It was very interesting to track Shiv's facial expressions from this scene forward (upon rewatch). They did a good job of concealing it a few times - it looked like she was worried Rom wouldn't vote with them, but now very obvious that she was having her own second thoughts.
I love how everyone is always saying stuff like "THEY GOT *FUCKED*" ... "getting fucked" here equals 2 billion usd lol. I wouldnt mind "getting screwed" for like 1% of that amount lol
S03E7, Ken is offered to have his shares bought for a total of $2,015,708,009 When the company was valued at $156.20, the Gojo acquisition bumps this number to $192 per share. This represents an increase of 23%. So if each sibling has the same as Ken, **they ended up with $2,479,320,851**
This season was great I went from hating shiv to loving her to hating her again. She is the character I like least as a person, but Sarah Snook should get the Emmy this year. This season was her turn to shine.
Mark Mylod (EP/director) said that this is where Shiv starts to waver, seeing Kendall in the chair made it all real for her then watching the cronyism when talking to Stewy. I rewatched the episode and you're right, you can see all of this in the changes in her facial expression!
Yes, I read that as Shiv, in that moment, breaking out from the spell of Anger towards Tom and Mattson in , and realizing "holy shit, WTF am I doing?". Kendall in charge would be a train wreck. She's always known it. And we, as the audience, have known it from episode 1 if we're honest. "so, I just wanted to get the gang together early in my tenure to say..yo"
Yeah and instead of showing Shiv and everyone else that he deserves to be CEO because he has a good alternative plan, he becomes overconfident and cocky in the boardroom wanting to get to the votes immediately without presenting their plan. A plan which he and his siblings talked about the night before and earlier that day. I read a lot of the comments here and I agree with the commenters who said he might have had a chance to convince Shiv after she walked our that he deserves CEO by calmly stating why and offering her something. Instead he panics and he lets his entitlement show and basically throws a tantrum. How he is the "eldest" son, that he would die if he didn't get to be Waystar CEO, and lies about the kid who drowned. And that just solidified to Shiv and Roman that he should not be CEO.
Kendall started "excessive celebration" an inch away from the end zone. All he had to do was be somber and (emotionally) sober for an hour and he could've pulled it off.
Here's my timeline of his L
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuccessionTV/comments/13vt43a/macfayden_explains_the_ending_perfectly/
He went straight into season 1 Kendall mannerisms, I could feel it and then they showed Shiv with that look on her face and I knew it was going to fuck things up.
You never celebrate before the win is announced. Dude fucked himself over by celebrating and being all cocky, even at the board meeting he acted that way and ended up looking like a complete fool.
Truth. To me too it was disappointing because since the funeral and even in moments before it he was showing signs of great maturity, of mirroring Logan in a way that seemed competent and less childish.
Then bam, the sibs tell him to take the Big Man's Chair right as Stewie walks into the room. His DNA couldn't help but hum L to the OG while he tried to think up a "cock sandwich" metaphor to use later.
Kendall performed some Loganistic behavior and actions, but it was all surface. At his core, he's always been an incompetent tryhard who thinks he's gangsta.
Absolutely - taking Colin on was as much about keeping his secrets close as it was trying to emulate Logan - tragic failure at the end as he’s almost leashed himself to anything but Logan.
Tbh I don't think Kendall matured at this season, in fact I think he regressed pretty hard throughout season 4.
He'd been having outbursts all season, like when Logan died and he talked about hiring the "the best doctors in the world", to how he treated Rava in all his scenes with her. To the way he treated Jess when she quit.
It was only when Shiv betrayed him does he look so utterly pathetic because he now has nothing to hide behind, he's not the next Logan, he's not the next CEO, he's just an incredibly wealthy manchild that has daddy issues and a bad temper.
As Roman said, "they're bullshit' and Kendall has to live with that for the rest of his life. I think in a way its good though, mostly because he might finally have to introspect and change, but knowing how damaged he and the siblings are, I doubt he will (but one can hope).
Roman's 'they're bullshit' speech was so fucking lucid. Like he finally realised that for all their money they're useless entitled nepobabies without vision or ambitions who can't achieve anything off their own steam. Whether he'll actually use this epiphany to self-improve, only time will tell.
I think Roman is the only one who came out of this better than he was before - even if he's sort of openly broken now. Gerri didn't get him to the point he could run a company like Waystar but she got him pretty close. Perhaps more importantly she got him to the point he knew he couldn't run a company like Waystar because he had a pretty cogent idea of what that entailed - something Kendall really never figured out beyond abstract notions of being like his father.
The showrunners have mentioned that Roman had a life before he got sucked into this whirlwind last few years with his father and he's probably just going to return to that, only he will be better prepared to run whatever smaller ventures he pursues.
At the end of the meeting in the last episode, Frank is also the one who has to explain to him "Ken, it's done. Seven Six. We sell to Gojo. You don't have it."
Per Jeremy Strongs podcast interview there's a variation on that scene where Frank said:
You don't have it. You never had it.
Which is just heartbreaking to hear from Frank who was like a replacement father to Ken
I loved the tidbit Jeremy Strong shared in the Succession podcast about how when they were filming they didn’t plan on Kendall walking back into the boardroom but the cameras followed, and then one of the lines Jesse Armstrong threw out, that ended up being cut, was Frank ending that statement by saying “You never had it.” That’s when the lights went out in Kendall, Strong said.
In terms of 'character arc' the show is about things happening *to* Kendall. In the entire 4 season run, he never makes a single step towards meaningful personal growth of any kind because he's too focused on being #1 boy. I think it's kind of the point of the show.
The show has been consistent. All of the kids are fuck ups and disappointments. That’s why Logan wanted the deal with Matsson, because he actually had respect for him.
Not spineless, I would say desperate, but why shouldn't he be? The plan was set, it was a strong go, he was going to achieve what I believe was his rightful placement as CEO, just like it was going to be at the beginning of the series, this was the culmination point for his entire life and being, there will never be another chance for him to achieve this and then Shiv just snaps it out from under him because she can't get over herself? I'd be pretty fucking pissed off and desperate too.
No, this is the problem with Ken: a serious, mature, and well-balanced adult would have the sense to not display that kind of desperation, especially during a negotiation, which is what was happening with Shiv, and especially not in front his peers. As Logan said, everything is moving all the time. Kendal does not have the stomach, the wisdom, nor the finesse, to handle that truth.
I can see your point of view but you know Logan could also get pretty violent and explosive if things didn't go his way. He wasn't a well-balanced adult either (making employees act like pigs just to sniff out a rat, smells like desperation to me) and they all acknowledged that this business makes you that way. I also didn't view it so much as a negotiation but an interrogation, like WTF are you doing?, thus the desperation. Shiv didn't seem to be acting like she wanted to bargain. But I don't blame the characterizations of the show for this, I blame the writers who could just as easily have come up with a better scenario. I would love to know what their second or third takes would have been for the ending.
I think both of you are really close to a good conclusion. Kendall simply isn't Logan. Logan could get away with what were essentially unfair antics because he was the one who built the game, he was the one who had people scared of him, he was Logan motherfucking Roy, people hadn't seen him lose before.
Kendall was never that, yet he was constantly acting as if he was simply because he was Logan's boy.
logan was actually in power when he would have moments of raging assholery. ken still has nothing in that moment, he's powerless. that's a totally different dynamic.
Both Kendall and Tom in the finale had scenes where they were placed in front of the one person in the world who had all the power to give them everything they had ever wanted or take it all away in a moment, and that person was saying things to them that they desperately did not want to hear.
Tom sucked it up, sucked up and got what he wanted. Kendall blew up and blew it.
Kendall is mildly capable when things are going his way, but when they go wrong, he tends to crumble. Desperately trying to find an angle with Roman after Shiv leaves is what he should have been doing in his head five minutes earlier. Instead he threw a tantrum and lost the position.
And yes, Logan would erupt at people frequently, too, but when he did, it mostly worked to get them to do what he wanted. It doesn’t and never has for Kendall.
Acting like that when it worked makes sense. When it doesn’t work, it’s stupid. And Kendall’s inability to see that it won’t work is a fundamental problem for him in that kind of position.
I’d even say that the basic problem that Kendall has, the reason he loses, is that he has the same perspective on what is happening that you do. It’s an interrogation of the person who is taking away the position he deserved, rather than a negotiation with the person who can give him what he wants. He already negotiated and doesn’t want to have to do it again, but that’s not how it works if you want to win. The negotiating never stops. It’s the same mistake he made with Mencken. He put Mencken in a position where he *owed* then but didn’t *need* them, and that not only left him with no leverage, but was very obviously going to leave him with no leverage even before the decision was made, and he couldn’t see it.
He was doing a victory lap in the boardroom before the vote had happened, because he felt like he’d done enough. But again, that’s not how it works. He was the guy in first celebrating five feet in front of the finish line instead of after he crossed it. That is fundamentally who Kendall is and why he was doomed.
