What Each Logan Roy Eulogy Says About The Characters Of Succession
This post contains spoilers for "Succession" season 4, episode 9, "Church and State."
Few things are harder to write than a eulogy. How do you even begin to sum up a person's life? How much do you share without making a speech about yourself instead of the deceased? On the latest episode of "Succession," the Roy siblings confronted these questions when they attended the funeral of their father Logan (Brian Cox).
Connor (Alan Ruck), who oversaw the funeral, has been pressing his siblings on who would be the speaker. In the end, all three of them were, plus their grumpy uncle: Logan's brother, Ewan (James Cromwell). Connor also wrote something himself, but he was ultimately barred from delivering it. We didn't get a glimpse at what he wrote, but apparently, his speech was too long and "legally actionable." Being the only sibling who doesn't say anything at Logan's funeral is a fitting denouement for Connor's non-existent relationship with his father.
Indeed, the eulogies were some of the most revealing and emotionally honest moments ever on "Succession." We saw how Logan shaped his family and who they'll become without him in their lives.
Ewan
Ewan is the principled one in the Roy clan and despises ATN, Logan's TV network, for spewing far-right propaganda and climate change denial. Back in the season 2 episode, "Dundee," he mused that taking into account the coming ecological devastation, Logan might have more blood on his hands than Hitler.
This is why Logan's children didn't want Ewan to speak at his funeral — but he overrules them. "What sort of people would stop a brother speaking for the sake of a share price?" he asks. However, Ewan doesn't use the chance to list out Logan's crimes; he leaves that in the hands of history books. Instead, the speech he delivers is mournful, yet also not a celebration of Logan's life.
Ewan opens with "sob stories" from their childhood: how when they first immigrated from Scotland to Canada, their ship went adrift and they spent two days living in fear that a German U-boat would find and kill them. How their younger sister Rose died from polio, and their aunt and uncle blamed Logan for it. Observing the reaction shots of Kendall, Roman, and Shiv, you get the sense that Logan himself never shared these painful memories with his children. Certainly Rose's fate has been kept a mystery up to this point.
Then Ewan stops holding back, delivering an eloquent condemnation of how Logan wielded his power. Ewan believes that Logan thought the world was a cruel place, so that's what he made it into. He concludes:
"[Logan] fed a certain kind of meagerness in men. Perhaps he had to because he had a meagerness about him — and maybe I do about me too. I don't know. I try. I try. I don't know when, but sometime, he decided not to try any more and it was a terrible shame."
After hearing these words, it's clearer than ever that Ewan didn't hate his brother. He was disappointed in him.
Roman
Ah, Roman. No one else on the show produces such conflicting emotions as the second-youngest Roy sibling (played by Kieran Culkin). This back-to-back punch of episodes illustrates that. Last week in "America Decides," he was at his most cruel as he gifted the White House to fascist Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk). In "Church and State," the bravado falls apart.
Though he strives to act like he doesn't care about anything, Roman is the most emotionally fragile of his siblings and the one who was most co-dependent on Logan. In the season 3 finale, "All The Bells Say," he was the only sibling who couldn't look Logan in the eye during their confrontation. At the beginning of this season, he had come crawling back to his dad right before the Grim Reaper put a stake through any further plans they had together.
Roman has been putting on a cool face since: he claimed in the episode after Logan's death, "Honeymoon States," that he'd "pre-grieved" his father. In "Tailgate Party" he volunteered to deliver Logan's eulogy, and "Church and State" opens with Roman half-practicing his boilerplate speech. When the time comes to deliver it, though, he chokes.
Breaking down in tears at the podium, the reality that Logan is gone finally hits Roman (he hysterically asks his siblings to get their father out of his coffin), and he can't deliver the speech. Despite acting otherwise, Roman's been erratic since Logan's death — take his cutting outburst at Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) in "Kill List" or his reckless firing of Gerri (J. Smith Cameron) in "Living+." This breakdown was the inevitable conclusion of Roman bottling up his grief.
Kendall
There's one episode of "Succession" to go. Trying to predict this show is usually a fool's errand, but so far season 4 has been building to the conclusion of Kendall (Jeremy Strong) ending up like Logan. He's now CEO of Waystar Royco and will throw anyone under the bus to keep that throne. The last few episodes have also been emphasizing Kendall's neglect of his children, indicating that the poison really does drip down. Kendall's remembrance of his father in "Church and State" is another sign of how alike they are.
With Roman unable to go on, Kendall delivers the eulogy in his stead. The result echoes Kendell's eponymous presentation in "Living+" — the speech has a shaky opening, but he wins the crowd by portraying confidence in a bad product.
Kendall concedes Ewan's point and calls Logan "a brute." Like an author stumbling out of writer's block, Kendall then hones in on Logan's business success and will to power. All but quoting Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) in "Network," Kendall calls money, "The lifeblood, the oxygen of his wonderful civilization we have built from this mud."
With this celebration of his father, Kendall damns him: Logan decided his mission was making money, so that's all there is to celebrate about his life. Worse, Kendall has decided that all of Logan's sins in pursuit of that goal were worth it; he hopes that the same "awful force" that lived in Logan lives in him. If an aspiring dictator (the aforementioned Mencken) calls your speech "perfect," odds are it wasn't.
Kendall's actions also have me thinking: he and Roman may be co-CEOs now, but Kendall has expressed willingness to throw his little brother under the bus since "Tailgate Party." Is Kendall taking Roman's place because the latter can't cut it foreshadowing where the series will leave their relationship? We'll soon find out.
Shiv
Shiv (Sarah Snook) always has to get the last word in, so once Kendall's speech ends in applause, she makes a beeline to the podium. With no prepared remarks, Shiv goes the anecdote route, telling how she and her brothers played outside their father's office as children, "because [they] wanted him to hear." Shiv, who admits her father was "terrifying," mentions that he never let them inside. And so Shiv's metaphor crystallizes: Logan kept everyone at arm's length and drove people who loved him away.
Shiv then claims that "When he let you in, it was warm," but acknowledges how rare that was. As Logan's only daughter, Shiv had a front-row view of his misogyny. Logan is the man who dismissed the women who were raped and killed on the Waystar cruise line as "not real people." Shiv admits: "[Logan] couldn't fit a whole woman in his head," for he saw even the women he loved as possessions more than people. He wouldn't make Shiv CEO of Waystar due to her gender, he had his first wife committed, and he drove away the other two by pursuing younger mistresses.
Shiv holds back tears and says "You did okay, Dad" like she's trying to convince herself more than anyone else. Then she says goodbye to her "world of a father," with the faint hope this makes up for her not being tell him that in life.
"Succession" airs on HBO and streams on HBO Max at 9:00 p.m. EST.