all theoretical until this point,” he told The New Yorker at the time. “You know, there’s a promise in the title of Succession. I’ve never thought this could go on forever.”
Succession received widespread critical acclaim and swept several top categories at the 2023 Emmy Awards. The show earned 27 nominations and six wins, including Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Culkin, 41, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Snook, 36, and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Macfadyen, 49.
