Succession's shocking twist

The latest episode of critically lauded HBO drama Succession featured a shocking twist: Media tycoon and Worst Dad of the Century Logan Roy dies unexpectedly on a plane. Critical reactions were virtually unanimous: The grueling episode was lavishly praised for its emotional wallop, and particularly for the unusual way Logan's death was depicted.

De-centering Logan

Brian Cox's scene-chewing performance in episode two, where Logan promised a leaner, meaner news operation at ATN, made his sudden demise particularly shocking. "This is not the end," he had said to his media troops while standing on top of some wobbly boxes hastily assembled by his son-in-law Tom Wambsgans (Michael Macfadyen). It turns out that it was, indeed, the end. Early in the third episode, as his children are mingling at his son Connor's (Alan Ruck) wedding to the hilariously unexcited Willa (Justinen Lupe), Roman (Kieran Culkin) receives a call from the private jet carrying Logan to Sweden for negotiations with a buyer. Logan has collapsed, chest compressions are being performed and, as Tom admits, he "might be gone."

Logan's final moments were, surprisingly, rendered almost entirely off-screen. "No one — not even the camera — could watch the old bear as he finally abandoned us all for good," wrote the AV Club's William Hughes. There was no drawn-out final monologue, no scenes of the frenzied attempts to revive him. "How could the show say goodbye to Logan with so little fanfare?" asked Vox's Whizy Kim. There is a brief shot of Logan on the ground, the phone carrying his children's anguished goodbyes perched on a pillow. The Ringer's Adam Nayman lauded the "eerily still postmortem view" that "eschews shock tactics while retaining the clammy finality necessary to assuage any fears of a narrative bait and switch."

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Humanizing the monsters

What we did see was the Roy children — who were in the middle of an on-again, off-again power play against their father's empire — struggling to find a way to say goodbye to their unconscious father in a 30-minute sequence that felt like a stage play. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) tells him, "I love you, but I can't forgive you." Only Connor appeared largely unfazed. "He never even liked me," he says, before deciding to go ahead with the wedding. For The Independent's Philippa Snow, the "inarticulacy" of their efforts to process their father's sudden death "reduced me to entirely unexpected tears." Next Bext Picture culture critic Brendan Hodges called it "among the emotionally realistic depictions of a family in duress I've ever seen."

The scene worked as a metaphor for the Roy children's estrangement from their father, Mashable's Belen Edwards wrote. After all, Logan had chosen to board the plane to Sweden rather than attend his eldest son's wedding. "Emotionally, these characters are far apart even when they're in the same room," she said. The staging of his demise "reflects that in its location choices. The kids are at sea, on a boat to Connor's wedding, while a dying Logan is thousands of feet in the air." The chaotic aftermath is "one of the finest-acted sequences you'll ever see on television," said The Ringer's Justin Sayle. "Every reaction feels authentic and understandable," an exceptional feat, in the end, for a show whose main characters are frequently unlikeable and morally bankrupt.