Succession is finally back after a grueling two year hiatus compliments of the global pandemic. The first episode of season three starts just moments after Kendall made his surprise announcement in the season 2 finale. Both Kendall and Logan are manning their “action stations” and establishing their teams. It looks like this season will be full out warfare between the two factions.
We learn that Kendall’s “decent move” (as Logan describes it) was perhaps not as well thought out as it originally seemed. He hadn’t really considered the fact that as he’s trying to bring down his dad and the company that he wouldn’t actually be working for that company anymore and thus not allowed to use the company car or get into the office. In this initial confusion, Kendall ditches Carolina, which is also surprising. Given the fact she was a prominent figure during Kendall’s announcement at the end of last season, I really thought that she would be part of his inner circle, and although she still might be, she was sidelined for this episode.
Someone who re-emerges after a long break from the show is Kendall’s ex wife Rava. She was almost completely absent from season 2 and it really seemed like the show forgot about Kendall’s family for the sake of convenience but I think they are going to play a much bigger role this season. Whether that is a good thing remains to be seen, family man Ken was not nearly as fun a character as coked out Kenny, but maybe we will get a happy medium. Ken, Greg and the entire team hold up in Rava’s apartment using it as a headquarters for the time being.
Meanwhile, Logan and the rest of the family are trying to figure out their next move. Logan seems much more unstable than when we last saw him and I think we are in store for some truly memorable Logan freak outs this season and a record shattering number of “Fuck Offs.” There is even mention of Logan’s mother. I’ve always been interested in knowing more about Logan’s backstory and especially his relationship with his sister that was mentioned in season 2, hopefully we’ll get a few more Logan nuggets this season.
Eventually, Logan decides on settling down in Sarajevo due to the lack of extradition to the U.S. There are illusions to “The Raisin” in the white house making it seem like this season takes place towards the end of Donald Trump’s first presidential term. It’s going to be interesting to see if the show takes an alternate history angle and shows a completely different presidential election than the one we saw in 2020.
Most of the action with the Logan team happens over phone calls in empty airport lobbies or on private jets. This makes sense with the flow of the episode but there is a sense that at least some of the filming was affected by the pandemic and the show was forced to keep their sets a little bit more contained. Overall, there was something that felt a bit off about the filming of this episode that seemed for a lack of a better word, cheap.
There is a scene with Roman in an airplane bathroom telling Logan that he wants the job of interim CEO, but if not he’d be okay with it going to Gerri. The scene is shot with an extreme close up on Roman’s face that is unlike any shot that the show used in the first two seasons and kinda felt out of place. However, this might be indicating that the show will put a larger focus on Roman this season. Each season the title sequence is slightly different and I could have sworn that they inserted a few extra Roman shots in there.
Logan eventually decides to go with Gerri as CEO, which leads into a weird, yet tender, scene between Roman and Gerri in their hotel room. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it but I think we are setting the stage for a Roamn Gerri sex scene at some point this season, so perpare yourselves. The decision to make Gerri interim CEO only comes after Shiv failed to secure high powered attorney Lisa Author (played by Sanaa Lathan) as Logan’s new lawyer. It turns out that Ken got to her first, one of his many victories in this episode.
Shiv is in a state of limbo at the start of the season, she isn’t CEO or in line to become CEO, her relationship with Tom seems to be on the rocks and her future is incredibly uncertain. However, Ken does reach out to her trying to make an alliance (mind you Ken reached out to just about everyone on Logan’s team to make alliances). But, I think Shiv will eventually jump ship and join Kendall putting the kids on opposite sides of the conflict. Shiv’s character took a major beating last season making one bad decision after another that has put her in a position with absolutely no leverage. I’m hoping she can turn things around, especially because Sarah Snook is one of my favourite actors on the show.
Towards the end of the episode, Naomi Pierce shows up to the Kendal headquarters and she directs Greg to open an old bottle of wine that was a gift from Rava’s godfather that she was saving. This could have been a ploy by Naomi to get under Rava’s skin and mark her territory or it could have been that Naomi is so rich that she simply thought this super special bottle of wine was just ordinary. I guess we will find out Naomi’s intentions as the season goes on but right now, she seems like a chaos agent that will cause Ken to slowly (or not so slowly) lose control. Ken keeps reiterating that she is “good for me” which leads me to believe that she absolutely is not.
The episode ends with Logan finding out that Kendall has beat him to the punch in getting Lisa Arthor and declares that they will be going with another lawyer named Leo, could that be Adrian Brody’s character? And Logan empathically tells his team that they are going “full fucking beast” making me believe that this season will be full carnage rather than the back room dealing and polite negotiations that happened in season 2 with the Pierce subplot.
I thought that this was a pretty strong start to the season. I did feel that at times the writing wasn’t quite as sharp as I remember it being.The frantic nature of the episode was an interesting change of pace and I enjoyed seeing everyone on their heels. Jeremy Strong and Brain Cox were both throwing absolute heaters in this episode and I suspect that they will be this way for the rest of the season, so I think the other characters will have to find places to shine amongst these two giants going at it. I hope that this manic energy subsides a bit in the episodes to come but I think that it might take a few weeks to get everyone fully situated on their respective sides. I still don’t really have any idea what the rest of this season is going to look like, the great thing about successions first two seasons was how the entire paradigm of the show could just change on a dime, so I fully believe that there will be plenty of twists and turns and backstabs this season, can’t wait.
Oh also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the wonderful Alan Ruck as Connor Roy, he only got a couple of lines this week and no mention of his presidential campaign (although how awesome would it be if Succession does an alternate history where Connor Roy faces off against Donald Trump for the Republican ticket). Connor did have one of the more memorable lines this week in response to an alternative marketing strategy for his girlfriend Willa’s play: “ jump on the ironocycle and make it into a thing, for the hipsters and the dipshits”
