The gut-punch series finale saw the Roy siblings reunited before another biblical betrayal. Here’s your order of service from a rug pull-packed climactic episode, titled All the Bells Say …
Kendall, you had us worried
Last week ended on a shattering cliffhanger as the clearly inebriated Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) submerged his face in a swimming pool and appeared to stop breathing. The Gatsby-esque moment hinted at the tragedy we’d been dreading all series. This week’s ambiguous opening scene teased us that the worst had indeed happened. Logan (Brian Cox) was reading Judith Kerr’s elegiac Goodbye Mog to his grandson Iverson and talking about Kendall in the past tense.
Sighs of relief all round when he reappeared alive and well. Or as well as a hangdog husk of a man with a penance buzzcut can be. PR rep Comfrey (Dasha Nekrasova) had found “Kurt Cobain of the floaties” just in time. Kendall nearly drowned and was kept in hospital overnight but waved it off as “too many limoncellos, fell off an inflatable, no biggie”. Now he was talking to new lawyers about posting all the incriminating documentation on his Insta.
“Let’s go see Hans Christian Anderfuck and see if he’s been telling us fairytales.” The goalposts had moved on Waystar’s bid to buy tech company GoJo since its CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) decided he wanted a merger of equals. GoJo’s market cap had now overtaken Waystar’s and Matsson was weighing up other options.
Logan and go-between Roman (Kieran Culkin) flew to his Swiss pile to salvage the deal. GoJo’s platform and Waystar’s content were a good fit, but Matsson played hardball: “We’re flying like a rocket ship, you’re sinking like a lead balloon.” Matsson proposed that he take over the newly merged firm. He’d let Logan retain the assets he loved. Roman would be “crucial to the integration process, the face of the family”. The rest of Waystar’s top team? Not so much.
Logan couldn’t swallow this. However, he sent Roman back to his mother’s Tuscan nuptials while he stayed to discuss asset swaps and side-deals. Something was afoot. And since dick pic-gate, Roman was suddenly out of the loop.
The siblings staged an intervention
For the first time since episode two’s doughnut-interrupted chit-chat in Kendall’s daughter’s bedroom, all four siblings sat down together for pastries and pass-agg sniping. They told Kendall they were worried. Still denying he’d been suicidal, he said they had no right to stage an intervention when they all needed one too.
Shiv (Sarah Snook) told Ken: “You’re addicted to booze, drugs, relationships, sex, work and the family drama.” Well, aren’t we all? Kendall replied: “Do you have any idea how it feels as the eldest son to be offered something, then have it taken away?” At which point, Connor (Alan Ruck) exploded. He was the eldest son, he repeatedly insisted. Besides, presidential wannabe Con was rattled by talk of the GoJo merger because Matsson wanted to “de-platform us maverick thinkers”. Going full Cameron-from-Ferris Bueller, he huffed off.
We were still in Chiantishire for the swish wedding of Lady Caroline Alexandra Helena St John Collingwood (Harriet Walter) and Peter Timothy Mungo Munion (Pip Torrens) – possibly a gold-digger, certainly a social climber.
Party gossip? Connor was convinced Logan was trying for a baby with PA Kerry (Zoë Winters), hence his nut-munching and super-smoothies. Greenpeace-suing Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), now quite the ladies’ man, was playing off Comfrey and the Contessa (Ella Rumpf). Most juicily, Shiv and Roman got wind that Matsson’s financiers had landed in Switzerland. Mergers and acquisitions experts were in town, too.
Waystar’s vice-chair Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) and CFO Karl Muller (David Rasche) flew out to huddle up with Logan, who’d set up a war room – missing his ex’s wedding, much to unctuous Munion’s dismay. Roman admitted to Shiv that Matsson had floated the idea of buying out Waystar. Was a deal being done behind the siblings’ back? Full of white-hot fury, Shiv reached out to Kendall. Avengers assemble.
The other ‘happy’ couple
“Will you make me the happiest man alive-slash-most bulletproof candidate in the world?” Connor was fretting on his still unanswered proposal to girlfriend Willa (Justine Lupe), wailing: “My family hates me, I’m gonna lose ATN to a Swede so my campaign is fucked, you’re gonna leave me and I love you.” Oh and he couldn’t get the air-con level right in their suite either.
