“Barry” is back, and the fourth and final season of the Emmy-winning HBO series picks up pretty immediately where Season 3 left off. Bill Hader’s hitman-turned-aspiring-actor is in prison for the murder of Janice Moss, and the revelation that Barry is a killer has reverberations for everyone on the show. The first two episodes of Season 4 premiered on Sunday night, and TheWrap spoke with Hader – who directed all eight episodes of this final season – about putting it all together.

In the following extended Q&A, Hader talks about the alternate opening scene that was considered for the start of Season 4, an abandoned idea that would have seen the specter of Barry’s father appearing throughout the premiere episode, putting together Sally, Fuches, Gene, Hank and Cristobal’s storylines for Season 4, and the suggestion from Paul Rudd that made it into the first episode. Hader also talks about crafting those two extended oners, thinking he broke his hand in the scene where he punched a wall and the thematic thrust of this final season.

Read the discussion below and check back every Sunday night as we’ll be breaking down each and every episode of “Barry” Season 4 with Hader right here.

Note: The following contains spoilers for “Barry” Season 4 Episode 1 and Episode 2.

How did you decide to begin the season immediately after Season 3 ended?
I think because we end Season 3 with a big cliffhanger, it’s just a question as to where everybody’s at. I think when we started the season we thought, “What’s the feeling of that?” I felt it was important to see everybody’s initial reaction, specifically Sally’s. It became very clear to me that Episode 1 needed to be everybody’s kind of dealing with their own personal fallouts, wins and losses from the end of Season 3, and Barry getting caught has to kind of affect that. So that was kind of the drive of it.

So Barry’s first phone call is to Gene, and he asks if he’s mad at him, which is very funny.
Yeah. “Did you trick me?” gets such a big laugh in the edit room, we all laughed so hard and no one ever laughs at that. Barry has become like Homer Simpson. He’s become just progressively dumber each season.

How did you hit upon the notion that Barry and Fuches would be in the same prison together?
That was a really interesting thing, the number of discussions and the amount of hand wringing and going back and forth and research and everything of what were the chances of them being put in the same prison? I actually went back and looked at it, the first iteration of Episode 1, the opening scene was Barry with his lawyer and the lawyer’s saying, “So this is what they’ve got on you,” and it basically was like “You’re f–ked.” And then it was him being transferred to another prison, and then when he’s transferred into that prison, you cut to him in the lunch room, and he’s eating at that prison, and then he walks by and then you reveal Fuches is in that prison. You do this a lot where you’re just trying to get the emotion right of Barry’s at a loss, and then that seems boring. So then there was another opening for the season that started with Gene Cousineau teaching the acting class. You see him on stage, and then he brings Barry up and he goes, “Barry, what scene are you going to do for us?” and then you see that the audience is basically every character that’s ever been in the show.

And Barry was basically apologizing and then in the middle of it he’s hit and you see that there are two security guards on stage beating him and you cut to the people in the audience watching it kind of like they’re watching a scene, like they’re kind of interested. And then they walk offstage and we push in on him, and the stage morphs into a jail cell. [HBO’s head of comedy] Amy Gravitt said, “This feels pretty didactic, Bill.” (Laughs) She said, “I feel like you kind of want to slow it down a bit. It’s the first episode, people need to get their bearings.” So then I went back and wrote the thing that you saw, which is we start with a press conference. He’s in jail and he calls Cousineau. The information that we were gonna get through in that scene with the lawyer we got through with him calling Cousineau and Cousineau just saying, “I got you.” So that’s basically how we got to the opening, but we didn’t really hit on that until Season 3 had completely aired.

I’m also curious how you guys hit upon Sally’s storyline. I love her freakout in the car with the button that she’s at a Sonic.
Yes, you and I being from Oklahoma, we understand how important Sonic is. The Sally storyline, it was very important to show she goes back home and so what’s that home life look like? And we had different versions of that, and like everything, we had too many scenes and then we just kind of honed it down to what you see. I remember we wrote a scene where she goes to her old high school and you see a big picture of her in “Cabaret” in high school and she was this big hit. And the teacher comes in and recognizes her and she takes the thing off the wall, so there was this whole thing like the town didn’t like her was one idea we had and it was just too much. So it was like let’s just get it down to, again, what’s the emotion? Initially, that scene wasn’t at a Sonic, it was at home and it was more on the nose kind of dialogue. Then you whittle it down to its bare essentials and then say, “What tells the story in an interesting way?” and let’s have her have a panic attack, and then her mom’s reaction just says a lot.

