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    With ‘Succession’ Complete, the Roys’ Next Takeover Is the Stage

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    Audiences are flocking to shows with Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and other alums of the acclaimed HBO series.There seems to be a secret ingredient to stage success this season: a stint on “Succession.”So many “Succession” alums are onstage in New York and London that the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, has been dashing from theater to theater, trying to catch the work of his colleagues. On a recent trip to New York, he saw four shows featuring “Succession” alums, including a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” one of the hottest tickets on Broadway thanks to its star performer, Jeremy Strong, and “The Effect,” an Off Broadway play written by Lucy Prebble, who is also among the producers and writers of “Succession.” In London, Armstrong saw “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a critically-acclaimed, one-woman adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic starring Sarah Snook, and is booked to see “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” starring Brian Cox.“We took a lot from New York theater,” Armstrong said, nodding to the many stage actors and playwrights who helped make “Succession” a success, “and I hope this season we are giving something back.”Arian Moayed, who played the investor Stewy Hosseini in “Succession” and starred in a Broadway revival of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” last year, theorized that the show had some theater-like attributes. “Part of what was cool about the show was that we shot it in a very one-act-y kind of way,” said Moayed. There are so many “Succession” alums onstage that one small downtown theater company in New York, Bedlam, advertised its current show, “The Assassination of Julius Caesar as told by William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw,” as “STARRING NO ONE FROM SUCCESSION.”Here is a look at where the Roys and their retainers are onstage now.Brian CoxBrian Cox as James Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” left, and as the distant patriarch Logan Roy in “Succession.”From left: Johan Persson; Graeme Hunter/HBOIn “Succession,” Cox played Logan Roy, the merciless media mogul at the heart of the series. Cox, a veteran stage actor (his résumé includes five Broadway shows), is now starring in London’s West End in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”Jeremy StrongJeremy Strong as Dr. Thomas Stockmann in “An Enemy of the People,” left, and as Logan’s ambitious, wounded son Kendall in the HBO series.From left: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; HBO, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Emmys Signal the End of the Peak TV Era

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      The Emmys on Monday night felt in many ways like a bookend to one of the defining features of the streaming era: a never-ending supply of new programming.As “Succession” cast members marched up to the Emmy stage on Monday night to grab their statues for the show’s final season, they used it as one last opportunity to say goodbye.Kieran Culkin, after kissing his co-star Brian Cox on the lips, gave a tearful speech while accepting the award for best actor in a drama. Matthew Macfadyen and Sarah Snook, who each won acting awards as well, gave loving tributes to fellow cast members. And Jesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” capped off the night by accepting the best-drama award for the third and final time and noting: “We can now depart the stage.”It all punctuated an end-of-era feeling at the Emmy Awards on Monday night. “Succession” was one of many nominated shows that had farewell seasons, joined by a list that included “Ted Lasso,” “Better Call Saul,” “Barry,” “Atlanta” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”But that was not the only reason that there was an elegiac theme to Monday night. The ceremony felt in many ways like a bookend to the so-called Peak TV era itself.Nearly every year from 2010 through 2023, the number of TV programs rose in the United States, reaching 599 scripted television shows last year.It may never hit those heights again.For more than a year now, studios and networks — including streaming giants like Netflix, cable stalwarts like HBO and FX, and the broadcast channels — have hit the brakes on ordering new series. Executives, worried about hemorrhaging cash from their streaming services, customers cutting the cable cord and a soft advertising market, have instead placed more emphasis on profitability. The monthslong screenwriter and actor strikes last year also contributed to the slowdown.With a more frugal approach, there is widespread fear throughout the industry about the fallout from a contraction.The Emmy nomination submission list gives a snapshot. The number of dramas that the networks and studios submitted for Emmy consideration dropped 5 percent, according to the Television Academy, which