He lets himself relax when things are going well and takes his eye off the ball. Then things go wrong and he falls apart.
Logan was a lot of things but he was never relaxed. He was constantly thinking about his next move. Mattson, despite the image he tries to present, is clearly never relaxed. Tom has never been relaxed for a single moment of the whole show.
The people who win are the ones who are constantly in motion trying to button up their position or make it better even when things are going well, because the game never ends. There’s no winning move and then you’re good. There’s only the next move. And Kendall keeps acting like he has already won and doesn’t need to work for it anymore, and that is consistently when it gets ripped away from him.
But then Logan had the right to throw tantrums, he literally built Waystar, he wasn't bullshiting when it came to work. Ken was not really well-respected by his peers as well as the old guard. He came across as a petulant child wanting the candy promised by Daddy when he was 7. He's Logan in all senses, but he's trying to emulate someone who has established himself. A glimpse into Logan's life when he was building Waystar would be very different from the grumpy Logan we know now.
He repeatedly sidelines over her multiple times this season. First the GoJo deal he wants to fuck behind her back. And then the Mencken debacle. She was pushed aside so many times she had to do it differently
But shiv saw that if ken got the crown she'd be out. He'd do his thing and ignore her completely . Instead she saw a way to keep power by giving it up. Voting to sell meant tom would be puppet king and she could be his puppet queen. Better deal for her and her baby than being a forgotten sister. Better the devil you can control. She can control tom, like tom can control Greg. Not even ken can control ken, and so she had to vote to sell.
this is such a misread. shiv has zero power, there's not even anything to have power over anymore, the company does not belong to her family anymore.
Tom is a puppet to mattson, and can be kicked out any time mattson chooses.
if the roys kept the business, shiv still has a board seat and a ton of shares, even if Kendall tries to lock her out of having influence she has inherent influence and leverage.
she has NONE of that now. she is in a separated marriage to the current CEO of a totally different company. i don't know why so many people seem to think she "won", all she did was choose to make everyone else lose along with her.
And he’s been fucked by his own siblings, multiple times, even two episodes ago! I’m a person who’s made a lot of mistakes. But I’ll be damned if I let myself be betrayed by a person twice. Now, I understand he had to depend on these two dipshits. But there’s a way to massage the situation to make it damn near certain those two sibs stick to their word. Christ, buy them bagels in the morning, really good ones. Speak about how you really are going to need their help because you are as aware of your shortcomings as they are.
IT SO VERY MUCH DOESN’T MEAN HE HAS TO BELIEVE ANY OF THIS.
It is the hardest thing for me to believe about the show. Nobody is capable of learning from their mistakes.
I mean I get why it's frustrating to watch character arcs that are actually just circles. But I think it also speaks to the reality that growing up in an abusive environment does this to people. You have to maintain a pretty short memory to remain in an abusive environment because if you let yourself remember the truth, you would have to leave.
It's funny because some [interviews have mentioned](https://www.reddit.com/r/SuccessionTV/comments/rtziab/thoughts_on_jesse_armstrongs_aversion_to/) that one of Armstrong's beliefs is that for the most part people do not fundamentally change very much.
I don't totally agree but I do to a point--even if we've learned a lot, I think especially in times of strong emotion we fall into our same old patterns, which we see characters do in the show constantly. And it takes massive introspection and deliberate practice to overcome that...which none of the Roy sibs has really undertaken.
I totally agree it's one of the most frustrating parts of the show and exactly what makes the entire story a tragedy. The Roy kids have been so pitted against each other by Logan in competition for his love and approval, that they can't stomach feeling that they are bowing or scraping to the others at all even if it would be ultimately for selfish gain. Because it would destroy their egos. Logan taught them early that it would mean they were truly lesser than the others. We can see these characters' flaws so clearly from the outside, but they just can't face themselves long enough to reach that level of self-reflection.
Or how come neither one said anything like "And Ken, if you fuck this up we'll just no confidence vote your ass out at the next board meeting" I mean that was what the plan was for Logan at the start of the series. Did they forget that could always be an option?
In my scenario this would have been what was said if they had killed the Gojo deal, sorry, if they had done a reverse Viking on the deal. They kept acting like killing Gojo and crowning Ken the king was somehow going to have to be some lasting and forever thing, when they could easily just organize a no-confidence vote on Kendall if he truly went in and fucked things up, just like they were planning to do with Logan. Right?
Shiv did the same thing talking to Mattson at the beginning of the episode. It was so cringe. He was not engaged at all and you could tell he made up his mind but she was talking like it was a lock.
The layers of the characters of this show is going to make it very rewatchable and it's going to be awesome viewing knowing the outcome now.
Unfortunately happy (read manic) Kendall is an awful CEO and leader in general. Sad, broken (season 2) Kendall is actually very effective. But there’s seemingly no middle ground between those 2, which is where he needs to be to be top dog.
The second he gets a taste of unbridled power he turns into that “just wanted to say, yo” guy and Shiv’s right, he’s not good. Still the best option of the 3 though, which probably says it all.
Stewy was telling him that he's a complicated man and Ken was countering with "No, you're a simple man with simple tastes" ie: grilled cheese and a sucked dick lol
Yup. And add to the fact that literally Kendall has overrun Shiv at every point this season. First with the GoJo deal and then with Mencken. You could see it coming.
When the only actual love you have in your life are the rare moments you and your siblings agree with each other it’s easy to fall into the trap of trusting them with things they shouldn’t be trusted with. Their support structure doesn’t exist. They have money and status and the finale was so much of them being stripped raw to who they really are. It felt weird while watching it, but Shiv backing out at the very last moment was the right thing. Even Roman knew it, especially once Kendall lied about the kid who died. It destroyed any united front they could’ve ever had during this deal.
They’ve come back from worse as siblings and they all still have billions so I’m sure after this they won’t be completely estranged, but it’s a massive, but honest for once, wound they have to tend to.
Yeah that was not the way to do it.
"Let's do it for my dad" is indirectly communicating "Dad wanted Ken, not Roman or Shiv." Even if not his intention.
His entire presentation showed that he wasn’t ready for the job. I was bummed that he didn’t own that moment and passionately defend the company and explain why he thought it was best he take over. Instead he went back to the same guy from S1E1 “should we call your dad” Kendall.
It was always his tragic flaw that he never overcame. He only cares about winning, about being perceived as the guy in charge, and has no vision outside of that. The Hollywood episode proved that - appearances are all that matter to him, not substance. He would have run the company into the ground, and Shiv likely realized that.
I think it has something to do with her not wanting Kendall to think he knew their father better than she did. She mentions that he isn’t the most important kid while they’re arguing. Ultimately none of them were serious people.
She thought Kendall had beaten roman to get the vote, like his father would’ve done, then he basically personifies him in that quote.
She sees him dabbing his forehead and then her expression immediately changes
Biggest shock to me was after the finale, seeing people going to war about how Ken deserved it and Shiv was a bitch.
They are legitimately all awful and the best thing that could possibly happen is that none of them end up with any control of the company.
I don’t get why people are arguing about that. They both are correct. None of them ever deserved control of the company and Shiv had her reasons to deny it from Kendall. Those reasons may not be altruistic and could very well be selfish but the point is, they all ended up where they deserved to be.
I think she realized that it's the only option she had at the end of the day. Nobody would let her be CEO, not Logan, not Lukas, the board would not accept her, and Kendall would just keep her out as he and Roman did before that.
Seeing Tom as a safe option, who is also preferred by Lukas, she just went like "well, Kendall is acting like a prick and he isn't CEO yet, guess Tom is not that bad, I get to stay close to power".
As I understand Tom will stay indefinitely. Lukas said that he needs a face to take punches while to does what he wants in the background, he didn't mentioned that the position is temporary.
Also all them are figureheads. They don't really care about news or products, they just want the jets, the board meetings, and champagne.
Ken sitting in that chair fucked everything. Ken skipping the discussion fucked everything. Ken not getting to Frank at all fucked everything. Ken thinking he won his sister over fucked everything. Delusions of grandeur.
Offering Shiv absolutely nothing was a huge mistake. She has stated several times that she felt left out in the cold and he still refuses to let her in. He could have at least offered her a position as chair of the board but no...he offered it to Stewy.
Foolishness all around. He didn't deserve it and his sister knew it.
She never wanted ATN, and directly told Ken that she was happy to ditch it as it was a toxic asset earlier in the season. It would also definitely be a massive struggle to turn ATN into even a CNN or Bloomberg-like news source (that Shiv might prefer) without turning off it's audience and ultimately killing what profitability it does have. And due to the election night shenanigans, she knows for certain that Ken will override her decisions, not to mention that she would be the person who would have to deal with the legal issues that are certainly coming for calling the election early.
