How the hell do you follow the third episode of this season of Succession, “Connor’s Wedding,” which killed off the drama’s long-reigning patriarch-protagonist, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), with a private-jet embolism? That’s the intimidating quandary that director Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler, Hustlers) faced when she returned to the Succession-verse to direct the bombshell episode’s follow-up, “Honeymoon States.”
“It was wildly daunting knowing that I was doing the one after [Logan’s death], which was a masterpiece,” Scafaria told Vanity Fair by phone Monday, crediting that episode’s director, Mark Mylod. Sunday’s “Honeymoon States” marked a major change for the Emmy-winning series almost midway through its fourth and final season: new episodes “without the big man.”
Save for a few opening shots, the entire episode—written by series creator Jesse Armstrong and executive producer Lucy Prebble—chronicles Logan’s penthouse wake, leading up to the Waystar Royco board meeting that determines Logan’s successor. “It was a bottle episode—all in one location, no bells, no whistles, just a real-time countdown until this board meeting,” says Scafaria, noting that the get-together “is not exactly the Scottish wake that Logan might have wanted.” But it was an appropriate send-off for a man who spent his life pitting those in his orbit against one another.
As Logan’s estranged wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), plays hostess to various power players paying their respects, two factions strategize: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin), who shared a rare emotional breakthrough during last week’s episode; and the old guard, Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Frank (Peter Friedman), and Karl (David Rasche), who are newly liberated by Logan’s death. The groups literally circle the penthouse like sharks—convening in different configurations in one interconnected room after the next.
“This apartment is a circle in a way—all the rooms are connected, at least on the main floor,” says Scafaria. “I kept thinking of ‘Ring Around the Rosie,’ sharks circling, and a tornado swirling—and about what happens when the person who is usually the gravitational pull isn’t in the room. It’s funny when they’re calling out Colin (Scott Nicholson) as a dog without its master. Roman, of all people, who has been referred to as a dog that Logan would kick.”
Even though Logan is gone in the earthly sense, a piece of paper discovered in Logan’s safe—selecting Kendall as his successor, with either an underline emphasizing the decision or a strike-through crossing it out—reveals that he is still unleashing chaos from the great beyond. “Once the piece of paper comes out, you realize he’s still pulling the strings,” says Scafaria.
Though the Roy siblings were united in grief in “Connor’s Wedding,” Sunday’s episode quickly sees Kendall, Shiv, and Roman jockeying again for their own individual ambitions. Ahead, Scafaria gives us insight into the Roy siblings’ arcs in the uncharted waters of their post-Logan lives.
Shiv
The episode opens with a shocking reveal: that Shiv, who is still mourning her father’s death, is pregnant. Though Shiv bared a vulnerable side of herself in “Connor’s Wedding,” Logan Roy’s lone daughter has already retreated into herself again when she receives a phone call from her doctor’s office.
“In this opening scene where she finds out the news, she has all these tiny, short words and sounds. You’re hearing this woman’s voice through the phone, and [Shiv’s] so aware of how someone is supposed to react to this news,” says Scafaria, who credits Snook’s facial expressions with displaying everything she cannot express verbally. “It’s interesting. I think it’s the most complicated range of emotions. People say, like, the two things that change you are losing a parent and having a child. And it seems like both of those things are happening to her at the exact same moment.” Scafaria points out that the news is all the more loaded considering Shiv’s tense Relationship with her estranged husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), and the bitter backstory she shares with her mother, Caroline (Harriet Walter). Caroline told Shiv last season that she regretted having children and that Shiv was wise not to attempt procreation herself: “Some people just aren’t made to be mothers.”