organizes the awards. Entries for limited series fell by 16 percent, and comedies by 19 percent.At after-parties on Monday night, there was considerable angst at just how much thinner the lineup would probably be for the next Emmys.Some television genres seem to be in some degree of peril. Limited series — six to 10 episodes shows that became a sensation over the past decade, particularly after the 2014 debut of “True Detective,” the 2016 premiere of “American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson” and the 2017 start of “Big Little Lies” — have been a hallmark of the Peak TV era. The shows stood out in part because of the big stars and lavish budgets involved.At the 2021 Emmys, the statue for best limited series was the final award presented. This had long been a designation for best drama, and it signaled an admission by organizers that the category had become television’s most prestigious prize.Not anymore.As part of programming budget cuts, executives now see significantly less benefit to deploying lavish resources to a show that ends after a matter of weeks.Once again, investing in series with lots of seasons is a much bigger priority. And there is a good chance that television may start to look a lot like television from a couple of decades ago.Executives at Max, the Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service formerly known as HBO Max, are looking for a medical drama. “Suits,” a 2010s legal procedural from the USA Network, became an unexpected streaming hit last summer, after millions of people began watching reruns of the show on Netflix. “Next year, you’ll probably see a bunch of lawyer shows,” Netflix’s co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, said at an investor conference last month.To wit, Hulu recently ordered a project from the star producer Ryan Murphy that will chronicle an all-female divorce legal firm.Of course, Peak TV-era quality television is not going away. “The Bear,” the best-comedy winner and already the runaway favorite for the next Emmys, will return. Also coming back are “Abbott Elementary,” the beloved ABC sitcom, and “The Last of Us,” HBO’s hit adaptation of a video game, which won a haul of Emmys.Even the origin story of “Succession” seems tailor-made for the new television era. When HBO executives ordered the series, they wanted to put their spin on a classic television genre — a family drama — but had low expectations. The show did not command “Game of Thrones” or “Stranger Things” budgets. It was light on stars. Armstrong was not a brand name yet. And yet, it became a hit.Less than an hour after the Emmys ceremony ended, when Armstrong was asked at a news conference what he would turn to next, he demurred.Instead, he reflected on the past.“This group of people, I don’t expect to ever be repeated,” he said, of “Succession.” “I hope I do interesting work the rest of my life. But I’m quite comfortable with the feeling that I might not ever be involved with something quite as good.” More

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      ‘Prisoner’s Daughter’ Review: A Family Drama Tale as Old as Time

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      Catherine Hardwicke’s latest film is a compelling, but conventional redemption story.Several moments within the director Catherine Hardwicke’s latest film “Prisoner’s Daughter” contain glimmers of promise, each one regrettably smothered by a pedestrian script from Mark Bacci. Fresh from his epochal stint as Logan Roy on the series “Succession,” Brian Cox stars as Max, a former boxer and criminal enforcer who has spent the last 12 years in prison. When Max receives a terminal cancer prognosis, the warden offers him compassionate release, provided he can reside with his estranged daughter, Maxine (Kate Beckinsale) and her son, Ezra (Christopher Convery).Maxine grudgingly accepts the arrangement — under the condition that Max pays rent — given her dire financial situation. Between inconsistent work and little help (if not outright sabotage) from Ezra’s unstable father, Tyler (The All-American Rejects frontman Tyson Ritter), Maxine struggles to afford Ezra’s epilepsy medication. But inevitably she begins to repair her relationship with Max, who also becomes a devoted father figure to Ezra, much to Tyler’s chagrin.Of course, we’ve seen this tale many times before, and far better executed. Despite committed performances from its cast (particularly Cox, arguably miscast for all his best efforts), the writing resists exploring what makes this story worth telling. The script denies its characters depth beyond their circumstances — struggling single mother, repentant father — and thus, their relationship, too, remains hollow and archetypal. More frustrating still, the film forgoes any critique of the prison system, in all its stifling bureaucracy; and what allows Max to survive outside of it — especially as an older man who has spent so many years incarcerated — goes largely unquestioned.Prisoner’s DaughterRated R for language and some violence. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Quiz: How Well Do You Know ‘Succession’

