Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the Season 4 premiere of Succession, as well as the follow-up trailer.
It’s been 15 months since the esteemed Roy clan graced HBO viewers’ televisions with their lavishly dysfunctional family dynamics, but with viewers able to tune in and watch the Succession Season 4 premiere set things up accordingly: Kendall, Shiv and Roman in one corner, and basically everyone else in the opposite corner. Perhaps it’s not quite so dire, as the trio scored an ultra-rare victory over their beast of a father by buying out PGM to the tune of $10 billion. But the time for victories isn’t so lengthy, as HBO aired a “Weeks Ahead” preview after the premiere that showcased much chaos to come in the next nine episodes, and it kinda got me thinking Kieran Culkin’s business-savvy pervo may be set for quite the dour (and possibly fatal) conclusion.
Before getting into some of my reasoning, let me go ahead and state now that I know Succession isn’t like other HBO shows with high body counts, and there haven’t been any super-obvious indications that creator Jesse Armstrong & Co. are aiming to wrap the sordid drama up with any major character deaths. But if this were that kind of show and Armstrong did make it sound that way, then everything below might make more sense. Check out the new footage and read on!
Season 4’s “Weeks Ahead” Preview Immediately References Logan Killing Someone
While this bit doesn’t specifically point to Roman biting any metaphorical bullets (presumably ones designed to look like his own dong), Greg rather quickly describes Logan in a way that makes it seem like manslaughter or worse could be imminent. (Dun-dun-DUN!) It might not have stuck out so much, but the new footage features a mostly different piece of Greg and Tom’s exchange from what we’d heard in the full-length Season 4 trailer. Here, Nicholas Braun’s ever-rising cuz brings up a Steven Spielberg classic when talking about his billionaire uncle.
He’s just walking around, but with the slight sense that he might kill someone. It’s like Jaws, if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws.
I’d like to think that Greg knows the threat in Jaws is Bruce the shark, and isn’t actually a namesake of the blockbuster flick itself, and that Logan’s murderous ferocity was enough to mess him up. And speaking of classics…
Roman Compares Himself To John Lennon
Now let’s put the focus on Romulus Roy himself. The “Weeks Ahead” video quickly sews distrust amongst the siblings, with Shiv and Kendall learning that Logan wants to talk to Roman amidst the contentiousness. Knowing that editing trickery is likely at play here, those moments lead Roman to make a particularly ominous comparison to one of the biggest rock bands the world will ever know. In his words:
Stop ganging up on me like you’re Lennon and McCartney and I’m fucking George. I’m John, motherfuckers!
Now, we could probably spend the rest of Season 4 waxing on and debating about all the ways Succession’s Roy siblings work as counterparts for The Beatles, and all the ways in which Roman does not embody the strengths and ideals of John Lennon while hiding in Logan’s overbearing shadow. But I think the point here is that Rom believes himself to be the Lennon of the offspring, which may be less an indicator of their comparable smarts, and more about their potentially comparable fates.
As just about anyone out there already knows, John Lennon was shot to death on December 8, 1980, by the convicted Mark David Chapman, who was a fan that turned on the Beatle for his more progressive beliefs and views on religion. And while I don’t necessarily think Roman deserves that kind of obsessive attention from anyone, there may be someone.
Roman And Mattson Appear To Be Bitter Rivals
Though the first Season 4 trailer digs more into the increasingly aggressive relationship happening between Roman and Alexander Skarsgård’s Lukas Matsson, presumably for the GoJo CEO’s involvement in helping Logan stick it to the siblings regarding the Waystar acquisition. But even if that stuff doesn’t play as heavily in the trailer above, there’s a bit of it, and the dialogue in spots makes it sound like Roman has a mound of critical pressure waiting for him no matter where he turns.
And while he’s not exactly the most trigger-happy character on this show, Roman 100% knows how to take things well beyond their proper cut-off points, so it’s entirely possible he could piss off Matsson to the point where the upstart bazillionaire gets his hands dirty for once.
Kendall Actually Attacks Roman
If anyone is going to kill Roman, I almost necessarily expect it to be someone outside the family, since I can’t readily believe that any of the Roys would purposefully put each other in physical torment that could end in death. (Do I think Greg would breezily go to town on Tom’s face with a tire iron if he knew there weren’t any cameras around, however? Uh, yeah.) Succession has made a point of limiting such bodily harm amongst the fam, with the glaring exception being the time when Logan backslapped the shit out of Roman in Season 2’s “Argestes.” In that moment, Kendall immediately jumped to his brother’s defense, telling Logan “don’t fucking touch him!” But in the new footage, it’s Kendall himself who goes into attack mode.
Kendall doesn’t dig such physical confrontations, and is still living with the endless weight of his involvement with the waiter who drowned during Shiv’s wedding, even if some of it was lifted during his Season 3 finale confession. So I have to think that Roman did something unimaginably fucked up in order to provoke Kendall to go on the attack like that. Is it fucked up enough to cause Kendall to more intentionally cause someone’s death? I guess it depends on what’s pumping through his bloodstream at the time.
For all that I’m speculating about Roman’s possible death, there’s no question about how crushed I’d be if Kieran Culkin was suddenly gone from Succession at any point prior to the Season 4 finale’s credits rolling. Shiv’s jokes about him wanting to bang their mom can’t just float off into the ethers without a target.
Find out what Succession has in store for Romulus Roy when it airs Sunday nights on HBO at 9:00 p.m. ET, and streams for everyone with an HBO Max subscription. Check out everything else hitting the 2023 TV schedule soon!