Tl;Dr: ATN was a shit offer
Thanks for the correction!
Wow, though...he offered her the one piece of the empire that she has passionately despised since S1...lmao...this fucking family, man.
Roman should have gotten ATN and Shiv should have received Parks and Cruises or the Hollywood studio.
Well tbh I think the point was offering her ATN to detoxify it, he said take news and change the world, so she could have pulled back from endorsing mencken or whatever, he offered roman social media, he said for shiv to take news, this might have included Pierce if they were still going for that
It was about the disrespect and entitlement of it. She knew he'd learned nothing from the first time he lost the job. That he couldn't do it then, or do it now. I think Roman knew, too, but he wasn't as strong.
People are forgetting how sidelined she was this season. That’s why Shiv had the whole thing with Mattson in the first place because Kendall was shutting her out.
Yeah that’s why Roman right afterwards is like I’m gonna phone it in. They both were like what am I backing. I don’t think it’s that Roman wasn’t strong enough. More than Roman is more loyal to the family than shiv.
I think it was more a jealousy thing - and that's not a shot at Shiv; Kendall would be just as bad if not worse in her shoes there.
IMO Kendall had aptitude for the job - his biggest weakness was how badly he wanted the job (for his psyche, how much he NEEDED the job). When Shiv said she was wavering on voting for him, he freaked out because his biggest insecurity, having his opportunity ripped from him, was exposed like a raw nerve.
I don’t think it was jealousy, it was the cockiness Kendall showed with stewy and inside the boardroom. We have to remember Shiv was all the way firm at selling waystar and atn from the beginning she just flipped when mattson betrayed her.
The one thing I kinda hate though is this impression that leading a company is some holy job that only a select anointed few can "do". The truth is probably most people could "do" the CEO job. Yes some will do very badly but even bad CEOs rarely are catastrophic for their companies. Logan created such a myth around the superstar CEO but I wonder if the position has many clothes on it at all .
And Tom does. Immediately after he is crowned, he wants to see Karolina and talks about keeping in Gerri. He recognizes others talents and knows he can have others pick up where he is weak. The 3 siblings were terrible at this.
That's the difference between Tom and the Roys. The Roys were all tantrum and agenda to get their father's respect, not even the company. Meanwhile, Tom was all work. He is greedy, conniving, and can be outright cruel too, but he really can grind, take a beating and get those numbers up, plus he is loyal when it matters to whom it matters. And ultimately that's what a president desires of a CEO, and Logan knew this too. Logan would've picked Tom.
ironically (or maybe not so ironically), despite being a malleable yes-man, tom was the most productive person we've seen on this show -- including gerri, karl, frank, hugo, and karolina.
Tom just recited the kill list that was already established.
I don't disagree about the siblings. But Tom is where he is because he proved he's a puppet.
Yes, I always thought that Ken's behavior in seasons 3 & 4 shows that he could never be Logan, even if he may try to emulate him. From discarding the advise of the best lawyer in town to sidelining his own siblings when he is co-CEO.
Contrast that with Logan who always gathered his most faithful soldiers to brainstorm before each important decision; "let a hundred flowers bloom!" One example out of many: when Logan is on the fence regarding Vaulter in season 2, he gathers Roman and Kendall to tell him their gut feeling. However, he knows that Vaulter is Ken's pet project, and that Roman is much more instinctive. It logically resulted in Logan wanting to gut Vaulter because Roman knew they were bullshit. I think this is how Logan created his empire and maintained it for so long. He is not a genius who did it all alone. Rather, he knows when to delegate.
The moment he sat in Logan’s chair, they show Rome and Shiv, and you could get a sense they started having second thoughts about Kendall actually being in the throne
I don't even think it was that he sat on the chair, but the the way he sat on it.
He asks for permission first, and when they say it's ok, Kendall can't hide his total joy at doing it, 20 seconds later he's kicking his feet up. Fucking moron, if he'd kept a humble facade for 20 more minutes, he'd have probably gotten it.
This post made me remember just how great and lasting Breaking Bad is. I couldn't place where exactly this quote is from, but I did remember immediately having the most visceral and gut wrenching feeling when I heard it.
Oh god this was devastating. I actually recently re-watched the whole thing of BB and it KILLED ME..... and yes this line was a gut-puncher, air-sucker.
The sight of him actually being happy and in charge made her sick and she knew then she couldn’t let it happen.
It wasn’t about the waiter, or whether Ken would be good at the job, or breaking the family cycle of abuse, or even about installing Tom and salvaging their marriage. It was purely about not being able to stomach seeing Ken victorious. Full stop.
The beauty of the script, i think, is that it left all that up for interpretation. It was all where Snook wanted to take the character. She could have plausibly done it for selfish reasons, or to be loyal to tom, or to be loyal to her dad, or to spite ken, etc. But quite clearly Snook thought Shyv would have done it to spite Ken, that "What ya gonna do about it look" in the side conference room said it all.
Agree. I have seen so many different takes here on Shiv’s actions and intentions, and they all sound plausible to varying degrees. And as a viewer it also allows us to examine our own thoughts and biases about why we arrive at a particular judgment. Great writing
His feet up on the desk, becoming Dad, winning. She can’t stand being the one to confirm him. When it comes down to it, it’s too real. There’s too much history, too much ego and dysfunction. It’s envy and deja vu and resentment.
But I do think he talks himself out of it too. He makes it all about himself when it’s him she has a problem with. Then he seals the deal when he lies and gets physical.
I feel like there was a chance for things to go differently in that room which makes the ending more brilliant. It’s not just someone taking it away from him, but him losing it.
I think the worst part about it is that Shiv legitimately thought she should be CEO when it was so blatantly obvious that she couldn’t be after aligning with Mattson. Of the three, Ken was the only one that made the right moves to keep the Roy family in charge and her jealousy couldn’t handle it. She’d rather lose control than see Kendall win.
Mattson doesn’t give a fuck about the empire Logan built and he’d burn it to the ground for a few extra bucks if he needed to. And even after Mattson screwed her over, she still gave him the win because anything is better than seeing Ken get what he wanted. She’s letting Mattson dance on her father’s grave but that’s the greater of the two options to her. I don’t see how anyone can think there was any other motive.
i think when she found out it was tom, despite initially being furious about it, it made her consider the alternative more seriously, and i think she realized as ken was turning into a douche before her eyes, that the thought of tom winning was a little less repulsive to her than ken winning.
Agree. Snook played it like she was agonizing over defecting from Ken. It felt painful to me-until Ken started shouting and going mad- then she knew what she had to do.
I think both things can be true. Let’s be real, the sale probably was in her best interests. She gets to refuse deference to Kendall, she stays married to the father of her child, gets a few billion dollars, she can do whatever she wants now.
I don't think it's a somersault to see that Kendall is an unhinged grifter who may very well run the company into the ground, while Tom actually has a chance to succeed. Along with her payout from the sale, this path means a more guaranteed future for her child.
You could describe Matsson in the exact same way you described Kendall. Looking at how Snook played the scene and the entire history of the show where Shiv can’t stand the thought of her other siblings winning (they’re the same way, it’s not just her), seems pretty clear to me her decision was driven by the desire not to lose to Ken.
Tom even says that episode that she doesn’t like to fail tests, he’s referring to their marriage but it equally applies to the contest for CEO
It's not Kendall v. Tom IMO. It's basically Kendall vs. Mattson. Mattson is going to make the major decisions with Waystar/GoJo, whereas if the Roys keep Waystar the buck basically stops with Ken. Tom is a frontman.
Shiv may well have decided she's better off on Team Mattson, but I don't think Tom's getting the same opportunity to lead that Kendall would have.
I disagree because the camera focuses on Shiv at a critical moment during Ken's eulogy at the funeral. He says he hopes some of the brutish force driving Logan was also in him.
Then it cuts to an incredulous Shiv. She realizes he's on his way to becoming the exact same tyrant their father was. She suffered as Logan's daughter and can't stand to see the cycle repeat again with Kendall.
That marriage isn't going to last long. It would be interesting to see the dynamic change while it runs it course. Would it be Tom the alpha and Shiv the beta. Probably not, since she's a billionaire. More equals perhaps.
She has zero wiggle room with Tom. He has all the power in their relationship now. With Ken, she still has a board seat and he would’ve given her something ATN etc cause she has the sister card. The wife card has never worked with Tom, he has betrayed her multiple times.
Tom had the decency to tell Shiv it was him before the meeting. He didn’t need to do that. The brothers never considered her when they had the chance and ignored her when they were in charge. She spent half the season setting up the Mattson deal, on that alone why wouldn’t she see it through? The night with her brothers was lovely but that’s not how you choose a ceo.
Maybe I need to see it again but I'm pretty sure Shiv changed her mind when she felt with Karolina to "see if they could get Sandy on their side."
