<em>Succession</em> Is a Game of Monopoly
The finale for HBO’s third season of Succession opens with a family session of Monopoly, a game that offers the perfect summary of the show: Players fight to be the last one standing—trading advantages and risking jail—going around the board over and over without a clear end in sight. But with the season’s exhilarating ending, has the game of Succession finally changed?
So far, each season has followed a different Roy sibling as likely successor as head of the family business: first Kendall, then Shiv, and now Roman. With that third season now over, how does Roman’s time as the Number One Boy stack up? And with Kendall as the show’s bloodied, beating heart, is every season fundamentally about him?
Sophie Gilbert, Hannah Giorgis, and Megan Garber discuss Tom, Shiv, and all the players in the Game of Roy. They also answer which Succession character they’d want to be stuck on a desert island with. Listen to their conversation here:
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. It contains spoilers through the ninth episode of Succession Season 3.
Sophie Gilbert: How is everyone? Have you been waiting three quarters of an hour for a gin and tonic?
Megan Garber: (Laughs.) I can’t say that I have, thankfully.
Gilbert: This is a reference, of course, to the epic line between Roman and Kendall in probably the most emotional scene from Sunday night’s season finale of Succession. I’ll start with you, Megan, but I wanted to ask you both: What did you think of the finale and of this season in general?
Garber: Oh, I really loved the finale. I thought it closed so many doors, but still left a lot open for further exploration. I mean, the Monopoly game that they played at the very beginning of the episode, that was genius. I agreed with you, Sophie, as you wrote in your early review, the show did feel stuck at the beginning of the season. It felt like we were just seeing a lot of the same plotlines and interactions happening over and over.
But by the end of the season, I felt that they had really resolved a lot of those issues, and made a point about what I think is the structural elements of the show’s satire, which is: So much happens, and yet nothing meaningfully changes. Despite all of the bombshells in the final episode, we’re fundamentally still in the same universe. There’s so much narrative propulsion, but very little structural change. And that felt satisfying to me as a viewer, but I also felt that it served the show’s satire.
Read: A perfect—and cyclical—Succession finale
Absolutely. I mean, the moment I finished the finale, I wanted to rewatch it, which is the highest compliment I can give anything I’m watching. I want to appreciate all of the dialogue—like, good