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      Photo credits: HBO (‘Succession’); Shannon Fagan/Getty Images; Ezra Bailey/Getty Images; vm/Getty Images; skynesher/Getty Images; Martin Barraud/Getty Images; Jennifer Smith/Getty Images (candle); E! (Kendall Jenner); Christof Stache/AFP, via Getty Images (Ken doll); Daniela White Images/Getty Images (mashed potatoes); Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times (turducken); Dorling Kindersley, William Reavell/Getty Images (curdled cream); Stockbyte/Getty Images (raisin); Fabrice Coffrini/AFP, via Getty Images; Simon Dawson/Bloomberg, via Getty Images; and Zheng Huansong/Xinhua, via Getty Images (Davos)
      A quiz by Tala Safie. Produced by Josephine Sedgwick, Sean Catangui and Amanda Webster. More

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      Unpacking the Roy Family in That Pivotal ‘Succession’ Episode

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      The Roy family has never felt more human than it has in this season’s third episode — or more alien.In her 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described the five emotional stages of people at the end of life: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Kübler-Ross’s model has since been popularly applied to the grief process. The implication is that all of us who live, love and die are in this way the same.“Succession” appears to have done its psych homework. In the tour-de-force episode “Connor’s Wedding” — spoilers begin here — the Roy siblings learn by phone of their father Logan’s fatal collapse, while he is on a jet crossing the Atlantic, and begin racing through Kübler-Ross’s stages.One part of the show’s genius has always been its portrayal of the superwealthy Roys as both deeply human and alien. As it is in life, so it is in death. The Roys’ reactions are, broadly, familiar to anyone who’s ever gotten similar news. It’s in the particulars that this family is very different.Let’s start with denial. In one sense, Logan’s death may be the least surprising big surprise in HBO drama history. His health has always been shaky, and the show’s very title asks what or who will come after him. But when the inevitable suddenly happens, instinct still kicks in: This can’t be real.“Real,” as any viewer of “Succession” knows, is a key word for the Roy family. It’s a measure of worth, separating people who are “real” — important, worthy of concern — from those who are merely numbers on a ledger.It’s also a fraught term for characters who grew up in a, shall we say, low-trust environment. “Is this real?” Shiv (Sarah Snook) asks, with good reason, when Logan (Brian Cox) offers in Season 2 to let her take over his media empire. It’s the series’s refrain: This deal, this promise, this expression of love — can I take it to the bank?So when Roman (Kieran Culkin) manically refuses to accept the news — “What if it’s a big [expletive] test?” — yes, he is being irrational. But he is also operating by the logic of the only reality he has ever known. What isn’t a test with Logan? His last words to Roman were to order him to fire his lieutenant Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), with whom Roman had a bond (and occasional rounds of masochistic sex chat). When Roman hesitates, Logan asks, “You are with me?”About Logan’s death, Roman keeps repeating, “We don’t know.” And the episode, written by the creator, Jesse Armstrong, and directed by Mark Mylod, cleverly puts the viewers in his position. We can see inside the plane, but we can’t see much of Logan, only the crew performing compressions on a body. Only when Shiv spills her frenzied last words into his cold ear do we finally see his face. I will admit to having wondered if Roman was right. Yes, it would be insane for Logan to fake his death. But a side effect of growing up Roy is learning to read your most intimate family moments as potential plot twists and fake-outs.Anger and bargaining, in Roy World, tend to operate as a team. There’s anger at Logan, of course. Each Roy child sputters a word salad of love and hurt and fury into the phone. But anger is also a reaction to helplessness. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) demands to have “the best airplane medicine expert in the world” brought onto the call, growing frustrated and incensed, as if he could cheat Death by demanding to speak to its manager.From the beginning of the phone call to when we cut to the corporate-response discussion aboard the plane is less than 20 minutes, and Armstrong packs a lifetime into it.Every line, every image, speaks to the moment and to decades of family trauma and relationships: Roman’s forcing himself to say that Logan was a good dad, then handing off the phone like it’s radioactive; Shiv’s becoming at once a terrified girl and a furious grown daughter; Kendall and Shiv’s holding hands as they go to break the news to their half brother, Connor (Alan Ruck), on his wedding day. (Ruck has done spectacular emotional work with comparatively little screen time, and he does it again here: “He never even liked me.”)By the time we