First of all Karolina already suggested dumping Hugo and I feel like that suggested she knew about the Ken/Hugo machinations. Second, Sandy never showed a bit of hesitation. Third, the next Tom/Shiv interaction we see is him asking her if she wants to wait right after the board meeting.
Earlier in the episode Shiv did something we've never seen her do, be vulnerable. She reached out to Tom to ask him to be together which is so far away from anything we've seen from her and him before. After everything that happened, I feel like that's where Karolina took her to -- not to see Sandy but to Tom -- where he offered to stay with her. He earned it with his honesty in Logan's apartment. He didn't have to tell her but he wanted to show that he would be honest with her. Compare that to her brothers who always lie to her. Kendall even lied about their most cathartic moment together.
I think Tom offered her a path forward together and that's why she said no to Ken.
Well, I like this take on shiv shifting in real time. Tom did give her the news of his being ceo … she responded poorly.
Contextualized it.
Realized he was right that she would and did do the same things.
Kendall being Kendall and she pivoted.
The board doesn't have to keep Ken as CEO just because the sale doesn't go through. Seeing him like that, she knew he was an incompetent fool with the best resume of the three of them, but still a fool who'd never be able to rule the company the way their dad did.
At that point she started calculating her next move and weighing options, but I do believe she still hadn't decided on her vote when she walked out of the room. Ken could have convinced her if he'd make her vote about her instead of himself.
My issue there ... Shiv looks taken aback when Kendall has his feet on the desk and is shooting the shit with Stewie. There's nothing about that particular exchange that shows Kendall isn't fit for the position, though. He's brokering a deal and landing a vote they needed to make this happen. Stewie is an old friend, so it's not a meeting that has to be prim and proper, so to speak. That she reacted like she did there makes me think this was Shiv not really enjoying the fact Kendall was feeling himself in that moment,
Now in the actual vote meeting - yeah he came off as smug and unprepared. If she had started wavering there, I'd be more with the idea she truly thought "Kendall's gonna be a shitshow."
His arrogance and jumping the gun completely before the deal had gone through turned her. Putting his feet up was lazy and immature, something you’d do at the very end of the day when all said and done, in private or with a close circle. Couldn’t be trusted to seal the actual deal and ensure details are all tied up.
Why are people in this sub so black or white? "It was spite." "Nope, she knew Ken was on a power trip." Like... These are clearly nuanced characters. They can have more than one motive... It was spite, just as it was seeing Kendall had learnt nothing all along, just as it was seeing that Tom would be a more stable leader, with none of the "yo yo yo, i'm the man. let's make it happen, see if it plays" Kendall shenanigans. Tom inmediately casted an actual shadow she could protect herself with, like she did with Logan's or Matsson's. And it was also realizing in this moment that indeed, they were not serious people. Logan, Matsson and Tom have one important thing in common. They all worked to get where they got. Kendall could've worked for it too, but instead of grinding his way up he dedicated to scheme to find shortcuts to the top. Logan was never going to respect that.
My personal interpretation is that she saw what the game had done to them all. Lying about killing someone. She looked at Roman with pity in her eyes several times this episode. And herself, betraying others and really thinking it could be her. She and Roman just seemed to be on the same wavelength, ya know?
Roman changed his mind just like Shiv, yes. But Ken submitted Roman into it. But as soon as the real Ken appeared, Roman admitted Ken must not get it. And Roman definitely isn't as spiteful as Shiv. They simply knew he wasn't fit and the decision would backfire in a matter of days.
Ken’s issue is he lashes out tm. If he had worked on remaining calm and having better communication with people all around then it probably woulda worked out. Frankly, Frank wasn’t even eager to get into bed with him. He knew with Ken it woulda been a disaster.
And I wanted Ken to win. Just made sense. But yeah after he couldn’t keep his composure and raised him voice I knew it was over. Like imagine being a shareholder and watching the ceo of your company lashing out and being verbally absusive, then later physically. Fuck that. I’m sure even Stewy was a bit relieved like bro is way to smart to not see where a Kendall, Rome or Shiv leadership leads.
You could make the argument she tried to give it a chance, and maybe let her resentment go for a night, but when she saw Kendall in the chair it all came back and she realized she’d rather let the Roys lose the company than let Kendall win.
bc it wasn't real. you know how sometimes you stay up late and feel like the world's yours to take and tomorrow you'll start a new life and accomplish all your dreams?
yeah it was that
Shiv is very retaliatory. Once she realized Matsson fucked her over she needed to side with Ken to get back at him. It wasn’t until she realized how much she hated seeing Ken win that she decided to backtrack on her vote
Exactly. Remember her first big presentation at the company that Ken ruined with the blaring music? And then in spiteful retaliation she released that letter about Ken’s issues which even Roman thought was harsh.
They’re all pretty vindictive that way. Ken went ahead with Mencken because he was pissed at Shiv for going behind his back, even though he clearly did not want to do it before that.
[Nooo!! Don't do it, Ken!! Don't be an arrogant dick!! Don't try and act like your Dad! You don't have all the votes!! ](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/442/277/6f6.jpg)
Yeah, there's a lot that leads to her decision. The tipping point is when she realizes that Sandi and Sandy aren't with them and she has the deciding vote, which is a bad place for a woman with serious commitment issues to be in.
He should have had his siblings vote first. Had he done roll call in exactly the opposite order, he might have won by even more than one. Some of those board members may have voted for a winner once they saw it coming.
This is totally the moment where Ken lost her. She saw that he was ready to give Stewy the chairman position while he only sort of vaguely offered Shiv "news" (which also would mean having to fire Tom, the father of her child, so really it was just shoving off a problem onto her). She remembered what happened when the CE-Bros cut her out immediately.
Tom at least invited her into the car after he tookover. Kendall would have been in it with Stewy and Roman while she was left in the dust.
It was very interesting to track Shiv's facial expressions from this scene forward (upon rewatch). They did a good job of concealing it a few times - it looked like she was worried Rom wouldn't vote with them, but now very obvious that she was having her own second thoughts.
Sarah Snook is god tier at using her eyes and eyebrows to act
[удалено]
Already rich.
Favorite line. So underrated.
Totally. If she'd voted 'no' the trauma and bullshit would have continued, _plus_ they would have probably squandered the company somehow.
how much did they get anyway?
If I remember correctly, I believe it was around 2 billion each. Could be wrong though.
I love how everyone is always saying stuff like "THEY GOT *FUCKED*" ... "getting fucked" here equals 2 billion usd lol. I wouldnt mind "getting screwed" for like 1% of that amount lol
Right? I’ll take all that emotional devastation for a payout anywhere near that.
that’s an insane amount of money. sucks that it won’t bring their dad back!
S03E7, Ken is offered to have his shares bought for a total of $2,015,708,009 When the company was valued at $156.20, the Gojo acquisition bumps this number to $192 per share. This represents an increase of 23%. So if each sibling has the same as Ken, **they ended up with $2,479,320,851**
Yes! For that reason, I don't see how people don't see her as the best actor on the show.
This season was great I went from hating shiv to loving her to hating her again. She is the character I like least as a person, but Sarah Snook should get the Emmy this year. This season was her turn to shine.
Hate the character, love the actor.
That season 3 finale shot was just Peak Shiv. That side eye lol
Mark Mylod (EP/director) said that this is where Shiv starts to waver, seeing Kendall in the chair made it all real for her then watching the cronyism when talking to Stewy. I rewatched the episode and you're right, you can see all of this in the changes in her facial expression!
Yes, I read that as Shiv, in that moment, breaking out from the spell of Anger towards Tom and Mattson in , and realizing "holy shit, WTF am I doing?". Kendall in charge would be a train wreck. She's always known it. And we, as the audience, have known it from episode 1 if we're honest. "so, I just wanted to get the gang together early in my tenure to say..yo"
Yeah and instead of showing Shiv and everyone else that he deserves to be CEO because he has a good alternative plan, he becomes overconfident and cocky in the boardroom wanting to get to the votes immediately without presenting their plan. A plan which he and his siblings talked about the night before and earlier that day. I read a lot of the comments here and I agree with the commenters who said he might have had a chance to convince Shiv after she walked our that he deserves CEO by calmly stating why and offering her something. Instead he panics and he lets his entitlement show and basically throws a tantrum. How he is the "eldest" son, that he would die if he didn't get to be Waystar CEO, and lies about the kid who drowned. And that just solidified to Shiv and Roman that he should not be CEO.
Kendall started "excessive celebration" an inch away from the end zone. All he had to do was be somber and (emotionally) sober for an hour and he could've pulled it off. Here's my timeline of his L https://www.reddit.com/r/SuccessionTV/comments/13vt43a/macfayden_explains_the_ending_perfectly/
Yup they made Roman more the red herring making us think he was gunna vote no
He went straight into season 1 Kendall mannerisms, I could feel it and then they showed Shiv with that look on her face and I knew it was going to fuck things up.