In an acceptance almost as romantic as the proposal, Willa said: “You know what? Fuck it. How bad can it be, right?” Con was cock-a-hoop. Weepy Willa regretted it almost immediately.
Ken came clean
The three siblings gathered by the bins (how glamorous) to discuss strategy, but watching the wedding waiters meant Kendall’s mind was elsewhere. In a heart-rending scene, astonishingly performed by Strong and Culkin in particular, Ken confessed about the Chappaquiddick-esque crash. “I’m a killer,” he sobbed, echoing Logan telling him he wasn’t in last season’s finale.
After turning full evil pixie in recent weeks, Roman demonstrated that he had a heart after all. He reassured Kendall it was an accident and he’d heroically tried to save the caterer’s life. “You’re not a killer,” he said, joining crumpled Kendall on the ground. “At worst, you’re an irresponsibler.” Damp-faced and dusty-trousered, Kendall was led away in his brother’s arms.
Meanwhile, Shiv got confirmation that GoJo was buying Waystar. Logan was cashing out. Matsson would take control. After three series battling to be Logan’s successor, a “slab of gravlax” was about to steal the throne.
The siblings scrambled to stage a coup
In a thrillingly propulsive sequence, the siblings united to torpedo the deal. Even Roman sheepishly admitted they “made a good team” as they drove to confront their father. In the Scooby van, Kendall explained there was a legal way to stop it. Logan needed a super-majority vote from the holding company, in which they had large stakes as part of the divorce settlement from Caroline. He needed their sanction for a change of control.
Roman balked at the prospect, until Kendall pointed out that Matsson “will Romanov you”. Shiv told some home truths too: “Dad will never choose you because he thinks there’s something wrong with you.” Recalling how his father had treated him since Chekhov’s dick pic, Roman’s resolve stiffened. And was Kendall up for trying to take down his father again? “Pass me the shotgun. I’ve basically been planning this since I was four.”
Shiv proposed pushing out Logan on grounds of ill health, leaving the siblings to run the company together. She phoned husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), told him the plan and asked him to make it a fait accompli by announcing on ATN. “Is he in?” asked Kendall, to which Shiv replied: “Yeah.” But was Tom really?
Back at the wedding, sad-eyed Tom was at pains to check where the new-look corporate landscape would leave him. He buttonholed Greg for a heart-to-heart. “Who’s ever looked after you in this fucking family? Wanna come with me, Sporus?” he asked in a callback to episode four’s Emperor Nero weirdness. Greg agreed to “make a deal with the devil”. Was the devil Logan in this scenario? After last week’s backfiring dirty talk and parenting prevarication, was Tomlette finally breaking rank from his power-wife?
In a climactic showdown, Logan told his children this was the “optimal moment” to make a deal. He tried to divide and conquer as usual, first telling Kendall to get out, then cosying up with Roman. It was impossible not to feel proud when Romulus stood firm. Logan promised their futures were assured. Nobody trusted him any more.
When Roman begged his dad to call off the deal, with the temerity to use words like “please” and “love”, Logan delivered the killer blow. Misogynistically mocking Shiv’s talk of super-majorities, he got their mother on the phone. He’d already redrawn their divorce agreement in exchange for “giving the seat-sniffer a leg up” (presumably wangling Munion a seat in the Lords). The siblings were powerless. Even Gerri (J Smith-Cameron) abandoned poor Roman. Victorious Logan charmingly told his children to “fuck off, you nosy fucking pedestrians”.
“Mom, you just slit our throats,” said a shell-shocked Shiv. But worse was to come. As Tom arrived, she saw Logan put an affectionate paw on his shoulder. Shiv realised he’d warned the battle-hardened patriarch they were coming. She became breathless at the betrayal. Just before the credits rolled, her eyes turned shark-like and her face hardened. A dramatically dizzying switcheroo which reset things beautifully for another season of Shakespearean psychodrama.
The heir apparent
As the series closed, Tom was left in pole position. You can’t say it hasn’t been coming. It had also been him who told Logan where to send the doughnuts of doom.