Everything with her parents is really revealing.
Yeah, she comes from a pretty nice house but is emotionally very locked off. I also like it when she goes, “Can I be alone?” and the dad goes, “Yep, I know the drill.” That just kind of gives you a lot of context on what her life was like and how she was treated by her folks. I think that the feeling that we got between those two is that they prove truly that the mother couldn’t handle having like an overdramatic daughter. And Sally just was ignored by her mother from a young age. I really like that scene where they get in a fight. A couple of people say that that’s a tough scene for them to watch.

Tell me about Hank and Cristobal in Santa Fe.
Yeah, they’re in heaven. They’re in their perfect place. It’s what they always wanted. That’s what interested me, let’s see these two guys having exactly what they wanted and they’re safe, and then almost immediately – much like Barry and Gene and Sally – they’re unable to turn off their nature. The woman mentions the sand and the wheels are spinning with them, they can’t help it. They’re criminals. Cristobal’s dream of having both things — legitimate and that you can be a crime lord and do this and also be in a loving, caring relationship. Early in the writing process, we said it’d be really interesting if Cristobal and Hank tried to recreate the thing they were doing in Season 2, the crime Utopia. And then we hit upon later that Hank is going back because Barry got caught.

I loved the rain stick at the restaurant.
That was Duffy Boudreau’s pitch, that that would be like playing the violin. That actor actually played all of “Pony” by Ginuwine on the rain stick and it was really great but it was just too long.

Seeing Barry kind of reckon with himself at the prison is really interesting. He says if he hadn’t tried to understand himself, they wouldn’t be there.
(Laughs) Yeah, “This is what introspection gets you.” I always thought it was funny, it’s a thing that can be relatable where you try to better yourself and then other things cause a chain reaction that blows up. It’s kind of like someone goes to therapy and then they realize, “Oh, my parents were really shitty to me,” and they stop speaking to them. His storyline and the Fuches storyline kind of bounce off each other. For Barry, the two people that he cares about more than anything basically told him to go f–k himself, and he goes back to the father that he felt was manipulating him, and in doing so gives Fuches the thing that helps him which is an apology. We knew early in that first episode, I think it always kind of stayed that Barry should apologize to Fuches. We cut a moment where initially, as written, when Barry saw Fuches he started chasing him in prison and Fuches was like, “Oh I’m about to get killed.” A kind of action scene where you’re like, “Oh, he’s about the killed” and then instead it was Barry chasing him to apologize to him, but it was really stupid. You don’t chase someone to apologize to them.

And then another thing I’ll tell you that we cut out was for a long time in the draft, the specter of Barry’s dad was in a lot of those scenes. So there was this ghost of Barry’s dad telling him where he f–ked up. It was very much supposed to be a nice companion to see Sally and her family then you saw Barry and his dad, and the dad we were looking for well-known actors to play that part. Then it became like, “These scenes are just someone telling Barry what to do.” The initial ending of Episode 1 for a long time was we had this thing of Sally walking away from him and then it was like someone from the acting class and they would kind of disappear into darkness and he didn’t see them again. And then you saw Fuches, he’s wearing a wire and he’s on some sort of duty thing mopping or whatever and Barry attacks him and starts beating him and he’s almost about to kill him and then you hear this, “Stop, Barry!” and he looks up and it was his dad. Like the specter of his dad saying, “Monroe has done so many great things” and all that stuff.

It was just really corny and did not work. It’s one of those things where you’ve got to write that stuff to kind of, at least in my experience, you write it to try to understand it and then once you get to that version and you live with it, you get sick of it. You go, “It shouldn’t be this,” and then by switching a couple of things and getting rid of the dad suddenly it worked. It’s a long road to make it simple, which is kind of a reoccurring theme.