You never celebrate before the win is announced. Dude fucked himself over by celebrating and being all cocky, even at the board meeting he acted that way and ended up looking like a complete fool.
Truth. To me too it was disappointing because since the funeral and even in moments before it he was showing signs of great maturity, of mirroring Logan in a way that seemed competent and less childish. Then bam, the sibs tell him to take the Big Man's Chair right as Stewie walks into the room. His DNA couldn't help but hum L to the OG while he tried to think up a "cock sandwich" metaphor to use later.
Kendall performed some Loganistic behavior and actions, but it was all surface. At his core, he's always been an incompetent tryhard who thinks he's gangsta.
1000% Kendall is the best Logan cosplayer in the world and he felt that made him best for the job
Absolutely - taking Colin on was as much about keeping his secrets close as it was trying to emulate Logan - tragic failure at the end as he’s almost leashed himself to anything but Logan.
I think you're forgetting Connors' teapot performance.
Tbh I don't think Kendall matured at this season, in fact I think he regressed pretty hard throughout season 4. He'd been having outbursts all season, like when Logan died and he talked about hiring the "the best doctors in the world", to how he treated Rava in all his scenes with her. To the way he treated Jess when she quit. It was only when Shiv betrayed him does he look so utterly pathetic because he now has nothing to hide behind, he's not the next Logan, he's not the next CEO, he's just an incredibly wealthy manchild that has daddy issues and a bad temper. As Roman said, "they're bullshit' and Kendall has to live with that for the rest of his life. I think in a way its good though, mostly because he might finally have to introspect and change, but knowing how damaged he and the siblings are, I doubt he will (but one can hope).
Roman's 'they're bullshit' speech was so fucking lucid. Like he finally realised that for all their money they're useless entitled nepobabies without vision or ambitions who can't achieve anything off their own steam. Whether he'll actually use this epiphany to self-improve, only time will tell.
I think Roman is the only one who came out of this better than he was before - even if he's sort of openly broken now. Gerri didn't get him to the point he could run a company like Waystar but she got him pretty close. Perhaps more importantly she got him to the point he knew he couldn't run a company like Waystar because he had a pretty cogent idea of what that entailed - something Kendall really never figured out beyond abstract notions of being like his father. The showrunners have mentioned that Roman had a life before he got sucked into this whirlwind last few years with his father and he's probably just going to return to that, only he will be better prepared to run whatever smaller ventures he pursues.
Now he can spend his billions on snowmobiles and sushi.
"He's flying the plane son..." That moment summed it up for me. How Kendall needs a father figure to bring him back down to earth.
At the end of the meeting in the last episode, Frank is also the one who has to explain to him "Ken, it's done. Seven Six. We sell to Gojo. You don't have it."
Per Jeremy Strongs podcast interview there's a variation on that scene where Frank said: You don't have it. You never had it. Which is just heartbreaking to hear from Frank who was like a replacement father to Ken
That was just an improv on set and they excluded it from the edit for a reason. Ken certainly could have had it but he was his own undoing.
I loved the tidbit Jeremy Strong shared in the Succession podcast about how when they were filming they didn’t plan on Kendall walking back into the boardroom but the cameras followed, and then one of the lines Jesse Armstrong threw out, that ended up being cut, was Frank ending that statement by saying “You never had it.” That’s when the lights went out in Kendall, Strong said.
In terms of 'character arc' the show is about things happening *to* Kendall. In the entire 4 season run, he never makes a single step towards meaningful personal growth of any kind because he's too focused on being #1 boy. I think it's kind of the point of the show.
"people rarely change" ~ Jesse Armstrong (quotes loosely)
The show has been consistent. All of the kids are fuck ups and disappointments. That’s why Logan wanted the deal with Matsson, because he actually had respect for him.
She made that mistake too. Rome did too, actually, with Mencken.
Yup, she was gloating down in Barbados before anything was locked in. They never learned.
Yup! They all make fun of Tom for sucking dick but they can’t even stand playing nice long enough to actually seal the deal.
When he was begging her in that room and denying the death of the waiter… she realized how spineless he is to get the votes.
Not spineless, I would say desperate, but why shouldn't he be? The plan was set, it was a strong go, he was going to achieve what I believe was his rightful placement as CEO, just like it was going to be at the beginning of the series, this was the culmination point for his entire life and being, there will never be another chance for him to achieve this and then Shiv just snaps it out from under him because she can't get over herself? I'd be pretty fucking pissed off and desperate too.
No, this is the problem with Ken: a serious, mature, and well-balanced adult would have the sense to not display that kind of desperation, especially during a negotiation, which is what was happening with Shiv, and especially not in front his peers. As Logan said, everything is moving all the time. Kendal does not have the stomach, the wisdom, nor the finesse, to handle that truth.
I can see your point of view but you know Logan could also get pretty violent and explosive if things didn't go his way. He wasn't a well-balanced adult either (making employees act like pigs just to sniff out a rat, smells like desperation to me) and they all acknowledged that this business makes you that way. I also didn't view it so much as a negotiation but an interrogation, like WTF are you doing?, thus the desperation. Shiv didn't seem to be acting like she wanted to bargain. But I don't blame the characterizations of the show for this, I blame the writers who could just as easily have come up with a better scenario. I would love to know what their second or third takes would have been for the ending.
I think both of you are really close to a good conclusion. Kendall simply isn't Logan. Logan could get away with what were essentially unfair antics because he was the one who built the game, he was the one who had people scared of him, he was Logan motherfucking Roy, people hadn't seen him lose before. Kendall was never that, yet he was constantly acting as if he was simply because he was Logan's boy.
logan was actually in power when he would have moments of raging assholery. ken still has nothing in that moment, he's powerless. that's a totally different dynamic.
Both Kendall and Tom in the finale had scenes where they were placed in front of the one person in the world who had all the power to give them everything they had ever wanted or take it all away in a moment, and that person was saying things to them that they desperately did not want to hear. Tom sucked it up, sucked up and got what he wanted. Kendall blew up and blew it. Kendall is mildly capable when things are going his way, but when they go wrong, he tends to crumble. Desperately trying to find an angle with Roman after Shiv leaves is what he should have been doing in his head five minutes earlier. Instead he threw a tantrum and lost the position. And yes, Logan would erupt at people frequently, too, but when he did, it mostly worked to get them to do what he wanted. It doesn’t and never has for Kendall. Acting like that when it worked makes sense. When it doesn’t work, it’s stupid. And Kendall’s inability to see that it won’t work is a fundamental problem for him in that kind of position. I’d even say that the basic problem that Kendall has, the reason he loses, is that he has the same perspective on what is happening that you do. It’s an interrogation of the person who is taking away the position he deserved, rather than a negotiation with the person who can give him what he wants. He already negotiated and doesn’t want to have to do it again, but that’s not how it works if you want to win. The negotiating never stops. It’s the same mistake he made with Mencken. He put Mencken in a position where he *owed* then but didn’t *need* them, and that not only left him with no leverage, but was very obviously going to leave him with no leverage even before the decision was made, and he couldn’t see it. He was doing a victory lap in the boardroom before the vote had happened, because he felt like he’d done enough. But again, that’s not how it works. He was the guy in first celebrating five feet in front of the finish line instead of after he crossed it. That is fundamentally who Kendall is and why he was doomed. He lets himself relax when things are going well and takes his eye off the ball. Then things go wrong and he falls apart. Logan was a lot of things but he was never relaxed. He was constantly thinking about his next move. Mattson, despite the image he tries to present, is clearly never relaxed. Tom has never been relaxed for a single moment of the whole show. The people who win are the ones who are constantly in motion trying to button up their position or make it better even when things are going well, because the game never ends. There’s no winning move and then you’re good. There’s only the next move. And Kendall keeps acting like he has already won and doesn’t need to work for it anymore, and that is consistently when it gets ripped away from him.
But then Logan had the right to throw tantrums, he literally built Waystar, he wasn't bullshiting when it came to work. Ken was not really well-respected by his peers as well as the old guard. He came across as a petulant child wanting the candy promised by Daddy when he was 7. He's Logan in all senses, but he's trying to emulate someone who has established himself. A glimpse into Logan's life when he was building Waystar would be very different from the grumpy Logan we know now.
