Succession Is Ending After Season 4
The Roy family is going out on top.
Succession, the HBO drama about the fictional Roy family's media dynasty, will end after its upcoming fourth season.
As Succession creator Jesse Armstrong explained, the decision didn't come easily.
"I went into the writing room for season four sort of saying, 'I think this is what we're doing, but let's also keep it open,'" Armstrong said to The New Yorker in an interview published Feb. 23. "I like operating the writing room by coming in with a sort of proposition, and then being genuinely open to alternative ways of going."
Over the course of filming season four, however, Armstrong said the verdict became clear.
"The decision to end solidified through the writing and even when we started filming, I said to the cast, 'I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think this is it.' Because I didn't want to bulls--t them, either."
Armstrong, who has won five Emmys for his work as a producer and writer on Succession, admitted that being wishy-washy on a definitive answer for so long could have been "a psychological trick on myself, to stop being sad about stopping doing something which I really, really enjoyed."
Rumors about Succession's imminent end began to pick up steam after recent comments made by Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall Roy on the show.
In a GQ interview published Feb. 21, Strong said he envies "that freedom to just shoot yourself out of some different cannons. Sometimes Kendall feels like the same cannon over and over again."
Looks like he'll be getting that freedom after all.
As for what Armstrong plans to do next? Well, that's complicated.
"I imagine I'll be a little bit lonely, and wandering the streets of London in a funk, and wondering, 'What the f--k did I do?'" Armstrong said. "I'll probably be calling you up in about six months asking if people are ready for a reboot."
Tom and Cousin Greg road trip spinoff, anybody?
The fourth and final season of Succession premieres March 26 on HBO.
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