‘Succession’ season 4 ending, explained

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Succession season 4

Succession has always been a story about who will inherit the role of CEO at Waystar Royco once its founder Logan Roy has called it a day, and even in its final season this continues to be the big question on everyone’s mind.

Thankfully, now that the series has wrapped we now have the answers for exactly who will be taking over and how they managed to sneak their way to the top of the chain.

Given this is an ending explained, it should be a given that we’ll be going well and truly into spoiler territory, so if you plan on watching the show without knowing how it ends then this is your warning to stop reading now. For those of you still here, this is everything you need to know about how Succession concludes.

How does Succession end?

Succession season 4’s key narrative point is the Gojo deal and ultimately this is exactly what the show comes down to. After the untimely passing of Logan Roy, newly appointed co-CEOs Kendall and Roman look to spoil the sale of Waystar Royco to Gojo in an attempt to keep the business in the family.

With the promise of the position of US CEO at Waystar Royco under the leadership of Gojo, Shiv is plotting against her brothers leading into the show’s finale, and the final arguments for blocking or supporting the sale within a board meeting. Early in the finale, we find out that Gojo boss Lukas Mattson isn’t actually planning to give Shiv the position he’d promised her, instead he has fielded other candidates ultimately settling on her arranged husband Tom Wambsgans.

After some sneaky eavesdropping, cousin Greg realizes that Shiv isn’t in Mattson’s plans and as a ploy to ensure his own safety no matter which party ultimately wins, he leaks this information to Kendall.

At the time Kendall and Shiv are both at their mother’s beautiful beachside home attempting to bring Roman to their respective sides ahead of the board vote. Using the info from Greg and some quick fact-checking with other members of Waystar Royco, Kendall manages to convince Shiv to jump on board the movement to stop the sale. While the motivation for this might be simply to get revenge on Mattson, after some intense discussion, Roman and Shiv agree that the deal can’t go through and settle on Kendall being their candidate for CEO—at this point, the three appear to be aligned for the very first time.

Heading back to New York, battle lines are drawn, and the family regroups at their father’s home. Shiv tells Tom that Mattson is fielding different CEO alternatives to herself when he drops the bomb on Shiv that Mattson wants him. As you’d expect she is enraged by this, cursing him out and planning to take it to him at the vote. As we head to the board room Tom takes a second to trade blows with Greg after realizing that his most trusted friend had leaked the information to Kendall and potentially cost him the deal.

Now at the Waystar Royco offices, Roman breaks down at the sight of Gerri, asking why it isn’t him becoming CEO, but Kendall is able to comfort him. Now in the board room, the vote begins and most parties cast theirs as expected resulting in a tie with just Shiv left. 

Shiv decides it’s all too much, and before voting storms out of the room. Kendall and Roman follow to find out what the problem is when Shiv says that she doesn’t think Kendall would be a good CEO despite previously agreeing to vote for it. This is where things reach their tipping point.

Kendall tries to plead saying that if he isn’t CEO he will die. Shiv threatens him with the information he killed the driver (back in season 1). Kendall then claims he made the story up when he told his siblings back at Shiv’s wedding, which doesn’t work in his favor, instead angering them more. Roman says that their father would want Shiv to be CEO as she is going to be having a child, going further to voice that Logan never accepted Kendall’s kids as his own bloodline because they were not born to Kendall. It’s revealed that the two children were not Kendall’s biological kids. After this comment, Kendall gets physical grabbing Roman’s face and slamming it against the glass. While this is happening Shiv storms out and heads to the board room to cast her vote.

Upon returning to the board room Kendall asks to adjourn the meeting but it’s too late, Shiv had voted and Waystar Royco is now in the hands of Gojo with its new CEO Tom.

In the following scene, we see Tom sharing with Greg his game plan for running Waystar Royco — who’s going to go and who will stay, surprisingly he opts to keep Greg despite his earlier betrayal.

Roman reluctantly signs over the company to Mattson who continues to joke about the purchase as well as Greg remaining on at the company. Tom says to Shiv that he has a car on the way if she wanted to come home with him. Despite being upset about everything that has gone down, she chooses to do so and the pair drive home handing hands, but she looks far from happy.

The series ends with Kendall. With just a security guard following him Kendall walks along a path to an oceanside bench where he sits down and stares out at the sunset with a blank, defeated look on his face. And that’s how the iconic series comes to a close.

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