What you got to is one of the most striking scenes of the series where Barry is at rock bottom in the bathroom, berating himself and acknowledging that he’s a bad person. What was it like shooting that?
Yeah, Jermaine, the guy who played the guard, I thought was just wonderful in that scene. He was a day player and that’s a tough position for an actor to be in to come in and deliver this big speech and you don’t know anybody. I thought he did such a good job, especially his face when he gets angry, I thought was just wonderful. But I think something that was interesting was that to see Barry at rock bottom. When I initially did that take, I thought it was good. And then (first assistant director) Gavin Kleintop and (writer/producer) Duffy Boudreau and (unit production manager) Aida Rodgers all kind of came into that set that we were in and they go, “We think we should go again,” and I was like, “Ugh.” I was so annoyed because I thought I did a good job (laughs). I think it was pretty over the top or something. Everybody’s usually like, “Oh let’s just go again” and Duffy, by virtue of being my friend for so long, he’ll be like, “It just feels like acting.”

So I went back and I was really annoyed and so I kind of was walking back and forth and then I started hitting myself. I could hear Wade Allen, our stunt coordinator, on the other side of the wall go, “There he is,” (laughs). And then I punched the wall and there’s actually a pad there – effects took it out. So I hit this pad and the minute I put my hand down on the sink as the guy is going, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, relax,” right then I thought I just broke my hand and that’s in the take we used. I’m like trying to stay in it but I’m going, “I think I just broke my hand.” My hand was just crazy swollen. It was like my ring finger and pinky were fused together, so for the rest of that scene, if you notice I’m on the ground and you cannot see my left hand because I’m hiding it.

Did you break it?
No I just hurt it. The actual term was, “You jacked it up.” And again, you see your influences where you do a thing and you’re thinking, “Man, this is really something, I’m really original here,” and then I’m like, this is like that scene in “Raging Bull” when he’s hitting the wall (laughs). But it was important to see him at his lowest point, and when there’s nothing left and no one left for him, he admits what he is. It’s a twofold thing. He admits what he is, but he also admits it in a way to get something, it’s a suicide-by-cop kind of thing. There was also a version where instead of hitting the wall, I was biting my finger. It was really crazy. Just to see him hurt himself and hating himself and he doesn’t want to live, and then it was really important to bring back that sound of the sky opening up. The “he’s going to die” moment. And then when he closes his eyes and he goes in his mind to a place where everything’s gonna be okay, it’s this kind of weird vision of him as a boy running and being free in this field.

Let’s talk about Episode 2, which reveals that Fuches knew Barry as a kid.
I think we kind of always knew that within the writers room. I told Stephen how to play it is I think you’re a guy that knows he’s probably never going to have kids and this is your buddy’s son and you like kids. And that’s how he played it and it was very sweet. I think that was always an important part of it, to really underline how much of a father figure Fuches is, and it also plays into other aspects that when you see the whole season will make more sense.

One of the best scenes is when Sally visits Barry in the prison, where he says “I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t tell you the part I didn’t want to be true.”
That’s a Liz Sarnoff line, she wrote that line and I went, “Oh my God, that’s the line.” I liked it being between the glass and on the phone where they’re static-y, it gives it this kind of otherworldly thing or this distance between them and they’re trying to connect but they don’t even sound the same and Barry’s beaten up. He looks hideous. The mask is off now, and this is the real him, this kind of weird, deformed guy.

My recollection of it was Sarah and I just went in and did it and we did not do a lot of takes. I think I did one close-up of both of us and maybe two takes of our wide shots. It was all very much clicking on the day and Sarah was unbelievable. What she does with the phone where she’s like, “You make me feel safe” and she kind of holds it out. That was great where she says that and Barry really latches onto that and she stands up and knows exactly where to stand so that half of her is in frame and half of her is out of frame. I’m so happy that Don, our camera operator, did not pan up with her. He let it cut off and it’s just her hand. I was so thankful, because any camera operator their job is to follow the actors, and he knew the power of it was to not see her face.

Tell me about putting together this incredible shot of this flashback that then turns into a wedding.
So I wrote a vision that Barry was having in prison and it was Sally and a kitchen and they have like a baby in a highchair and she says, “Oh, I made breakfast for you” and here’s the paper and all this stuff and he walks over and sits down in his prison uniform with his face all beaten up and it was kind of like, “Oh, this is the world that he can have after that talk with her and she said, ‘You make me feel safe.’” And again Amy Gravitt said, “We’re really spoon-feeding the audience here.” So I got that note really early and wrote what you saw. I don’t know why. I can’t really describe what that is. But a lot of Italian movies do that. It’s like a white blank space and you see like a party or something happening. Fellini movies and then also there’s a movie “The Night of the Shooting Stars,” these great Italian films, they tend to do that and I always liked that imagery.