return from the plane to the wedding yacht in New York, depression is creeping in. And acceptance — well, that too has a different meaning in this family.Logan (Brian Cox, left) as seen with Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) moments before Logan’s plane ride flies him into the Great Beyond.David Russell/HBOThe Roys live in an environment where everything is personal and nothing is entirely private. Your family is your family, but it’s also a business. Your father’s death is your father’s death — bound up with a lifetime of resentment and thwarted love — but it is also a “material event” that requires disclosure. (“Succession” is known for its clever, filthy dialogue, but it also has an ear for the bland brutality of business-speak.) Your emotions may be complicated and genuine, but their expression is inevitably tactical. As Kendall says, “What we do today will always be what we did the day our father died.”Your father is the man who loved you or hit you or molded you or disappointed you, but he is also an expensive corporate asset, an asset that has now failed. And its failure must be announced and adjusted to, even as you adjust to the fundamental reordering of the universe.The dialogue shifts seamlessly from shock to grieving to maneuvering. The firmament has shattered. God — or the devil, or both — is dead. That vacuum must be filled, and the deluge prepared for, whether you are family, staff or, like Shiv’s estranged husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), an unhappy bit of both. “I have lost my protector,” he says, like a “Game of Thrones” bannerman realizing that his head may soon part company with his neck.It’s a bold and potent move for Armstrong, who has one of TV’s greatest actors in Cox, to give us none of this from Logan’s point of view. We don’t know what he was thinking at the end. We, like his children, don’t know what he felt or if he heard their last words. There is no closure, no satisfaction. He will forever be a question mark at the center of the universe.Instead, a scene from the season’s first episode amounts to his last testament. Restless and unsettled at a birthday celebration that Kendall, Roman and Shiv have chosen not to attend, Logan ends up at a diner with his body man, Colin (Scott Nicholson), whom — is it possible to pity Logan Roy? — he calls his “best pal.”To his wary companion, Logan launches into what now sounds like a deathbed monologue. “What are people?” he asks Colin, and then answers his own question: “What is a person? It has values and aims, but it operates in a market. Marriage market, job market, money market, market for ideas, et cetera.” And while he is a winner in the judgment of the market — “a hundred feet tall” where most people are “pygmies” — he doesn’t seem to feel like one.At last, he asks Colin whether he believes in the afterlife, and again, Logan supplies his own answer. “We don’t know,” he says. “We can’t know. But I’ve got my suspicions.”Those suspicions were confirmed or denied on an airplane floor thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean, a most appropriate choice for “Succession.” The series is about people untethered to place, who move from vehicle to vehicle, from one antiseptic luxury space to another.So this is a most fitting end for Logan Roy — to die in no country, in the expensive no-space of a corporate jet, his last moments relayed to a yacht docked off the financial district, where the market will weigh and digest his death as it does all human effort and sorrow. As Roman says, a plunging chart line on his phone indicating Waystar Royco’s share price: “There he is. That is Dad.”There is one vehicular transfer left for Logan Roy. We end the episode at Teterboro Airport, where his shrouded body is deplaned and loaded into an ambulance. Kendall looks on, taking a private, pensive moment before what comes next: The period when his father’s passing becomes a news event, and most likely, a contest.Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance belong to us all. But for a Roy, there is a sixth stage of grief: ambition. More

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      Brian Cox Takes Stock of His Eventful Life on Stage and Screen

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      I’m such a fan of the HBO series “Succession,” about a morally depraved, megarich media family, that I hum its theme song in the shower and have taken to wearing commanding pantsuits. So when I picked up “Putting the Rabbit in the Hat,” the new memoir by Brian Cox, who plays the family’s tyrannical patriarch, Logan Roy, I was desperate for tidbits to tide me over during the long wait for Season 4.Well, there aren’t many. Cox writes gruffly of a newcomer director on the show giving Kieran Culkin, who plays his youngest son and is an ace at mixing up the script, notes to “slow down.” “Now, this is an actor who’s calibrated the patterns of his character’s delivery over the course of two previous seasons,” the author thunders, or so I imagine (as Roy, he’s a big thunderer). “He’s not going to suddenly slow down just because you’ve given him a note.”Brian Cox, whose new memoir is “Putting the Rabbit in the Hat.