Without Truth, There is Only Tragedy.

The tragedy of Succession lies not in power, but in a denial of the truth.

It’s been a handful of hours since I finished the fourth and final season of HBO’s Succession, glued to the perfect final episode of a perfect show, and just like every day that I have watched members of the Roy family navigate their tragic existences, I have been riveted, enthralled and several other thesaurus words that can maybe attempt to explain what watching these characters over forty perfect episodes has done to my brain chemistry.

As I write this, I am also binge-listening to the soundtrack (wow Nicholas Britell, and for very different reasons, also wow Nicholas Britell) after, of course, binge-listening of the show’s official podcast, hosted by none other than Kara Swisher.

The last time I remember feeling this way was when I finished the last of Mad Men, and before that it was when I watched the last of Breaking Bad (an alliterative title might have something going for it). As is the case in Succession, both are perfectly crafted endings, after which I felt both deeply moved, and also depleted. What lingered was a profound sense of sadness for the “ending”, and relieved. Surprisingly, I felt a strange sense of real connection to characters that are (mostly) fictional by all means. Without overstating it, watching this show day, hungrily consuming the episode after episode, felt like what I can only imagine is a religious experience, a kind of communion, not with a god, but with the human condition.

Shakespearean in its structure, the story of Succession is both a cautionary tale and a doomed tragedy, but most of all, I believe it is a story about Truth, and the way we relate to it as humans, both reflexively and to others. Despite the flaws of every character we come across, they share a common thread: they have a very contentious relationship with the truth. The concept is deceptively simple, and we have long appeased ourselves as a society with the idea of an absolute truth — a fact that cannot be refuted. However, truth is a shapeshifter, and as soon as we feel we have grasped it, it slithers away out of reach.

For the Roy family and their associates, the truth is often used as a weapon, but more often, it is the weakness that brings on their demise. We see them lie to the world, lie to each other, and most telling of all, lie to themselves. Their intentions are cloaked in pretense, and even those who believe they are privy to the truth about another character, they are often being misled, made possible through a perfect storm of manipulation, leverage and fear. The juiciest moments in the show are when we see a character operating within layers of lies, and in trying to contend with the paradox of the truth they have told themselves, they reach a breaking point.

HBO's "Succession" Season 3 Premiere

Alan Ruck, Brian Cox, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong attend HBO's "Succession" Season 3 Premiere at American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York on October 12, 2021. (Photo by Lexie Moreland/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images)

I often ask myself who the protagonist of this show is. It helps me understand the fallacy that there is ever a single truth. Seeing the story unfold through Kendall’s eyes places the truth in a very different place than that of Logan’s, or any of his siblings. His conviction that he is the rightful heir to the Waystar Roystar empire (loosely based on the Murdochs, if you fancy a rabbit hole) is one that is his truth. To what extent he believes that this was ever his father’s intention, or even believed that he deserved it, is compounded by the expectations of those who oppose and compete with him. In the end (SPOILER ALERT!!! Stop reading if you haven’t watched yet!!!!!!!), it is this conviction and his total belief of his right to his father’s former chair that exists in total defiance of his sister Shiv’s own truth that she cannot, despite her love for her elder brother, “stomach” him as CEO. When she says to him “I don’t think you’d be good at this,” she is stating that her truth and his do not align, and she cannot betray hers to satisfy his.

An argument can be made convincingly that Logan never intended for any of his children to be the heir to the company he built. His truth is that they are spoilt, and “not serious people”. He addresses them collectively when days before his unexpected (but also awaited) death he ends the unplanned meeting they have in a karaoke bar by telling them collectively, “you are not serious people.” In that moment, the truth is there is no differentiation in his eyes when it comes to the worthiness and deservingness of any of his children to take over, and the sentiment echoes throughout the remaining episodes.

The characters flaws run deep and existential, and I found myself thinking at many many moments about what the right move might have been in any given disastrous instant, and the realization I came to over and over is that without being able to face their multiple truths, and make peace with them, they would never be able to see a situation clearly or leverage their true strengths to their advantage. The most exciting, at least for me, moments in the show is where we see the siblings truly let their guard down with each other and show vulnerability. I sat at the edge of my seat as I took in these scenes, holding my breath in awe of it all. These scenes were the insight into a stripped-away truth that we rarely got to see, one in which psychological safety and support were possible through true vulnerability, however these instances rarely lasted long. Driven by a common tendency to make decisions from a place of fear of the truth, the Roy siblings continuously fail, and in the end, the truths of each character are exposed, ugly, raw and impossible to come back from.

The experience of watching this show for the first time was more than entertainment to me, it was a moment of the proverbial “a-ha”. As I watched the final minutes of the finale, as the camera followed each of the Roy siblings in their new and definitive realities, it made me think a lot about the ways we choose to show up in the world, and in our work. In dynamics where multiple truths exist, it requires a pro level of self-awareness and self-acceptance of our strengths, our vulnerabilities, and the cracks in our armor. It is only then that we can begin to truly live in our power and move through the world with a confidence that can only truly come from knowing ourselves, and accepting the truth of who we are. When we operate from a place of deep and real truth, there is nothing to memorize, no effort in having to present, no heavy armor to wear. Only then are we free to move through the world carrying a conviction that is magnetic, and impossible to deny.

In 1957, Picasso started an extended series of variations on Las Meninas 1656 of Diego Velazquez.

“If someone want to copy Las Meninas, entirely in good faith, for example, upon reaching a certain point and if that one was me, I would say..what if you put them a little more to the right or left? I'll try to do it my way, forgetting about Velazquez. The test would surely bring me to modify or change the light because of having changed the position of a character. So, little by little, that would be a detestable Meninas for a traditional painter, but would be my Meninas.”