So I’m sure it kind of came from that and then the idea of going into this wedding and then landing on Barry and Sally as an old couple. There’s something that just felt right about this idea of a future to get a life together. That he’ll be happy to grow old with somebody, and the idea that a wedding takes him there.

The way we shot that was that that’s two different shots put together in editing. So that’s a wall that we brought into a banquet hall into a hotel and we shot the people running against the wall and then it revealed them at the banquet hall and then the other one was then we went out to the desert like two months later, in Lancaster we shot the scene that you see with them coming towards you. The groom is Luca who’s my longtime stand-in on the show. He and the actress who plays the bride deserve so much credit because they were able to match their movements perfectly. Once they hit the wall and those sconce lights come on, they were able to match their movements perfectly.

Our cinematographer Carl (Herse) was concerned that it was going from bright daylight to a dark banquet hall, so we made a thing where there was a hallway that we brought all the way out there with lights and stuff. It was a lot of work to do that shot and then you have the sconces turned on and all that stuff, and then someone said, “What if they just come in and we just close a curtain behind them?” It was a pretty big team effort.

Where did the idea of Hank and Cristobal doing their big sitdown at Dave and Buster’s come from?
That was from me and Duffy Boudreau. I think initially it was going to be at just a warehouse. In the same writers meeting we came up with two things, we decided it would be more interesting if this was at a Dave and Buster’s, and then the other thing was when Gene first met with the Vanity Fair reporter it was initially at a restaurant. We were like, “This just seems really crazy because people would see them and he’s like notorious right now,” so that’s when we came up with the idea of the One-Man Show. And the scavenger hunt, that’s one of my favorite jokes – Duffy wrote that where he’s like, “How’d you get here, a rocket ship?”

I love the “Desperado” song playing at Gene’s show.
I was telling Paul Rudd about the show and I said there’s a scene where Henry Winkler gives a One-Man Show to one person and I said I’m trying to figure out a good song that can be playing as they’re waiting and he said, “Oh my God, you should have this children’s choir singing ‘Desperado.’” So he gave me that idea. And for Gene it’s like he couldn’t help himself. He can’t help his nature, and his nature is to be narcissistic.

Was the scene at Dave and Buster’s at the roundtable all one take?
Yes, all that is one take. That is Take Four where they were they nailed it. Anthony (Carrigan) and I both had the same idea at the same time, which was that he should run around to get back to his mark, which was really fun. And then like “The Untouchables” and Robert De Niro walking around the table, there’s always those scenes where they try to get the crime gangs together and they’re all at a table, like “The Godfather.” And then there’s always the guy who brought them together as always kind of walking around the table giving them a big speech about here’s what we have to gain if we all work together, but it was funny just to do it.

How did you go about putting together the whole FBI storyline?
I think the FBI thing came about because in reality, this is a very high-profile case. As we went through it, we said to ourselves, well Barry has killed high-profile people. He’s worked for different crime organizations. That’s something that would be helpful to the FBI. It was a lot of discussion to get to the simple thing of the FBI goes to Fuches. They’re like, we’ll give you a witness protection program and a deal if you get Barry on tape admitting to other crimes. And then Barry apologizes to Fuches and Fuches says, “F–k it. I love you. We’re together and we’ll be able to make this happen together.” And it’s the team back together and then Sally comes and instead of hating Barry, she says, “You make me feel safe.” So then Barry sees like, “Oh, there might be a chance of me having a real life.” So he takes Fuches’ deal, which we thought was very funny. It takes us such a long time to figure that out. But then once you figure it out it’s really simple and very funny, and it was emotional. That’s the thing, it’s all driven by emotion.

Then this other thing that starts to come up that was very conscious was this idea of everyone performing and how you perform in life. Having Cousineau literally perform for the Vanity Fair reporter. And when Sally gets there in the visiting room, she’s like, “Hi, how are you?” She’s performing, she’s trying to put on an act to get information. And Cristobal and Hank at Dave and Buster’s, they’re performing. And the lawyer, the first thing he says is, “What is this, an audition? I don’t do auditions.” So that was very conscious.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

“Barry” airs Sunday nights on HBO and HBO Max.

