We have less than a week to go before Succession’s fourth and final season premieres on March 26.
It’s been more than a year since the explosive Season 3 finale aired in December 2021. The satirical HBO drama will soon bid one last goodbye to the Roys, as siblings Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) face off against their father, Logan (Brian Cox), to decide the fate of the family’s news and entertainment conglomerate, Waystar Royco.
When the much anticipated trailer was released on Jan. 26, fans of the show had yet to learn that the fourth season would mark the last.
The news was confirmed less than a month later on Feb. 23 by the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, who told the New Yorker that deciding to end the Emmy-winning series was a tortuous process.
“You know, there’s a promise in the title of ‘Succession.’ I’ve never thought this could go on forever,” he said. “The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From Season 2, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?”
And as fans continue to grapple with the beginning of the end, it sounds like the show’s cast are navigating similarly mixed emotions.
Discussing the final season in an LA Times profile published yesterday, Sarah Snook, who plays Shiv Roy, revealed that she didn’t find out the show was ending much sooner than fans did.
A lot like her character heading into Season 4, Sarah was left somewhat blindsided when she was informed that the show was wrapping up for good during the final table read in January.
“I was very upset,” she told the outlet. “I felt a huge sense of loss, disappointment and sadness.”
The Australian native confessed that “it would have been nice” if she’d found out a little sooner, but she expressed that she understood the reasoning.
“It would have been nice to know at the beginning of the season, but I also understand not being told until the end because there was still a potential that maybe this wasn’t going to be the end,” she said.
Sarah went on to add that one of the most painful things about the show’s conclusion is the idea of parting ways with her castmates, saying that none of them were “emotionally” ready to accept the end because they “love each other so much.”
“But everything has to come to an end, and it’s smart not to let something become a parody of itself,” she added.
It isn’t entirely clear whether all the cast members were told at the same time; however, a number of them have since weighed in on how they processed the news.
Like Sarah, Nicholas Braun, who plays the lovable cousin Greg, admitted that saying goodbye wasn’t easy for him, either.
Last week, the actor told the Times that he “sobbed” after shooting his final scenes with Matthew Macfadyen, who stars alongside him as Shiv’s husband, Tom Wambsgans.
“I just feel extremely close to him,” he said of his costar. “When we finished shooting the last season I sobbed saying goodbye. It’s still hard to get through a scene with him without laughing.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Brian Cox recently told Variety that bidding farewell to Logan Roy was much less of an ordeal.
“I felt nothing when I played the last scene. Nothing! It was the last scene, finito.” he said, before giving fans a taste of what to expect from the final showdown.
“Logan absolutely gets what he needs. That’s the great thing about the show. He gets peace, which is good,” he hinted.
Interestingly, Brian went on to say that he thinks now is the perfect time for Succession to bow out, quipping that oftentimes “American series live well past their sellout date.”
“This one won’t do that,” he said. “HBO would love us to go for as long as Game of Thrones, but thank God it won’t happen.”
“I would find it hard-going to be saying ‘fuck off’ to people for the next 10 years, although it’s the nicest thing to say to someone. You can actually say how you feel,” he joked.
Since the fourth season was confirmed as the last, Sarah’s onscreen brothers have yet to comment on the show’s end.
But Jeremy Strong recently spoke on the prospect of parting with his character, Kendall, telling GQ in February that it “will feel like a death.”
While announcing the news last month, Jesse Armstrong expressed that it was important to go out on a high — but hinted that this might not be the last we hear from the Roy family.
“I do think that this succession story that we were telling is complete … 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,” he said.
He continued: “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.”