Editor's note: This article contains major spoilers for "Connor's Wedding" Season 4.
The Succession universe has been upended in the third episode of the critically acclaimed HBO series' fourth and final season.
The patriarch of the dysfunctional Roy family is dead. Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, has finally initiated the very succession of the show's title by dying. Now the scheming siblings will have to accelerate their battle to the top, while awaiting the results of whatever is in Roy's will.
Even though the cast was prepared in advance via a Zoom call that informed them of Logan's demise, they say they were still unprepared for the final scene with the polarizing head of the family.
"When Jesse [showrunner Jesse Armstrong] told me that was going to happen, I wasn't totally surprised. It made sense, dramaturgically," says Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall Roy. "And then when I read the script, I found it shocking and emotionally devastating."
The siblings are gathered for Connor Roy's wedding on a yacht when the news comes in. Strong says that as he has been tasked to do many times before as a part of the Succession cast, he had to stretch to reach the demands of the role.
"Time and time again I'll be given something that is the limit of what I thought I was capable of as an actor," he says. "Here's my wall -- and you have no choice but to go through that. And this episode was one of those."
Cox, the accomplished Scottish actor who earned two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe Award for his work as Logan Roy, knew that his character's arc would come to an end at some point.
He told the New York Times that while he didn't anticipate it being so soon in the final season, and that it's always a challenging moment for an actor, he understands why it had to happen.
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"You feel, hang on, this is one of the greatest pieces of work I've ever been involved in and suddenly it's no more," Cox said in the HBO featurette released after the episode aired. "But it also it reflects what our existence is about because we're here for a time and then we're gone."
He added, "When you work with somebody who's a genius like Jesse it's always sad when it comes to an end, there's no question about it because you've had great respect. It's going to be hard when the public sees in episode 3 that Logan is gone because they've lived with Logan for so long. So, they're going to miss him."
The episode, titled "Connor's Wedding," was shot in an unusual 30-minute take to give it a more visceral feel. That involved stowing cameras around the yacht where much of the episode takes place. As film has to be reloaded every ten minutes, per director Mark Mylod, who also appears in the featurette, the actors were tasked with staying in the scene for what is an unusually long time for a TV series. They viewed it as akin to performing a one-act play.
"It felt like the most exciting episode we'd shot because it moves in real-time," said Kieran Culkin, who plays Roman Roy.
Australian actress Sarah Snook, who plays Siobhan "Shiv" Roy, says like the rest of the cast, she was surprised by her TV father's end, but told Rolling Stone her initial response was the same as anyone who watched the show.
"Like, Whoa! That's a huge swing. That's amazing from Jesse. In some ways, it was a long time coming," she said. "The premise of the first episode was, he was about to keel over. And there have been times in the third season as well, in the episode with Adrien Brody and Jeremy out at the island. There's always been an ailing quality to [Logan] despite his robust vigor. So the first question I had was, "So who takes over?"
And that should be the focus of Succession's final seven episodes to see where the manipulating, posturing, jockeying for position, and betrayals large and small have gotten everyone. Although the Roys are rich, the lure of the series has always been that dysfunctional families, rich and poor, operate very similarly under stress.
"There's a couple of factors in where Logan's death falls in our narrative trajectory," Armstrong says. "One is a sort of base one, that maybe it will surprise people. I am not immune from such thoughts as wanting to keep the show exciting and fresh. I think much more prominent was the feeling that if we do this, we don't want to see people crying, have a funeral, and be done with the show. We want to see how a death of someone significant rebounds around a family."