New Trailer for ‘Succession’ Season 4 Promises Final Showdown With Logan Roy

Succession

Brian Cox, seen here in a scene from Season 3 of 'Succession,' returns as media mogul Logan Roy in Season 4 of the Emmy-winning series, which returns in March. Photo: Macall B. Polay/HBO

The new trailer for Succession Season 4 is here, and with it we get a glimpse into the Roy kids’ final battle against their media magnate father Logan Roy (Brian Cox, 76), who outsmarted them in Season 3’s finale.

Promised to be the final season of the show, the trailer sees Roy siblings Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) scheme to outmaneuver their father for control of the family’s global media empire. The plan, offered up by Kendall, involves partnering with the enemy, Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed), Sandi Furness (Hope David) and Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones).

 Meanwhile, Logan appears to have the ATN staff preparing for war and chanting his name.

“I’m going to build something bigger, faster, wilder,” he says with his typical intensity. “I want to kill the opposition, cut their throats,” he adds before declaring: “We are pirates!”

The fourth and final season consists of 10 episodes and will debut on HBO March 26.

— Andrew Wright

 

‘Succession’ Season 4 Teaser Trailer Delivers the High Drama and Trademark Wit

 

The first teaser trailer for the fourth season of the award-winning HBO series Succession dropped on Thursday. And, while it doesn’t tip its hand too much when it comes to what’s in store for the feuding Roy family, it does offer two staples of the Emmy-winning series: high drama and hilarious one-liners.

Succession is, and always has been, about the intergenerational battle for power over a global media empire between father and media mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox, 76), three of his four children — Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) — and various spouses and longtime company execs who play to one side or the other. The series — which takes inspiration from the real-life Murdoch family and their own battles over patriarch Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire — is riveting in its depiction of a singularly horrible family, made up of individually horrible people shifting allegiances in an increasingly hostile and risky power grab.

When last we saw the Roys at the end of Season 3, siblings Kendall, Shiv and Roman had put aside their differences in an attempt to oust their father from Waystar Royco and prevent the sale of the company. Shiv’s husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen, 48), however, betrayed the younger Roys and spilled the beans to Logan, aligning himself with the patriarch and bringing cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) along with him.

Side note: Succession fans will no doubt delight in seeing the endlessly entertaining duo of Tom and Greg back together for Season 4. As the now-legendary second season line goes, “You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking some Greggs.”

The trailer, meanwhile, amps up the drama around what comes next, with Shiv noting, “We wanted to do something together. This is not about getting back at dad. But if it hurts him, it doesn’t bother me.”

Elsewhere, Kendall tells Roman that their new strategy, whatever it may be, is “a tightrope walk on a straight razor. A 500 foot reputational drop.” When Roman asks why Kendall smiles when he says that — adding, “Who likes tightrope walking a straight razor?”— Kendall offers a knowing, and surely disconcerting, look. Which, given his proclivity for self-destructive behaviour, not to mention the demons he’s battling from previous seasons, may not bode well for the Roy siblings’ cause.

Neither, in fact, does the warning from WaystarRoyco exec, and Logan loyalist, Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron, 65), who point blank declares, “You cannot win. Your dad will wash you away.”

The trailer doesn’t offer much in the way of hints as to what the Roy siblings’ next moves could be beyond attempting to negotiate a phone call with their father. Though the oldest sibling, Connor Roy (Alan Ruck, 66), who foregoes the family drama to pursue his own delusions of running for the United States presidency, is shown marrying his not-so-in-love-with-him partner Willa (Justine Lupe).

That said, the trailer does offer more of the show’s trademark hilarious one-liners that have spawned countless memes over the last few years.

In one instance, Tom asks Logan if their business partnership will remain intact should he and Shiv divorce.

“We’ll always be good, right?” Tom asks.

Logan replies with the vague and not-at-all reassuring, “If we’re good, we’re good,” to which Tom responds with a visibly nervous, “Okay, well that’s heartening. That’s heartening. I’m heartened by that.”

And later, to cap off the trailer, Tom attempts to explain the gravity of the situation to Greg: “This is a chessboard and every move is crucial. Like Israel-Palestine, Greg. But harder. And much more important.”