Following last week’s emotionally devastating bombshell, the fourth episode of the final season of “Succession” opened by tossing a nuke-level development, then shrugged it off and got down to what the show’s always been about: business.

With the title question of who will inherit leadership of the Waystar Royco media empire now that patriarch Logan Roy is dead, his three contentious children Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Siobhan’s (Sarah Snook) newfound camaraderie is tested by their individual ambitions. The siblings, along with other family members and Waystar executives, honor his memory in a way Logan would have appreciated: by slicing one another’s throats as figuratively and verbally as they can.

There’s a hushed, corporately decorous feel to “Honeymoon States” compared to the emotional paroxysms of Episode 3. But make no mistake; blood’s left all over the imported marble floors of the fallen billionaire’s Manhattan penthouse by the time this installment is over.

Intimate Evenings

Episode 4 opens with the Roy siblings in their separate dwellings, concerned about their father’s death (or in Roman’s case, brushing his teeth like any other morning). Shiv gets a call telling her the amniocentesis looks great. In a lesser, less-disciplined show, confirmation that the leading lady is pregnant would suck up the rest of the episode’s oxygen. But that’s the last we hear of Shiv finally expecting a baby this week.

Protected by his trusty sunglasses, Kendall enters the lobby of his dad’s building to hear one of the company’s PR pros, Fisher Stevens’ Hugo, shouting at his daughter’s voicemail. She’s really put the strap-on to him, (hopefully) metaphorically speaking. Exiting the elevator into Logan’s penthouse, Ken’s surprised to see his stepmother Marcia (Hiam Abbass) receiving mourners. She was supposed to be shopping in Milan forever, as we were informed in the season premiere.

“We spoke every morning and afternoon, so I came as soon as I heard,”the third wife explains. “We were very close. It was complicated. But we spoke intimately every evening.”

Reeling from this TMI talk, Ken finds his brother and sister in another room. Wicked exchanges immediately kick off.

“Death becomes her,” Shiv says of Marcia.

“Where’s Kerry?” Ken asks about the assistant Logan cavorted with through his final days.

“In Marcia’s trunk. Inside an anaconda. Inside a sarcophagus,” Roman speculates.

Shiv notes their dad’s calendar indicates he hadn’t seen Marcia for seven weeks. Ken asks if she got the “intimate calls” memo. Shiv considers suing the stepmother for the thought of Logan doing phone sex. She then suggests a huddle since, sad as the day is for some, for others it’s a coronation demolition derby.

The Kitchen Cabinet

Her estranged husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) shares a glance with Shiv before he walks into another room where the Waystar execs are gathered. They’ve got to make a recommendation to the board as to who should replace Logan, now an interim position before the still-planned sale of most of the company to Swedish tech mogul Lukas Matsson goes through. To keep their deliberations out of bereaved ears, vice-chairman Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) suggests “looking at the china.” Tom, PR head Karolina Novotney (Dagmara Domińczyk), general counsel Gerri Kellman (G. Smith-Cameron) and CFO Karl Muller (David Rasche) follow Frank into the kitchen.

While the siblings are blowing off an over-solicitous Cousin Greg, Matsson calls Roman’s phone. Ken wants to do five — when does he not? — to get their ducks in a row before speaking to the prospective buyer. No wonder the execs are discussing the kids in the kitchen. The velvet viciousness could be cut with a no-doubt nearby chef’s cleaver.

“If the message we gave is that the kids are, y’know …” Karl nonproposes.

“Screwups and dips—s,” Tom suggests.

“Maybe not constitutionally well-equipped at this point to take on the role,” Karl finesses.

Gerri and Karl test the waters for themselves. She deploys a speargun.

“Look, I think you’re a corporate legend,” she tells Karl. “What you did in the ‘90s with cable? Huge!”

Ouch! Sounds like David Zaslav speaking to HBO.

Tom, noting that he’s sick with grief, tells the distinguished veterans all he’s ever wanted is to serve.

“Oh, you’re sick with grief?” Gerri has reloaded. “You might want to put down that fish taco. You’re getting your melancholy everywhere.”

Eviscerating Tom is turning into this season’s top-rated blood sport. When he plows ahead and puts his hat in the ring, kind-voiced Karl frames the question the board might ask him, as a friend, just so he’d be prepared.

