A basic rule of storytelling is one needs a beginning, middle, and end. While this rule seems simple enough, endings can actually be quite tricky. One wants to do the story justice but when a show is popular it is often easy to want to keep it going for financial gain or simply because it is just too fun to produce. It is extremely difficult to walk away from a successful show such as HBO’s Succession but it is a good call to walk away on a high note. Jesse Armstrong — creator and showrunner of Succession — recently opened up about this to the New Yorker. Before we get into if there will be a fifth season of Succession, let’s take a look at the show’s creative team, cast, and plot.
Succession’s creative team
Succession as we know it today came out of a similar project by creator Jesse Armstrong. He was working on a feature-length film about the Murdoch family. While this film never saw the light of day, it sparked an idea in Armstrong who took it and ran with it. He decided to include the larger Wall Street landscape into his story and created original characters based on not only the Murdochs but also the Redstones and the Sulzbergers and more. He also decided the best format for this version of the story was not a feature film but instead a television series.
A pilot that was written by Armstrong and would be directed by Adam McKay was ordered by HBO on June 6, 2016. Armstrong, McKay, Will Ferrell, Frank Rich, and Kevin Messick served as executive producers. The pilot was successful and around one year later on May 16, 2017, HBO picked up the first season of the series.
The plot and cast
Succession tells the story of the mega-rich Roy family who owns the media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo. The patriarch Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, has a health scare. This causes his four children to begin to plot for their future in the family business. The eldest son Connor, played by Alan Ruck, is in a world of his own. Arrogant-yet-determined Kendall, played by Jeremy Strong, appears to be the heir. Roman, played by Kieran Culkin, is a typical spoiled rich kid but don’t count him out completely. Adding some much-needed feminine energy to the siblings is Shiv, played by Sarah Snook. Rounding out this ensemble cast is Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s husband and Nicholas Braun as Greg Hirsch, a ladder-climbing family member.
Succession’s successes
The series is critically-acclaimed, winning awards left and right. It has won both the Golden Globe for Best Television Series Drama and the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series twice in 2020 and 2022. Armstrong has been awarded an Emmy three times for his writing on the series. Cox, Strong, and Snook all received acting Emmys. The list goes on and on. Succession was paramount in helping usher HBO out of the Game of Thrones era and keeping the cable network relevant.
The end
Armstrong always wrote with the end in mind. “There’s a promise in the title of Succession. I’ve never thought this could go on forever. The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From season two, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that,” he stated to the New Yorker.
When season four came around this seemed like the best time to end things. “I got together with a few of my fellow writers before we started the writing of season four, in about November, December, 2021, and I sort of said, ‘Look, I think this maybe should be it. But what do you think?’ And we played out various scenarios: We could do a couple of short seasons, or two more seasons. Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks. Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference,” Armstrong concluded.
Season four will be the end of the Roy family’s drama at least for now. Armstrong has not ruled out returning to the Roys’ world so audiences have that to potentially look forward to.
“I do think that this succession story that we were telling is complete. This is the muscular season to exhaust all our reserves of interest, and I think there’s some pain in all these characters that’s really strong. But the feeling that there could be something else in an allied world, or allied characters, or some of the same characters — that’s also strong in me. I have caveated the end of the show, when I’ve talked to some of my collaborators, like: Maybe there’s another part of this world we could come back to, if there was an appetite? Maybe there’s something else that could be done, that harnessed what’s been good about the way we’ve worked on this. So that is another true feeling,” Armstrong concluded.
Audiences will not be seeing a season five of Succession but may see a continuation of the universe in another iteration. Stay tuned.