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesCox confides furthermore that he doesn’t really relate to the intense, Method-like “process” that Jeremy Strong uses to get into the character of Kendall, Logan’s middle son. Fans already knew about Strong’s tactics from a profile of him in The New Yorker that was chewed over for weeks after it was published in December. Some perceived condescension in the article toward Strong’s working-class background, including an anonymous Yale classmate having marveled at his “careerist drive.”The heated discussion was fascinating and perplexing. When did acting become so bougie and aspirational? Wasn’t a working-class background once a key element of the Hollywood success narrative — getting yanked out, discovered and made over by the savior figure of agent or studio executive? Think Cary Grant (born Archibald Leach, son of a tailor’s presser), Lana Turner (miner’s daughter), Ava Gardner (child of sharecroppers) and all those other glamour figures of yesteryear.A humble background didn’t hinder Cox, who has gone from leading man of the British stage to one of America’s most prolific and consistent character actors — what is sometimes called a “jobbing actor,” though he now has the clout to negotiate a chauffeur, nice hotels and a double-banger trailer. Nobody rescued Cox, the consummate utility player. “I knew that simply wasn’t my ballpark,” he shrugs, on the subject of Hollywood stardom. “Besides, I’m too short.” He’s written two previous memoirs, one that tracks him to Moscow to direct “The Crucible” and another about the challenges of “King Lear.” Taking stock at 75, he’s not so much a lion in winter (indeed, he was fired as the voice of Aslan in the Narnia movies) as a seasoned workhorse finally able to enjoy a victory gallop.Cox writes eloquently about his origins in Dundee, Scotland, as the youngest of five children who occasionally had to beg for batter bits from the local chip shop. His parents met at a dance hall; his mother had been a spinner at jute mills and suffered multiple miscarriages and mental illness; his father, a shopkeeper and socialist, died when Brian was 8. Getting plunked in front of the telly rather than taken to the funeral was formative. So were later escapes to the movies, particularly ones like “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (1960), starring Albert Finney: “a film that wasn’t all about the lives of posh folk in drawing rooms, or struggling nobly in far-off places, or having faintly amusing high jinks on hospital wards,” Cox writes. “It was all about working-class people — people like us.” A kind teacher told him about a gofer gig at the local repertory theater and boom, he was home.Brian Cox and his fellow cast members of the HBO show Succession.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesCox went on to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and perform in esteemed halls like the Royal Court, learning the classics but also grooving nicely with the rise of the angry young man and kitchen-sink realism led by the playwright John Osborne, with whom he became friends. Before very long he was working with his gods, including Finney.At a time when theater, the fabulous invalid, is straitjacketed by the pandemic, it’s heartening and a little wistful-making to have it recalled in all its messy midcentury glory. Cox fluffed a flustered Lynn Redgrave’s wig; got felt up by Princess Margaret backstage; narrowly escaped dying in a plane crash on his way to audition for Laurence Olivier. Years later, as Lear in a wheelchair, he “frisbeed” his metal crown into the first row at the National Theater, injuring an audience member. He once compromised his testicles during a naked yoga scene. In the leaner years, he booked bikini waxes and cohabited with an army of cockroaches in a sublet apartment. There was drunkenness aplenty; one actor playing the priest in “Hamlet” got so soused he tumbled into Ophelia’s grave.Cox, who prefers cannabis to drink, can ramble on a bit. If times ever get lean again, it’s easy to imagine him doing bedtime stories for a sleep app. He salts all the idolatry with disdain. On Kevin Spacey: “A great talent, but a stupid, stupid man.” On Steven Seagal: “As ludicrous in real life as he appears onscreen.” On Quentin Tarantino: “I find his work meretricious. It’s all surface.” (Though he’d take a part if offered.) He’s softer on Woody Allen, owning up to himself dating an 18-year-old when he was in his 40s. “It seems that everybody in this book is either dead or canceled,” he notes with some rue. He’s preoccupied with making a “good death,” cataloging friends’ ends with an almost clinical relish (cancer, emphysema, suicide, a heart attack so massive it threw the victim “clean across the pebbles”).Like many actors, Cox treads more nimbly on the boards than in his personal life. He admits he wasn’t fully present for family tragedies, like his first wife’s stillborn twins and their daughter’s anorexia. “And that’s my flaw,” he declares. “It’s this propensity for absence, this need to disappear.” He loves the part of Logan partly because, when not thundering, he’s “reined in and bottled up.” But on the page, at least, he is present, lively and pouring forth, though the hints of his distinctive burr may send you heading for the audiobook instead. More