“You’re a clumsy interloper and no one trusts you,” he tells Tom. “The only guy pulling for you is dead. And now you’re just married to the ex-boss’ daughter and she doesn’t even like you. And you are fair and squarely f—d.”

Sympathetic Devils

Five having passed, the kids call Sweden back. A guy calling himself Oskar, no doubt a functionary from Matsson’s GoJo company, answers Lukas’ phone.

Rome asks if Lukas is there.

“Oh, ah, no,” Oskar replies. “He went now,” he says.

Shiv wants to know if he’s still buying Waystar.

“Oh sure man. Maybe,” Oskar responds, applying English as a second language to Swedish business purposes. . Oskar passes on condolences re: Logan, then says Matsson wants them, or one of their old guys, there in 24 hours. When Shiv suggests they come to New York considering the sudden death situation, he’s adamant GoJo’s annual retreat can’t be disrupted.

“Oh, yeah, I totally see that,” Shiv says, giving the phone the finger.

Logan’s first son Connor (Alan Ruck) and his new bride Willa (Justine Lupe) arrive, fresh from their barely attended wedding. He’d hoped the event would generate free media coverage for his pathetic presidential campaign, but his father’s death drew all the attention from it.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Willa tells Marcia.

“Congratulations,” Marcia replies. “Look how far you’ve come.”

“Yeah. Look at us both,” a playwright in addition to an escort service provider, Willa knows how to drop a line, adding after a deadly pause, “right?”

Connor says they have a trip planned in a few weeks to what Willa calls the Honeymoon States; Midwestern battlegrounds about as romantic as a stump speech.

Connor sheepishly asks about someday buying Dad’s place. Marcia instantly sets her price range. $63 million it is! Spit shake. It’s his!

In the upstairs library Frank, who’s one of the estate’s executors, shows Karl and Gerri a “rather worrying” piece of paper he’s discovered in Logan’s safe. Undated with all kinds of hand-written addenda, it indicates that at some point the old man wanted Kendall to succeed him. They agree it has no legal standing and “joke” that it should get accidentally flushed down a toilet anyway. The term “not germane” is repeated by all.

As the kids make jokes about their dad’s newspaper obituaries, Hugo asks for a private moment with Ken. He confesses that his daughter sold Waystar stock just before the Logan news went public. A total coincidence! But he can’t recollect what phone records will show.

A moment later, Kendall brushes off an obsequious Tom.

The kids are called into the library. Frank tells them what the paper appears to say, and how the suggestions are non binding since the family no longer owns majority control of Waystar. Ken, of course, views it as ironclad.

“Ken, I get it, but this thing is old and you’ve tried to put him in jail, like, 12 times since then,” Roman points out.

Shiv questions whether Kendall’s name had been underlined or crossed out. Visual is ambiguous about it.

“Well, it sure as f—g s—t doesn’t say Shiv,” Ken snaps back. Shiv’s eyes go googly sideways, like she’s a rock played by Michelle Yeoh.

On the stairs, Shiv asks Roman if the three of them together felt good — it did. But now does this feel good? Tom approaches. Roman leaves. Tom tells Shiv he’s sad about Logan.

“Yeah, I guess you’ve already picked the wrong horse,” his wife sneers. “You might have picked the dead horse.”

She makes a generic statement about Logan’s grandkids, not mentioning she’s pregnant. Won’t let Tom touch her.

“It feels like I’m the only one who lost something that they actually f—g wanted here and it’s not coming back,” Shiv brink-of-blubbers.

Tom reminds her of the first time they knew each other, when he flew to her in France. She storms away as the recollection gets intimately tender.

A Nation Mourns

Right-wing blowhard Ron Petkus (Stephen Root) eulogizes Logan in the dining room, sincerely spouting horses—t about great men and angels weeping.

Tom whispers to Greg that Logan died fishing his iPhone from a clogged toilet. “They say Karl was the one who blocked it,” he adds of his new enemy.

Connor complains Petkus is trying to make his father into a neo-conservative when he was really a paleo-libertarian, practically an anarcho-capitalist. As if any of it were true or mattered.

As Greg’s yes-manning Marcia in the foyer, Kerry comes out of the elevator. With a wavering voice, the dead man’s mistress tells his wife she got her message not to show up, but has to get some of her things from upstairs.

