I’d usually start a piece like this with a warning about spoilers. I’d point out that I’m about to discuss major events that took place during a recent television episode, and then do my best to persuade anyone who hasn’t seen it to stop reading, lest their enjoyment of the episode is ruined for ever.
But, honestly, what’s the point? If you’ve seen a copy of the Daily Mail today – in the flesh, or online, or on TV – you will have seen the front page obituary for (final spoiler warning) Logan Roy. “Farewell to the foul-mouthed tyrant whose life (and death) were so explosively dramatic you couldn’t make it up!” crowed the Mail’s banner, taking up a quarter of the entire page, and adding “LOGAN ROY 1938-2023” just for the absolute avoidance of doubt.
You can’t pin this lack of decency on the Mail alone, because everyone has been at it. As soon as this week’s episode of Succession ended, the internet became the world’s greatest minefield, with just about everyone trampling over themselves to spoil Logan’s death as egregiously as possible. There were tweets, and postmortem interviews with Succession’s cast and crew. The LA Times ran a full fake obituary for the man, which was shared around the internet with reckless abandon from almost the moment he breathed his last. Brian Cox even appeared on Stephen Colbert’s talkshow on Monday night for an interview specifically about his character’s death, and you could hear audience members groaning in despair because they hadn’t had a chance to watch the episode yet.
And yet, on the other hand, the death of Logan Roy was a monumental event. One of the buzziest shows of the past decade had lost its leading actor. It’s a testament to the writing and acting on Succession that people felt the need to react as if there had been an actual death. And, as someone who writes about television for a living, God knows I’ve had my run-ins with spoiler bores who have got their knickers in a twist because I let slip what happened in the Red Wedding five years after the episode was broadcast.
I can see both sides, is what I’m trying to say. It’s important that people get to watch something with fresh eyes, so every twist and turn can land with the full weight of its intention. But also, the world doesn’t owe you a forever pass. People should be allowed to discuss things.
So where do we go from here? We sorely need to establish a new agreed-upon etiquette when it comes to television spoilers.
As far as I can see, we all need to play our part. My job already has roughly established guidelines. If I’m going to write about events in a recent programme, I will always warn the reader up top and directly before the first mention of the spoiler. But when headline writers barf the spoiler into the headline, that changes everything. The body of an article is an agreement between writer and reader; you clicked on the story, you read the warnings, so whatever happens next is on you. But a headline mention – which could get shared, or sucked into an aggregator, or even leap on to your phone as a news alert – is unforgivable. This is why the Mail and the LA Times inspired so much anger this week.
But you are viewers, too. You also have a responsibility not to ruin things for other people. In the flesh it’s fine. You ask someone if they’ve seen the episode yet, and then continue according to their answer. Online, however, it’s different. In my experience, it’s best to assume that nobody has seen the episode other than you. You can refer to events, but without specifics. “Wow, I didn’t see that coming!” is infinitely preferable to “RIP Logan Roy ur wiv da angels now xoxoxo”.
That said, there’s a statute of limitations here. You can’t just not talk about things for ever, for fear of annoying a stranger on the internet. People should be given a respectable amount of time to watch the episode, after which it’s open season. Perhaps the best example of this came with the film Avengers: Endgame in 2019. When it was released, the directors politely asked everyone to keep quiet about spoilers until opening weekend was over. And, by and large, people did.
Perhaps this is what we need to do. We should all give ourselves 72 hours after an hour of television like Connor’s Wedding to quietly sit and process and (most importantly) let everyone else catch up, before beginning conversations with people in a tentative, respectful way. That’s more reasonable than burping it across a newspaper front page, right?