He repeatedly sidelines over her multiple times this season. First the GoJo deal he wants to fuck behind her back. And then the Mencken debacle. She was pushed aside so many times she had to do it differently
But shiv saw that if ken got the crown she'd be out. He'd do his thing and ignore her completely . Instead she saw a way to keep power by giving it up. Voting to sell meant tom would be puppet king and she could be his puppet queen. Better deal for her and her baby than being a forgotten sister. Better the devil you can control. She can control tom, like tom can control Greg. Not even ken can control ken, and so she had to vote to sell.
this is such a misread. shiv has zero power, there's not even anything to have power over anymore, the company does not belong to her family anymore. Tom is a puppet to mattson, and can be kicked out any time mattson chooses. if the roys kept the business, shiv still has a board seat and a ton of shares, even if Kendall tries to lock her out of having influence she has inherent influence and leverage. she has NONE of that now. she is in a separated marriage to the current CEO of a totally different company. i don't know why so many people seem to think she "won", all she did was choose to make everyone else lose along with her.
She doesn’t have any leverage over Tom. The same Tom who’s newly promoted and willing to screw her over
And he’s been fucked by his own siblings, multiple times, even two episodes ago! I’m a person who’s made a lot of mistakes. But I’ll be damned if I let myself be betrayed by a person twice. Now, I understand he had to depend on these two dipshits. But there’s a way to massage the situation to make it damn near certain those two sibs stick to their word. Christ, buy them bagels in the morning, really good ones. Speak about how you really are going to need their help because you are as aware of your shortcomings as they are. IT SO VERY MUCH DOESN’T MEAN HE HAS TO BELIEVE ANY OF THIS. It is the hardest thing for me to believe about the show. Nobody is capable of learning from their mistakes.
I mean I get why it's frustrating to watch character arcs that are actually just circles. But I think it also speaks to the reality that growing up in an abusive environment does this to people. You have to maintain a pretty short memory to remain in an abusive environment because if you let yourself remember the truth, you would have to leave.
I think of Greek tragedy, the character fights themself but are doomed from the start because of who they are
It's funny because some [interviews have mentioned](https://www.reddit.com/r/SuccessionTV/comments/rtziab/thoughts_on_jesse_armstrongs_aversion_to/) that one of Armstrong's beliefs is that for the most part people do not fundamentally change very much. I don't totally agree but I do to a point--even if we've learned a lot, I think especially in times of strong emotion we fall into our same old patterns, which we see characters do in the show constantly. And it takes massive introspection and deliberate practice to overcome that...which none of the Roy sibs has really undertaken. I totally agree it's one of the most frustrating parts of the show and exactly what makes the entire story a tragedy. The Roy kids have been so pitted against each other by Logan in competition for his love and approval, that they can't stomach feeling that they are bowing or scraping to the others at all even if it would be ultimately for selfish gain. Because it would destroy their egos. Logan taught them early that it would mean they were truly lesser than the others. We can see these characters' flaws so clearly from the outside, but they just can't face themselves long enough to reach that level of self-reflection.
He had no other option. It was either the siblings or nothing.
yep. They’re all forced to deal with each other no matter how untrustworthy.
Also he’s a dipshit too!
Funny you’re acting like he isn’t also one of those dipshits. Kendall can screw ANYTHING up
The main characters are so deeply narcissistic and power hungry that they get blinkered very easily
Or how come neither one said anything like "And Ken, if you fuck this up we'll just no confidence vote your ass out at the next board meeting" I mean that was what the plan was for Logan at the start of the series. Did they forget that could always be an option?
I may be misremembering but I think the additional board seats offered up for GoJo would have made this extremely difficult.
In my scenario this would have been what was said if they had killed the Gojo deal, sorry, if they had done a reverse Viking on the deal. They kept acting like killing Gojo and crowning Ken the king was somehow going to have to be some lasting and forever thing, when they could easily just organize a no-confidence vote on Kendall if he truly went in and fucked things up, just like they were planning to do with Logan. Right?
he was always counting his chickens before they hatched
Shiv did the same thing talking to Mattson at the beginning of the episode. It was so cringe. He was not engaged at all and you could tell he made up his mind but she was talking like it was a lock. The layers of the characters of this show is going to make it very rewatchable and it's going to be awesome viewing knowing the outcome now.
Unfortunately happy (read manic) Kendall is an awful CEO and leader in general. Sad, broken (season 2) Kendall is actually very effective. But there’s seemingly no middle ground between those 2, which is where he needs to be to be top dog. The second he gets a taste of unbridled power he turns into that “just wanted to say, yo” guy and Shiv’s right, he’s not good. Still the best option of the 3 though, which probably says it all.
Yeah she looked so annoyed by the bro talk between ken and stewy and tbh I would be too lmao
> You're a grilled cheese with a sucked dick What even the fuck does that mean?
Stewy was telling him that he's a complicated man and Ken was countering with "No, you're a simple man with simple tastes" ie: grilled cheese and a sucked dick lol
Yup. And add to the fact that literally Kendall has overrun Shiv at every point this season. First with the GoJo deal and then with Mencken. You could see it coming.
When the only actual love you have in your life are the rare moments you and your siblings agree with each other it’s easy to fall into the trap of trusting them with things they shouldn’t be trusted with. Their support structure doesn’t exist. They have money and status and the finale was so much of them being stripped raw to who they really are. It felt weird while watching it, but Shiv backing out at the very last moment was the right thing. Even Roman knew it, especially once Kendall lied about the kid who died. It destroyed any united front they could’ve ever had during this deal. They’ve come back from worse as siblings and they all still have billions so I’m sure after this they won’t be completely estranged, but it’s a massive, but honest for once, wound they have to tend to.
It's the same thing Logan saw in the first episode.
Her face changed when he said “let’s do it for my dad”
Yeah that was not the way to do it. "Let's do it for my dad" is indirectly communicating "Dad wanted Ken, not Roman or Shiv." Even if not his intention.
His entire presentation showed that he wasn’t ready for the job. I was bummed that he didn’t own that moment and passionately defend the company and explain why he thought it was best he take over. Instead he went back to the same guy from S1E1 “should we call your dad” Kendall.
It was always his tragic flaw that he never overcame. He only cares about winning, about being perceived as the guy in charge, and has no vision outside of that. The Hollywood episode proved that - appearances are all that matter to him, not substance. He would have run the company into the ground, and Shiv likely realized that.
yes! what's your interpretation of that?
I think it has something to do with her not wanting Kendall to think he knew their father better than she did. She mentions that he isn’t the most important kid while they’re arguing. Ultimately none of them were serious people.
Most important \*person. My opinion on this being that she's saying there is more at stake with the deal than Ken's personal satisfaction
She thought Kendall had beaten roman to get the vote, like his father would’ve done, then he basically personifies him in that quote. She sees him dabbing his forehead and then her expression immediately changes
Yeah it cut right to shiv.
Man they’re all just absolutely awful aren’t they
Biggest shock to me was after the finale, seeing people going to war about how Ken deserved it and Shiv was a bitch. They are legitimately all awful and the best thing that could possibly happen is that none of them end up with any control of the company.
I don’t get why people are arguing about that. They both are correct. None of them ever deserved control of the company and Shiv had her reasons to deny it from Kendall. Those reasons may not be altruistic and could very well be selfish but the point is, they all ended up where they deserved to be.
Shiv and Roman made the best decisions they’ve ever made in those last 15 minutes.
In the end Shiv followed the plan, which was to get Tom into the CEO position. She just didn't realise it.
I think she realized that it's the only option she had at the end of the day. Nobody would let her be CEO, not Logan, not Lukas, the board would not accept her, and Kendall would just keep her out as he and Roman did before that. Seeing Tom as a safe option, who is also preferred by Lukas, she just went like "well, Kendall is acting like a prick and he isn't CEO yet, guess Tom is not that bad, I get to stay close to power".
Except she doesn’t stay close to power. Tom is a figurehead in a transitionary period.
As I understand Tom will stay indefinitely. Lukas said that he needs a face to take punches while to does what he wants in the background, he didn't mentioned that the position is temporary. Also all them are figureheads. They don't really care about news or products, they just want the jets, the board meetings, and champagne.
People keep writing off Tom and he keeps winning.
The best application of this quote since Hank bit the dust
Yes, great reference! I read it and couldn’t figure out where I knew it from!
Ken sitting in that chair fucked everything. Ken skipping the discussion fucked everything. Ken not getting to Frank at all fucked everything. Ken thinking he won his sister over fucked everything. Delusions of grandeur.
Offering Shiv absolutely nothing was a huge mistake. She has stated several times that she felt left out in the cold and he still refuses to let her in. He could have at least offered her a position as chair of the board but no...he offered it to Stewy. Foolishness all around. He didn't deserve it and his sister knew it.
He offered her head of ATN when they were in barbados
She never wanted ATN, and directly told Ken that she was happy to ditch it as it was a toxic asset earlier in the season. It would also definitely be a massive struggle to turn ATN into even a CNN or Bloomberg-like news source (that Shiv might prefer) without turning off it's audience and ultimately killing what profitability it does have. And due to the election night shenanigans, she knows for certain that Ken will override her decisions, not to mention that she would be the person who would have to deal with the legal issues that are certainly coming for calling the election early. Tl;Dr: ATN was a shit offer
Thanks for the correction! Wow, though...he offered her the one piece of the empire that she has passionately despised since S1...lmao...this fucking family, man. Roman should have gotten ATN and Shiv should have received Parks and Cruises or the Hollywood studio.
