Succession Is Over. Why Did We Care?

For five years, the series and the question of who would end up in charge captivated a chatty swath of the TV audience. But did anyone really win in the end?

This article includes spoilers for the series finale of Succession.

For nearly five years now, certain homes and offices and the punchier corners of social media have dilated around a billion-dollar question: Which wounded nepo baby would succeed Logan Roy, the founder and chief executive of Waystar Royco, as the head of a baleful empire that includes cruise ships, theme parks and ATN, a scaremongering media conglomerate? Turns out: None of them. On Sunday night, with the second son, Kendall, poised to take it all, his younger sister, Shiv, betrayed him. The company would be sold to Lukas Matsson, a Swedish tech anarchocapitalist, with Shivs husband, Tom Wambsgans, as C.E.O.

And while the problem of who had won the presidential election was left open, the shows fans were reassured that Willa, the wife of Connor, the eldest Roy scion, planned to redecorate Logans townhouse with a cow print sofa.