MANILA, Philippines — Just a few hours after HBO’s Succession Season 3 finale episode aired on Dec. 12, showrunner Jesse Armstrong had a virtual roundtable chat with the international press, The Philippine STAR included, to break down the bombshell conclusion.
Well, sort of, as Armstrong candidly said on Monday, while passing up on questions that attempted to extract specifics, “I love talking about the show but there are certain things that make me itchy to deconstruct live.”
However, there were a few burning questions that Armstrong gamely addressed about the season ender, titled All The Bells Say, of the Emmy-winning dark comedy-drama about the highly-dysfunctional dynasty that is the Roy family.
A warning though, minor spoilers ahead.
Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox), the patriarch and CEO of one of the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerates, began Season 3 in a “perilous position, scrambling to secure familial, political and financial alliances.” In the season finale, no one still among his grown children measured up to become his successor. Instead, with some help, Logan devastated three of his heirs — Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) — with an epic betrayal, brokering a deal behind their backs while looking to start fresh without them.
By fresh, the last episode raised the possibility of the 80-something Logan working on to produce a new heir, as his kids found out that he was taking something — a maca root smoothie, to be specific — which supposedly enhances male fertility.
Armstrong said that they researched all sorts of food that would boost the sperm count. “You know, we are a heavily researched show, and we looked into all the products which alleged that they can help with your sperm count, especially as you move on in years. And yeah, I can confirm that research for the show (was) not from my own life,” he mused.
This wasn’t just any detail, though. Asked about where this “deployment” of the idea of an heir was heading and whether it would be further used in the future (a.k.a. Season 4), Armstrong said, “It was not a silly detail. It’s actually a very potent-like psychological detail, isn’t it? About someone thinking about mortality and so on.
“But its place, you know, is kind of a comic beat in the show, in the episode last night. But it’s a good example, I think, probably of what I would say we’d do with the show in that light.”
He hinted that he already knew how this detail would play out in the future, at the same time, suggested as much that it could go another way. “I have an answer to that question. But I won’t say it in public, but I will say it to the writers in the room and then it lives in quite… well, for me, an agreeable, gray area of like, I think I know what happens. But if someone makes a really strong argument, and it starts to feel okay, then we could go in another direction. And that’s a good, creative way to run the route.”
One of the questions also was how Succession was able to keep up with the tradition of delivering yet another “game-changing” ending. Did he already envision this culmination when he and his team were just starting to write the season?
“We do. You know, we restructure. We try and spend the first three or four weeks cracking that overall shape. Everyone writes their episodes separately. We don’t write the episodes in the room, but we construct the plots in the room and so we get the overarching thing. And then we do each episode’s construction and shape,” Armstrong said.
He added that it was important for him to know where the season was headed early on “because otherwise, it could be bullsh*t, you know. I think it’s really important for me to know that.”
“Also, on a technical level, it is very important because all through the season, we have the episodes and then, I do some rewriting. Oftentimes, long story short, I don’t have much time to write the final two (episodes). And if I didn’t, if I was literally making it up, it would be a big problem.
“Whereas having the freedom to be creative within a structure, which I know I’m heading to some psychological and also business climax that I know is true and satisfying, it means that the game of thinking what the scenes are that get us there is an enjoyable game. Not a terrifying game.”
Another media observation was how the ending proved that the show’s most powerful and electrifying moments happened whenever Kendall, Logan, Shiv and Roman were together in one room.
Armstrong said, reacting to a question on whether he employs these moments sparingly or strategically: “I will always prioritize emotional and character truth rather than trying to fit a shape, however cool or compelling the shape does.”
Not a few journos pointed out that the ending had The Godfather-ish feel with the behind-the-scenes drama during a wedding. But for Armstrong, in terms of cinematic inspirations, he said he was more influenced by the Danish film Festen. “Festen was an inspiration from the beginning in terms of brutal family dynamics brought into the open,” he said.
“The Godfather, I guess, is something, which I mean, if you’re doing an American story, a family story, a patriarch-mortality story, I like those movies a great deal. I’m reminded of them when we do a beat or I see a shot… They’re great cultural works that I do think about, but they don’t form the shape of the show for me, so much as maybe Festen has helped.”
As for the emotionally-charged final scene with the weight of the betrayal registering on Shiv’s face, Armstrong said it was also emotional on set.
“The scene was long. The days were long. It was emotional. You can see from the performances that it was. They (stars) were working really hard. And it was quite an artistic coup, I would say, to find that particular way of ending.”
Season 3 cast also includes Alan Ruck, Nicholas Braun, Matthew Macfadyen, Peter Friedman, J. Smith-Cameron, Dagmara Dominczyk, Justine Lupe, David Rasche, Fisher Stevens, Hiam Abbass, Arian Moayed, Harriet Walter, James Cromwell, Natalie Gold, Juliana Canfield, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Zoë Winters and Jeannie Berlin. Additional cast members are Alexander Skarsgård, Sanaa Lathan, Linda Emond, Jihae, Adrien Brody, Hope Davis and Dasha Nekrasova.
(Stream all three seasons of Succession on HBO GO, which can be downloaded at the App Store or Play Store. HBO GO can also be accessed via Cignal, Globe and Skycable or at https://www.hbogoasia.ph/.)