/Film Readers Disagreed With Succession's CEO Decision
We used to love Cousin Greg on "Succession," but now we hate him. The only trouble is, our readers never stopped loving him. The distant cousin of the powerful Roy family may have evolved — or devolved — more than any other member of his family over the course of the show. A once humble pot-smoking service worker transforms into an executive d-bag before our very eyes. Still, he never loses his ability to turn a phrase, his snail-speed wit, and his unassuming boyish charm. Even as he becomes just as despicable as the other characters around him, the audience still can't help but root for the underdog — and we've got the numbers to prove it.
Ahead of the recent finale, we took a Twitter poll to see who our viewers would choose as the next CEO of Waystar Royco if they were sitting on the board. Against all odds, Greg won by a significant margin of the vote — he pulled in 39.3%, to be exact. Kendall came in second at 28.5%, more than 10% less than his bumbling younger cousin.
Based on our coverage of Greg, the same poll among the /Film writers would have yielded totally different results. He became a totally different person in season 3, which was important for Greg's evolution. The Egg's true colors really start to show when he goes girl-crazy at Caroline's Tuscan wedding. He's never been much of a mastermind, but he has always been a bit conniving and materialistic, ever since his private conference with Logan in the pilot episode.
"Greg just wants stupid things: a new suit, good shoes," actor Nicholas Braun admitted of his character in a New York Times interview.
Readers thought Greg should be the next CEO
Cousin Greg might have been the least likely person to take over Waystar, but he ended up just as close or closer to becoming the next successor as anyone else in the poll. Kendall is obviously out of the running for life, but Gerri (who pulled in 20.6% of our pre-finale votes) and Shiv (11.7%) could still have a shot at the title if anything were to happen to Tom — maybe some old skeletons from his closet coming back to haunt him? Even Matsson seems to have a soft spot for old Gregory Pegory. Perhaps the littlest cousin in the big chair isn't such a crazy idea.
Even though these poll results don't align with all of /Film's coverage this season, they definitely aren't off-base. I actually had a theory that Logan left Greg the company when Frank discovered the addendums to his will. The old man went out of his way to minimize Greg's role on this mysterious piece of paper, described as "an addendum of miscellaneous matters, in pencil, with a question mark."
Logan took a quiet liking to Greg from the very beginning of the series. He saw his potential very early on, and even in moments he seemed to have squandered it, the CEO tolerated keeping him around. When Greg told the media mogul that his brother, Greg's grandfather, was threatening to cut him off if he didn't leave Waystar, Logan revealed his true feelings of affection for his grand-nephew (in a very Logan way). Greg had lost his leverage with Logan, but the rugged patriarch told him he liked him anyway, even though he had nothing to gain from him anymore. (One could view this as another case of classic Logan manipulation, but still.)
But there were only two people that Greg really needed in his corner in the end: Tom and Matsson. Luckily for him, those were the only two guys that ever really wanted him around in the first place.
Was Greg trying to take over the company all along?
In season 4, Greg becomes a double agent. He had always been Tom's sidekick and fellow Disgusting Brother, although his loyalty occasionally wavered. But when it looks like Tom is going to lose, Greg tries to warm up to the siblings, who are even meaner to him than Tom was. Still, by the grace of Tom, Greg still secures himself a spot at Waystar under its new regime.
Even though our readers' predictions didn't exactly come true, Greg ended up extremely close to the new Waystar CEO as his right-hand man, the world's highest-paid assistant. So how exactly did Greg go from zero to anti-hero (shoutout "Minutemen") over the course of the series?
According to the actor, Greg didn't exactly have a master plan from day one. He knows that he wants to be close to the whirling vortex of power that is Waystar Royco, but he isn't exactly sure what his angle is. "People sometimes ask, 'What is Greg doing in there? What does he want? Why does he keep hanging around?'" Braun explained. "We weren't playing these big long game things."
The truth is that Greg only ever hoped to be in proximity to this great wealth and power, to feed off the million-dollar scraps from the table, as Kendall so poetically puts it. The most he was ever hoping for was to take over his grandfather's seat on the board. If you look at it that way, he got what he always wanted: a seat at the foot of the table, nipping at Tom's heels. Even if the fans aren't happy with where this beloved character ended up, it was the only ending that the Gregletts really could've hoped for, and for that I can die happy.