Succession, the critically acclaimed satirical drama about a media mogul and his family’s fight over his legacy, is set to end with the upcoming fourth season.
Creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong told the New Yorker in an interview that “there’s a promise in the title of Succession. I’ve never thought this could go on forever. The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From season two, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?”
Armstrong said that he and his fellow writers had been planning the show’s end since late 2021, and had considered “[turning] the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks. Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference.”
The show’s network, HBO, has separately confirmed the hit show will end with season four, which will air on HBO in the US on 26 March. It will air on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK, and on Binge and Foxtel in Australia, on 27 March.
Armstrong, the writer of UK hits including Peep Show and Fresh Meat, has long teased that Succession would end after four or five seasons, ever since it became a hit with audiences and critics.
“I feel deeply conflicted. I quite enjoy this period when we’re editing – where the whole season is there but we haven’t put it out yet. I like the interregnum,” Armstrong said. “And I also quite liked the period where me and my close collaborators knew that this was probably it, or this was it, but hadn’t had to face up to it in the world.”
HBO had let him make the call to end the show, he added.
“HBO has been generous and would probably have done more seasons, and they have been nice about saying, ‘It’s your decision.’ That’s nice, but it’s also a responsibility in the end – it feels quite perverse to stop doing it,” he told the New Yorker.
Succession, which stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Nicholas Braun, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Macfadyen and Sarah Snook, has garnered 48 Emmy nominations and 13 wins, including two for best drama series, among numerous other accolades.
Armstrong said that it was possible he would revisit the world of the Roys in a different show.
“I do think that this succession story that we were telling is complete,” he said. “This is the muscular season to exhaust all our reserves of interest, and I think there’s some pain in all these characters that’s really strong. 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. I have caveated the end of the show, when I’ve talked to some of my collaborators, like: Maybe there’s another part of this world we could come back to, if there was an appetite?”
