The Women Of Succession Unite During Logan's Funeral, And It Rocks
This post contains spoilers for "Succession" season 4, episode 9, "Church and State."
Grief can do funny things to a person. One minute you can be icing someone out, convinced they'll end up on the opposite side of a complex estate issue as you. The next you can be sitting next to them at the funeral, quietly sharing memories of the deceased. That's exactly what happened to Marcia (Hiam Abbass) on this week's episode of "Succession," as the show made a surprisingly lovely pivot away from its cutting drama and satire to give Logan's exes a pure, united moment.
"Succession" has always cared more about what feels true to its characters than it has about what feels consistent for its story. Most shows would have crowned Marcia HBIC at Logan's wake and never looked back. If they bothered to show her again at all, it would be making an even bigger power move than the one she made when she kicked Kerry (Zoe Winters) out the back door. Yet "Succession" understands humankind's penchant for paradoxical mood shifts more than most shows, and it carries its knack for capturing power shifts and contradictory moments into Logan's funeral. There, the mood isn't actually all that cloudy — especially for the women.
'He couldn't fit a whole woman in his head'
"Succession" made it clear that Logan Roy (Brian Cox) was misogynistic, but it's not a fact many characters on the show have ever dared speak about. We've seen Logan wave away Shiv's (Sarah Snook) ambitions, support politicians who undoubtedly want to roll back the clock on women's rights, and cover up Waystar Royco's sexual assault scandals. It's not until his funeral, though, that Shiv (Sarah Snook) finally says the quiet part loud.
"It was hard to be his daughter, I can't deny," she says at the Catholic church where mourners gather. She seems to be speaking almost entirely off the top of her head, and this acknowledgment of Logan's biases bubbles up unbidden. "He was hard on women," she continues. "He couldn't fit a whole woman in his head."
It's a line that calls to mind the mythical birth of Athena, who sprung fully formed from the head of another man who was hard on women — the violent, patriarchal god Zeus. There's a heaviness to these lines, but Shiv sums up her feelings more succinctly earlier in the hour, in a conversation with Matsson: "I can do anything, my dad just died!" It's another statement that's paradoxical yet true; the event that threw Shiv's whole world out of orbit was also the most freeing thing that's ever happened to her. The man whose backward views of women informed her own entire worldview is gone, and there's a space in his stead that she can finally step into, spine straightening after so much time spent bending to his will.
'God, Logan would hate this'
This brings us back to Marcia. It seems Shiv's spirit of complex, low-key celebration is catching, as Logan's exes also operate a bit more freely than they did when he was alive. Caroline (Harriet Walter), usually the show's most sharp-tongued ice queen, decides to reach out to Kerry and ask her to sit in the front row with Logan's wives. Kerry looks shell-shocked — she brought a lawyer friend to help her get in the front door, after all — but she ends up sharing a pew with Caroline, Sally-Anne (whom Caroline describes as "my Kerry, so to speak"), and Marcia. In another episode, at another time in the series' run, this would've been a powder keg of a seating arrangement, but in the eleventh hour, "Succession" creator Jesse Armstrong seems more committed to putting small dramas to bed than he is to starting new ones.
The moment between Logan's exes and widows is brief but surprisingly sweet. Marcia makes a joke about his teeth grinding, then grabs Kerry's hand when she starts to cry. "God, Logan would hate this," Caroline says, but there's no sorrow in her voice. So many tiny exchanges between women in this episode contain the same thrumming undercurrent, not of joy, but of a muted sort of relief. The man who everyone described as a huge presence, a titan, a looming figure in the world and in their lives, is dead. He loomed doubly large for the women who knew him, and whose power was defined by his own and reconfigured according to his whims.
'He kept us outside'
With Logan dead, there's no hierarchy between the women who were in his life any more — at least, not in this church on this day. "Succession" has portrayed the enduring legacy of parental abuse (and, to a much lesser extent, spousal control) in a dozen different ways over the years, and I can say from my own perspective that all of them rang true. With these brief exchanges, though, it directly tackles a taboo that's rarely admitted to on-screen: feeling better or freer — even slightly so — because someone you loved, who also hurt you, died.
"He kept us outside," Shiv admits in her eulogy, "but he kept everyone outside." It's only fitting, then, that the women in his life use his death as a chance to let each other in, even if only for a moment.
"Succession" airs Sundays on HBO and Max at 9pm ET.