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      Succession Season 3: What You Need to Know From Season 2

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      Two years have passed since Season 2 ended, and the alliances and schemes were as layered as an insult from Roman Roy. Here’s a quick catch-up guide.Because of the pandemic, the HBO drama “Succession” has been on hiatus for two years. People who had never seen “Succession” when it racked up seven Emmys last year had plenty of time to catch up ahead of Season 3, which premieres on Sunday. But fans who haven’t seen an episode since the Season 2 finale aired — back in October 2019! — could maybe use a refresher.In that finale, the emotionally unstable corporate stooge Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) detonated a bomb under his family’s media empire, delivering damning evidence of a criminal cover-up at a news conference where he was supposed take the blame. It was an unforgettable cliffhanger, capping an eventful Season 2.Here’s a quick overview of what this show’s major characters and companies were up to before Kendall knocked everything askew.From left, Sarah Snook, Strong and Brian Cox in the Season 2 finale. Who will be the sacrificial lamb?Graeme Hunter/HBOWaystar RoycoThe show’s primary setting — and its main plot driver — is the media conglomerate Waystar Royco, a powerful corporation known primarily for its Fox-style conservative cable news channel, ATN. (The similarities to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation are, to put it mildly, intentional.) The company is also active in online media, publishing, entertainment, theme parks and cruise ships. Through the first two seasons, Waystar has been under attack from politicians and business rivals, and has been the target of multiple attempts at both negotiated mergers and hostile takeovers.In Season 2, news leaked that top Waystar executives had buried internal reports about a longtime associate in the company cruise line: Lester McClintock, nicknamed “Uncle Moe” (as in “moe-lester”). McClintock, now dead, had a history of sexual harassment and assault — and possibly murder. The scandal has led to embarrassing media investigations and congressional hearings. It’s what ultimately prompted Kendall to betray his father, Logan.Brian Cox as Logan Roy, in one of his quieter moments.Graeme Hunter/HBOLogan RoyIn the series’s first episode, Waystar’s irascible, monolithic, octogenarian founder, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), was felled by a stroke. The timing wasn’t great: He had just been about to announce a plan of succession, which would have seen him stick around as his company’s chief executive while his third wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), would have the power to name his eventual successor. The medical crisis set off a scramble, dividing the Roy children and Waystar’s inner circle of advisers.Logan recovered … sort of. (He has had multiple public moments of unprovoked fury and foggy memories since the stroke.) By the start of Season 2, he had called in enough favors and played enough on his family’s sympathies to bring most of his loved ones and his associates back together — although Kendall’s power-play in the Season 2 finale proved how tenuous that truce actually was.A complicated and volatile man, Logan had a childhood in Scotland marred by want and abuse. His relationship with his children and his underlings has been pretty raw at times, with Logan defaulting almost by habit to psychological manipulation and fits of rage. His capriciousness has tested his marriage to Marcia, who toward the end of last season grew frustrated by her husband’s rumored affair with Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), a rival media magnate he tried — and failed — to sway into running Waystar.Strong with Nicholas Braun, who plays Cousin Greg, in a scene from the coming season.David M. Russell/HBOKendall and GregOne of the few members of the Roy family who seem genuinely excited by corporate jargon and robber baron blindsides, the longtime Logan loyalist Kendall rebelled in Season 1 after realizing that his father had no intention of naming him as next in line. He then orchestrated a plan to steal the company from his father before a relapse into substance abuse — culminating in a tragic car accident at his sister’s wedding — led a newly contrite Kendall back into the fold.In Season 2, Kendall settled into a role as Logan’s shameless hatchet-man, willing to humiliate himself and to eviscerate the undeserving to promote Waystar’s interests. But his dad’s demand that Kendall take the fall for the cruise ship scandal went a step too far, prompting him to pull the big switcheroo in the season finale’s climactic news conference.Kendall’s unlikely accomplice