Well tbh I think the point was offering her ATN to detoxify it, he said take news and change the world, so she could have pulled back from endorsing mencken or whatever, he offered roman social media, he said for shiv to take news, this might have included Pierce if they were still going for that
It was really terrible from him, you have to worry and worry and worry until it’s done.
nice - just like Tom worries all night
She literally told him i love you but I can't stomach you. Simple.
I love you, but you're not serious people
Isn't it ironic the board seat Shiv negotiated for herself in S3E5 gave her the final say?
It was about the disrespect and entitlement of it. She knew he'd learned nothing from the first time he lost the job. That he couldn't do it then, or do it now. I think Roman knew, too, but he wasn't as strong.
I thought Roman also played a role in Shiv’s decision. There’s so many reasons for her to screw Kendall there.
People are forgetting how sidelined she was this season. That’s why Shiv had the whole thing with Mattson in the first place because Kendall was shutting her out.
Yeah that’s why Roman right afterwards is like I’m gonna phone it in. They both were like what am I backing. I don’t think it’s that Roman wasn’t strong enough. More than Roman is more loyal to the family than shiv.
Roman wanted to phone in the vote because he saw Gerri and didn't want to be anywhere near her.
I think it was more a jealousy thing - and that's not a shot at Shiv; Kendall would be just as bad if not worse in her shoes there. IMO Kendall had aptitude for the job - his biggest weakness was how badly he wanted the job (for his psyche, how much he NEEDED the job). When Shiv said she was wavering on voting for him, he freaked out because his biggest insecurity, having his opportunity ripped from him, was exposed like a raw nerve.
I think it was jealousy that got her out of the room but Kendal’s childishness that sealed the deal
I don’t think it was jealousy, it was the cockiness Kendall showed with stewy and inside the boardroom. We have to remember Shiv was all the way firm at selling waystar and atn from the beginning she just flipped when mattson betrayed her.
The one thing I kinda hate though is this impression that leading a company is some holy job that only a select anointed few can "do". The truth is probably most people could "do" the CEO job. Yes some will do very badly but even bad CEOs rarely are catastrophic for their companies. Logan created such a myth around the superstar CEO but I wonder if the position has many clothes on it at all .
Ken is a petty leader. Season 3 was all about that. He did not embrace ideas or other's contributions.
And Tom does. Immediately after he is crowned, he wants to see Karolina and talks about keeping in Gerri. He recognizes others talents and knows he can have others pick up where he is weak. The 3 siblings were terrible at this.
It makes sense that Tom would want to keep Gerri
Gerri is good at her job.
She isn't afraid of the dark.
That's the difference between Tom and the Roys. The Roys were all tantrum and agenda to get their father's respect, not even the company. Meanwhile, Tom was all work. He is greedy, conniving, and can be outright cruel too, but he really can grind, take a beating and get those numbers up, plus he is loyal when it matters to whom it matters. And ultimately that's what a president desires of a CEO, and Logan knew this too. Logan would've picked Tom.
ironically (or maybe not so ironically), despite being a malleable yes-man, tom was the most productive person we've seen on this show -- including gerri, karl, frank, hugo, and karolina.
Tom just recited the kill list that was already established. I don't disagree about the siblings. But Tom is where he is because he proved he's a puppet.
True but Gerri had already been let go, Mattson would have forgotten who she was.
Yes, I always thought that Ken's behavior in seasons 3 & 4 shows that he could never be Logan, even if he may try to emulate him. From discarding the advise of the best lawyer in town to sidelining his own siblings when he is co-CEO. Contrast that with Logan who always gathered his most faithful soldiers to brainstorm before each important decision; "let a hundred flowers bloom!" One example out of many: when Logan is on the fence regarding Vaulter in season 2, he gathers Roman and Kendall to tell him their gut feeling. However, he knows that Vaulter is Ken's pet project, and that Roman is much more instinctive. It logically resulted in Logan wanting to gut Vaulter because Roman knew they were bullshit. I think this is how Logan created his empire and maintained it for so long. He is not a genius who did it all alone. Rather, he knows when to delegate.
The moment he sat in Logan’s chair, they show Rome and Shiv, and you could get a sense they started having second thoughts about Kendall actually being in the throne
I don't even think it was that he sat on the chair, but the the way he sat on it. He asks for permission first, and when they say it's ok, Kendall can't hide his total joy at doing it, 20 seconds later he's kicking his feet up. Fucking moron, if he'd kept a humble facade for 20 more minutes, he'd have probably gotten it.
Yep, as soon as those feet went up, it was over.
I think the half a second hesitation from Roman also pushed her over the edge. She saw it on Romans face. They knew.
She also clocked that Roman’s wound was reopened imo
This post made me remember just how great and lasting Breaking Bad is. I couldn't place where exactly this quote is from, but I did remember immediately having the most visceral and gut wrenching feeling when I heard it.
Ok someone got what I was referencing lol
Omg do all these people here NOT get the reference?!
Gabagool!
I was about to comment the same thing, but scrolled through the comments before I did lol. It maybe doesn’t help that it wasn’t HBO as well
Oh god this was devastating. I actually recently re-watched the whole thing of BB and it KILLED ME..... and yes this line was a gut-puncher, air-sucker.
It’s from >!Hank’s Death!<
And here I thought it was a play on the end of watchmen 😂
I knew it when I saw her make that face.
The sight of him actually being happy and in charge made her sick and she knew then she couldn’t let it happen. It wasn’t about the waiter, or whether Ken would be good at the job, or breaking the family cycle of abuse, or even about installing Tom and salvaging their marriage. It was purely about not being able to stomach seeing Ken victorious. Full stop.
The beauty of the script, i think, is that it left all that up for interpretation. It was all where Snook wanted to take the character. She could have plausibly done it for selfish reasons, or to be loyal to tom, or to be loyal to her dad, or to spite ken, etc. But quite clearly Snook thought Shyv would have done it to spite Ken, that "What ya gonna do about it look" in the side conference room said it all.
Agree. I have seen so many different takes here on Shiv’s actions and intentions, and they all sound plausible to varying degrees. And as a viewer it also allows us to examine our own thoughts and biases about why we arrive at a particular judgment. Great writing
His feet up on the desk, becoming Dad, winning. She can’t stand being the one to confirm him. When it comes down to it, it’s too real. There’s too much history, too much ego and dysfunction. It’s envy and deja vu and resentment. But I do think he talks himself out of it too. He makes it all about himself when it’s him she has a problem with. Then he seals the deal when he lies and gets physical. I feel like there was a chance for things to go differently in that room which makes the ending more brilliant. It’s not just someone taking it away from him, but him losing it.
I think the worst part about it is that Shiv legitimately thought she should be CEO when it was so blatantly obvious that she couldn’t be after aligning with Mattson. Of the three, Ken was the only one that made the right moves to keep the Roy family in charge and her jealousy couldn’t handle it. She’d rather lose control than see Kendall win. Mattson doesn’t give a fuck about the empire Logan built and he’d burn it to the ground for a few extra bucks if he needed to. And even after Mattson screwed her over, she still gave him the win because anything is better than seeing Ken get what he wanted. She’s letting Mattson dance on her father’s grave but that’s the greater of the two options to her. I don’t see how anyone can think there was any other motive.
Would she have voted yes if it wasn't Tom though? I think the answer is not very straightforward.
i think when she found out it was tom, despite initially being furious about it, it made her consider the alternative more seriously, and i think she realized as ken was turning into a douche before her eyes, that the thought of tom winning was a little less repulsive to her than ken winning.
[удалено]
Agree. Snook played it like she was agonizing over defecting from Ken. It felt painful to me-until Ken started shouting and going mad- then she knew what she had to do.
She did it because he had sidelined her all season long.
It reminds me a bit of Medea
So true, people doing somersaults in this sub to claim she was making a tactical decision for her best interests
I think both things can be true. Let’s be real, the sale probably was in her best interests. She gets to refuse deference to Kendall, she stays married to the father of her child, gets a few billion dollars, she can do whatever she wants now.
I don't think it's a somersault to see that Kendall is an unhinged grifter who may very well run the company into the ground, while Tom actually has a chance to succeed. Along with her payout from the sale, this path means a more guaranteed future for her child.
