Who will ‘win’ in the ‘Succession’ finale? Don’t discount these extreme dark horses

As Succession prepares for its grand finale, fans are placing their final bets on the outcome. Not literally. Johnny Avello, Director of Racing and Sportsbook Operations at DraftKings crunched whatever number one can crunch over a fictional show(opens in a new tab)and has the smart money predictions for you:

Yes, the company is likely to be sold to GoJo, according to Avello. As for the more difficult question of who will reign (since exactly what they will reign over depends on the answer to that first question), the dullest answers are, in descending order of probability, Shiv Roy at odds of 5-2, followed by by Kendall, and then by Roman. If you’re looking for a lottery ticket bet, go with Cousin Greg. At odds of 50-1, he’s not the one to bet his house, but if he has some money to risk, a call from Greg could be huge.

But this is the beauty of fiction: literally anything can happen. Kendall’s son, Iverson, can be executive director if the writers so desire. Hell, there’s no law that says showrunner Jesse Armstrong can’t bring Logan back from the dead, or aliens materialize and take over Waystar Royco.

But somewhere between “boring” and “totally, unsatisfactorily out of left field,” are the dark horses. Tom, Frank, and Gerri are a few examples of CEOs who would make some pretty wild decisions, as well as probably great TV. But it doesn’t take much to imagine those scenarios in existence.

Here, then, are three extreme dark horses. None of these are likely, but I’m offering them as hypothetical anyway, because, if nothing else, they show just how much fun TV writers can be if they really let loose.

pedro ammunition

If you’re not a fan of Munion, you might need a reminder that Peter (played by Pip Torrens), Caroline Collingwood’s pathetic rock-climbing husband, even exists. After all, part of his character is that he’s easy to go unnoticed. It was in very poor taste when the Roy brothers’ new stepfather announced himself at Logan’s funeral by saying “Daddy’s here!” But it was true in a sense, and what if it suddenly became more true?

By the end of Season 3, you’ll of course remember that when the brothers tried to wrest control of Waystar from Logan, the old man’s control over the driver’s seat was maintained by appealing to his ex-wife Caroline. His divorce settlement once kept the Roy Family Holding Company, which owns 36 percent of Waystar, under the brothers’ control. But after renegotiating the divorce, the former couple put the brothers on ice so the sale could go ahead.

With Logan dead, by my calculations, Caroline controls, though not own — 36 percent of Waystar. One of Waystar Royco’s current CEOs has just been trampled, and the other is preparing to wage a boardroom war against his sister Shiv. However, all this confusion can be resolved and the GoJo sale can move forward if Caroline uses her considerable voting power to appoint another CEO. And since Waystar’s latest Wall Street heist was fueled by Living+, a new type of retirement home, bringing someone with experience in that area will certainly help, because other board members will need to vote for this person.

Well, it’s worth noting that Caroline is married to the CEO of Lavender Park Care Homes, a British nursing home chain: our old friend Peter Munion. Another victory for the awkward hangnails.

Surely, assuming Jeryd Mencken, with his America-first mentality, actually becomes US president, Britain’s Peter could never be promoted to CEO of GoJo, which would become Waystar’s parent company in this scenario. But assuming Shiv’s desire for that job is just a fantasy, and Matsson has other, bigger plans, Peter’s promotion to Waystar’s CEO position would make him look like the winner of the show anyway.

lorenzo yee

Rob Yang and Kieran Culkin in ‘Succession’
Credit: Peter Kramer Photography/HBO

The media landscape was a little different when Succession debuted in the summer of 2018, and the prominence of Vaulter founder and CEO Lawrence Yee (Rob Yang) reflected that. BuzzFeed and the other online media organizations that overcame their weight and inspired Vaulter were important news(opens in a new tab) and perceived as a threat to legacy corporations like News Corp. But that trend reversed during Succession‘s run, and now the idea of ​​a figure like BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti or Vice’s Shane Smith taking over a major conglomerate like Waystar entirely is, well, laughable.

But viewed in that light, Lawrence Yee’s return might just be the funniest outcome possible. If he Succession universe mirroring our own, Yee’s entire part of the media business, not to mention his own completely defunct company, would have quickly become an afterthought between season 1 and today. But lest we forget, Yee once had the ability to vote at Waystar board meetings, and she planned to use that ability to terrorize the Roy brothers, especially Kendall.

“You just invited me to the chicken coop,” Yee said at the end of the pilot, “and with no daddy around to protect you, I’ll eat them all. One by one.” He never did that, but what if he was just biding his time? There’s no easy way to make the math of this work work given the show’s existing plot machinations, but if we’re assuming something has been cooking in the background, probably some sort of plot from devious Sandy and Stewy, it could, perhaps, read as plausible.

Despite the need for a last-minute sweaty exposition dump, Yee is worth showing up in Kendall’s face as a jump scare towards the end of the final episode. She just envisions Kendall cowering in a small puddle as the end credits roll.

colin

Scott Nicholson at the season 3 premiere
Credit: Photo by Lexie Moreland/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images

As Logan’s body man, Waystar’s general problem solver, and the company’s absorber of human misery, Colin’s presence is like a ghost. When Logan sat across from him at dinner the day before he died, his mind couldn’t help but drift to the subject of death, because Colin (Scott Nicholson) is a reminder of the literal and figurative corpses that paved the way. towards death. The blood-soaked success of the Logan family. During Kendall’s brief moment as an anti-Logan horsefly, when he arrived at the Waystar office to give his opinion, Colin appeared only to mutter, “I know you,” and we know what Kendall saw when Colin said those words: the face of Andrew Dodds, the Scottish waiter for whose death Kendall is partly responsible.

Colin doesn’t even have a last name. Apart from the fact that he is married(opens in a new tab) and has a religious father, we don’t know anything about his backstory. But knows everything. From their conversation at the funeral, Kendall has now hired Colin to do for him what Colin once did for his Logan, and Kendall would no doubt love to think that by appropriating “best friend” and right-hand man from his father, he is becoming more like him. But what he’s really doing is flirting with the grim reaper that he can, anytime he wants, plunge his scythe into Kendall’s back.

If a real moral judgment ever comes to Waystar, Colin would likely be one of the first to be convicted, charged, and generally made to suffer. But so far, Colin doesn’t seem to be playing cousin Greg, he doesn’t keep a ledger of the dark favors he does for others so he can use them as currency. In fact, Logan’s death seems to have left a big hole in his life, and he’s looking for answers, including visits to a psychiatrist. Therapy is time well spent, and it could benefit Colin in particular if, through all that thinking, he has realized the power he has.

Once awake, an inaudible whisper in the ear of every Roy and Roy’s acolyte, and control could be Colin’s once and for all. And okay, this definitely won’t happen, but Colin’s unsettling potential is worth bearing in mind as we head towards an ending where the only sure thing is that something it will shock us.

The end of the series Succession airs May 28 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.(opens in a new tab)