in that ambush is his cousin Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), the grandson of Logan’s disapproving brother Ewan (James Cromwell). The gawky, bumbling Greg is a frequent target of the Roy family’s jokes and bullying — a fate that he accepts as a trade-off for access to their money, power and drugs. In Season 1, he smartly held onto some damning documents about Brightstar’s troubles, anticipating the moment when he could use them as leverage.That moment arrives after the family openly considers adding some “Greg sprinkles” to whomever they serve up on a platter to take the fall for the cruise fiasco. And after Kendall finds himself in need of a plan.Matthew Macfadyen and Sarah Snook as Tom and Shiv, whose marriage is … very complicated.Zach Dilgard/HBOSiobhan and TomIt’s hard to say who in the Roy family has been most hurt by Kendall and Greg’s betrayal, but the situation is pretty dire for Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), the husband to Logan’s daughter, Siobhan (usually called Shiv, played by Sarah Snook). A former executive in Waystar’s parks and cruises division — and Greg’s immediate superior — Tom not only knew about Uncle Moe’s crimes but also helped in the cover-up.At the end of Season 1, Tom learned — on the day of his wedding, no less — that his then-fiancée, Shiv, wanted to have an open relationship. He suffered through that arrangement for most of Season 2 before finally admitting his unhappiness in the finale. A major part of Tom’s frustration has to do with his taking a thankless position at ATN in hopes of setting himself up for more responsibility down the line … only to find that Logan had secretly named Shiv as the big Waystar successor.As for Shiv, she quickly learned last season that her dad’s promise to let her take over was a ploy to keep his left-leaning feminist daughter under his control rather than allow her to cozy up to political enemies. As soon as Logan saw the potential advantage in setting up Rhea as the next in line, he let Shiv dangle. Ever since, his daughter has been staying publicly faithful while working behind the scenes to sabotage her rivals and get back onto Logan’s radar as a future Waystar boss.Roman and Gerri (Kieran Culkin and J. Smith-Cameron): also complicated.Peter Kramer/HBORoman and GerriThe Roy family’s unexpected Season 2 all-star was Logan’s youngest son, Roman (Kieran Culkin), a notorious cynic and an unapologetic slacker, who suddenly set out to prove to his father that he could make smart deals on Waystar’s behalf. While Kendall has wanted to lead the company into a new era and to protect his dad’s legacy, and while Shiv has wanted to distance Waystar from its toxic reputation, the incorrigible troll Roman relishes the idea of running a powerful organization that annoys a lot of people.Roman surprises even Logan by securing enough foreign money to take Waystar private — before advising his father to reject the deal and to try working with someone closer to the family’s political interests. For his industriousness, Roman is named Waystar’s sole chief operating officer (a position he previously shared with Kendall) in the Season 2 finale.Throughout this shift toward ambition and guile, Roman has been quietly assisted by Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron), a longtime Waystar lawyer who has worried often that her boss might throw her to the wolves to save himself. As she has whispered ideas in Roman’s ear, the two have developed a freaky quasi-sexual relationship, in which Gerri turns him on by playing the demanding mommy figure.Justine Lupe and Alan Ruck as the aspiring playwright Willa and the Roy brother from another mother, Connor.Zach Dilgard/HBOConnor (and company)Kendall, Shiv and Roman are Logan’s children from his second wife; but the siblings also have an older half brother, Connor (Alan Ruck). Connor has never been that active in the family business, opting instead to spend money and promote himself as a libertarian firebrand.In Season 2, these hobbies create headaches for Logan. Connor announces a run for president of the United States, arguing for free market reforms that wouldn’t serve Waystar’s interests. At the same time, he pours much of his fortune into the Broadway dreams of his ex-sex-worker girlfriend, Willa (Justine Lupe), who has written a flop play. Logan handles both of these problems at once, agreeing to cover his son’s showbiz losses in return for his dropping the presidential campaign.Connor is a minor “Succession” character compared to some; but while this show’s cast is huge, the creator Jesse Armstrong has had a long-term narrative use for nearly everyone. A case in point is Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed), who was introduced in Season 1 as an old friend of Kendall’s with enough money to help get Waystar out a financial jam; he has since become a pesky enemy, determined to hold onto his stake in the company and to outlast the Roys on the board.Anyone could end up being a power-player in “Succession” Season 3. This is a show where loyalties shift overnight, and no grudge is forgotten. More