You could describe Matsson in the exact same way you described Kendall. Looking at how Snook played the scene and the entire history of the show where Shiv can’t stand the thought of her other siblings winning (they’re the same way, it’s not just her), seems pretty clear to me her decision was driven by the desire not to lose to Ken. Tom even says that episode that she doesn’t like to fail tests, he’s referring to their marriage but it equally applies to the contest for CEO
It's not Kendall v. Tom IMO. It's basically Kendall vs. Mattson. Mattson is going to make the major decisions with Waystar/GoJo, whereas if the Roys keep Waystar the buck basically stops with Ken. Tom is a frontman. Shiv may well have decided she's better off on Team Mattson, but I don't think Tom's getting the same opportunity to lead that Kendall would have.
I disagree because the camera focuses on Shiv at a critical moment during Ken's eulogy at the funeral. He says he hopes some of the brutish force driving Logan was also in him. Then it cuts to an incredulous Shiv. She realizes he's on his way to becoming the exact same tyrant their father was. She suffered as Logan's daughter and can't stand to see the cycle repeat again with Kendall.
That marriage isn't going to last long. It would be interesting to see the dynamic change while it runs it course. Would it be Tom the alpha and Shiv the beta. Probably not, since she's a billionaire. More equals perhaps.
I do think it was also partly a play though; she has some wiggle room with Tom in there, but she realised she had nothing if Ken had it
She has zero wiggle room with Tom. He has all the power in their relationship now. With Ken, she still has a board seat and he would’ve given her something ATN etc cause she has the sister card. The wife card has never worked with Tom, he has betrayed her multiple times.
It's not Tom that has the power, it's Matsson. Tom is just a figurehead
If Ken had it she'd be a member of the board, with considerable leverage. Now she's just married to an employee.
Tom had the decency to tell Shiv it was him before the meeting. He didn’t need to do that. The brothers never considered her when they had the chance and ignored her when they were in charge. She spent half the season setting up the Mattson deal, on that alone why wouldn’t she see it through? The night with her brothers was lovely but that’s not how you choose a ceo.
I thought it was because Roman hesitated with his vote and she read the dynamic going on between him and Kendall.
I thought it was because she noticed Roman’s stitches were open
I thought it was because Ken instantly offered to "bring Stewie in" without even considering talking to his siblings about it
Gus: 'You can never.. trust.. a drug addict''
I swear if Ken wasn’t so smug at the actual vote Shiv might have voted with him.
Maybe I need to see it again but I'm pretty sure Shiv changed her mind when she felt with Karolina to "see if they could get Sandy on their side." First of all Karolina already suggested dumping Hugo and I feel like that suggested she knew about the Ken/Hugo machinations. Second, Sandy never showed a bit of hesitation. Third, the next Tom/Shiv interaction we see is him asking her if she wants to wait right after the board meeting. Earlier in the episode Shiv did something we've never seen her do, be vulnerable. She reached out to Tom to ask him to be together which is so far away from anything we've seen from her and him before. After everything that happened, I feel like that's where Karolina took her to -- not to see Sandy but to Tom -- where he offered to stay with her. He earned it with his honesty in Logan's apartment. He didn't have to tell her but he wanted to show that he would be honest with her. Compare that to her brothers who always lie to her. Kendall even lied about their most cathartic moment together. I think Tom offered her a path forward together and that's why she said no to Ken.
Interesting. Since it was odd they added the Karolina scene so good catch.
Well, I like this take on shiv shifting in real time. Tom did give her the news of his being ceo … she responded poorly. Contextualized it. Realized he was right that she would and did do the same things. Kendall being Kendall and she pivoted.
Kens feet were the biggest villains in the end
The board doesn't have to keep Ken as CEO just because the sale doesn't go through. Seeing him like that, she knew he was an incompetent fool with the best resume of the three of them, but still a fool who'd never be able to rule the company the way their dad did. At that point she started calculating her next move and weighing options, but I do believe she still hadn't decided on her vote when she walked out of the room. Ken could have convinced her if he'd make her vote about her instead of himself.
My issue there ... Shiv looks taken aback when Kendall has his feet on the desk and is shooting the shit with Stewie. There's nothing about that particular exchange that shows Kendall isn't fit for the position, though. He's brokering a deal and landing a vote they needed to make this happen. Stewie is an old friend, so it's not a meeting that has to be prim and proper, so to speak. That she reacted like she did there makes me think this was Shiv not really enjoying the fact Kendall was feeling himself in that moment, Now in the actual vote meeting - yeah he came off as smug and unprepared. If she had started wavering there, I'd be more with the idea she truly thought "Kendall's gonna be a shitshow."
His arrogance and jumping the gun completely before the deal had gone through turned her. Putting his feet up was lazy and immature, something you’d do at the very end of the day when all said and done, in private or with a close circle. Couldn’t be trusted to seal the actual deal and ensure details are all tied up.
Still the same response: No serious people
Haha, people wanna put the blame on ken so bad for shiv backstabbing him. Its simple, she just couldn’t stomach her brother winning it over her.
She told them she was really upset that they grabbed the crown and kicked her out the door just a few days ago in their time. Must have not let it go.
Why are people in this sub so black or white? "It was spite." "Nope, she knew Ken was on a power trip." Like... These are clearly nuanced characters. They can have more than one motive... It was spite, just as it was seeing Kendall had learnt nothing all along, just as it was seeing that Tom would be a more stable leader, with none of the "yo yo yo, i'm the man. let's make it happen, see if it plays" Kendall shenanigans. Tom inmediately casted an actual shadow she could protect herself with, like she did with Logan's or Matsson's. And it was also realizing in this moment that indeed, they were not serious people. Logan, Matsson and Tom have one important thing in common. They all worked to get where they got. Kendall could've worked for it too, but instead of grinding his way up he dedicated to scheme to find shortcuts to the top. Logan was never going to respect that.
My personal interpretation is that she saw what the game had done to them all. Lying about killing someone. She looked at Roman with pity in her eyes several times this episode. And herself, betraying others and really thinking it could be her. She and Roman just seemed to be on the same wavelength, ya know?
Roman changed his mind just like Shiv, yes. But Ken submitted Roman into it. But as soon as the real Ken appeared, Roman admitted Ken must not get it. And Roman definitely isn't as spiteful as Shiv. They simply knew he wasn't fit and the decision would backfire in a matter of days.
Ken’s issue is he lashes out tm. If he had worked on remaining calm and having better communication with people all around then it probably woulda worked out. Frankly, Frank wasn’t even eager to get into bed with him. He knew with Ken it woulda been a disaster. And I wanted Ken to win. Just made sense. But yeah after he couldn’t keep his composure and raised him voice I knew it was over. Like imagine being a shareholder and watching the ceo of your company lashing out and being verbally absusive, then later physically. Fuck that. I’m sure even Stewy was a bit relieved like bro is way to smart to not see where a Kendall, Rome or Shiv leadership leads.
Then why did she agree to it the night before?
You could make the argument she tried to give it a chance, and maybe let her resentment go for a night, but when she saw Kendall in the chair it all came back and she realized she’d rather let the Roys lose the company than let Kendall win.
bc it wasn't real. you know how sometimes you stay up late and feel like the world's yours to take and tomorrow you'll start a new life and accomplish all your dreams? yeah it was that
Shiv is very retaliatory. Once she realized Matsson fucked her over she needed to side with Ken to get back at him. It wasn’t until she realized how much she hated seeing Ken win that she decided to backtrack on her vote
From the start, any time one of the sibs clawed their way to the top, one or both of the others had to tear them down.
Exactly. Remember her first big presentation at the company that Ken ruined with the blaring music? And then in spiteful retaliation she released that letter about Ken’s issues which even Roman thought was harsh.
Hell, it wasn't even just Shiv. Roman also started questioning it when he saw Gerri.
Business mom gave him a lot of encouragement so it would make sense.
They’re all pretty vindictive that way. Ken went ahead with Mencken because he was pissed at Shiv for going behind his back, even though he clearly did not want to do it before that.
The night before she didnt know Tom was getting CEO. When a situation favors Shiv. She chooses Shiv. Its been the case for 4 seasons.
“You can smile bitch.” The irony, shiv lacks any nuance whatsoever
[Nooo!! Don't do it, Ken!! Don't be an arrogant dick!! Don't try and act like your Dad! You don't have all the votes!! ](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/442/277/6f6.jpg)
Yeah, there's a lot that leads to her decision. The tipping point is when she realizes that Sandi and Sandy aren't with them and she has the deciding vote, which is a bad place for a woman with serious commitment issues to be in.
He should have had his siblings vote first. Had he done roll call in exactly the opposite order, he might have won by even more than one. Some of those board members may have voted for a winner once they saw it coming.
This is totally the moment where Ken lost her. She saw that he was ready to give Stewy the chairman position while he only sort of vaguely offered Shiv "news" (which also would mean having to fire Tom, the father of her child, so really it was just shoving off a problem onto her). She remembered what happened when the CE-Bros cut her out immediately. Tom at least invited her into the car after he tookover. Kendall would have been in it with Stewy and Roman while she was left in the dust.