“They’re in a bag,” Marcia says. Security man Colin blocks Kerry’s way to the staircase. A maid hands Kerry the bag. Roman comes into the foyer, asks if she’s OK.

Kerry, weeping now: “I’m good.”

Roman, who’s insultingly fantasized about Kerry’s oral skills in the past, says he wants to help and tries to get her private number. The bag drops, spills contents on the floor.

While on their knees picking up stuff, Kerry babbles something that sounds like Logan was making arrangements to marry her.

Colin’s guy takes Kerry out the back. Roman tells Marcia that was unnecessary.

“We’re calling her a taxi to the subway so that she can go home to her little apartment,” Marcia imperiously explains.

A moment later, Roman disses an ass-kissing Tom while, in another room, Ken solicits his old friend (and Waystar board member) Stewy’s (Arian Moayed) vote to succeed Logan. Affectionately but seriously busting his buddy’s balls, Stewy extracts an assurance that Ken will go through with the GoJo sale.

Ken then huddles with his siblings. He swears to work toward the trio’s previous goals if they’ll back him as CEO.

Shiv thinks it should be her.

“There is an argument that you’re the worst of both worlds,” she tells her brother. “Different, but the same.”

“That plays, Shiv,” Ken spins. “It does. With the board. Same old, but with a vibey new banner.”
Roman points out that he actually has COO experience, is close to Matsson and reveals he had recent communications with Logan. He and Shiv agree it doesn’t feel right for the CEO to just be Ken.

“I see that, Bro,” Ken concurs.

“Ohhh-key … And what about me?” Shiv wants to know.

The boys have all kinds of rationalizations why it should just be them. Shiv needs her beak wet. The brothers assure her she’s just not fronting, would be inside everything, this is “just sell.”

“Yesterday was real,” Roman states, evoking how Logan’s death bonded the three of them as never before.

Shiv wants it all equal as f—k, not to get f—d on this. “This is a Dad promise. On Yesterday.”

Her brothers agree.

In the library, Ken makes his pitch to the executives for him and Roman to be recommended as co-CEOs.
Karl cites that both of their recent contretemps with Logan makes them damaged goods.

Gerri toots her own horn. Roman suggests we all know Dad had soured on Gerri.

“I don’t think there’s anything on paper to that effect.” Gerri asserts to a silent pause with accompanying side-eyes. “But I’m not going to push it.”

Ken and Roman reaffirm they’re excited about the Matsson deal.

History in the Murking

Among a waiting throng in the library’s anteroom, Greg tells Tom, “History is happening. Can you smell it?”

“Uh huh,” his mindf—k buddy ripostes. “Roses and rotting corpses.”

Karolina announces “OK, it’s done, they voted it up, Ken and Rome step up from COO.”

The brothers emerge from the library to applause, handshakes and shouts of “Long live the kings!” Shiv shoots by behind them and heads for the stairs as Tom watches. Marcia’s coming up as she’s marching down them.

“Everything well?” the stepmom asks.

“Yep, all great. All good,” Shiv replies with a terse, phony smile.

She tells two laughing guys to shut the f—k up, it’s not a comedy night, then falls on her way into the parlor. Stewy and Tom help her up.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine! Don’t f—g touch me. Stop smiling!”

Ken and Rome enter Logan’s home office with Karolina and Hugo. The boys study his desk.

“Did you know he did Sudoku?” Roman asks.

“I, I think I knew that,” Ken sputters.

They stare at Logan’s jacket draped over the back of the desk chair.

Hugo and Kaorlina want to go over coms points for Monday’s market openings, to help solidify the new bosses’ position. Strategic choice is between embalming Lenin by emphasizing the boys’ connections to Logan, or take on any issues about their competence by stressing how the kids have actually been running the company as their dad lost his focus toward the end.

“OK. So it’s Operation S—t on Dad,” Roman accurately assesses.

Hugo and Karolina in unison: “No!” Then Hugo details how far they could go in trashing Logan’s reputation — though they wouldn’t.

Roman and Ken agree now’s not the time to s—t on Dad.

Rome thanks the PR team then says, “Maybe don’t bring us this disgusting shit ever again, OK?”

Later, Ken tracks down Hugo.

“You know the stuff, the bad Dad stuff?” he mentions. “It’s what he would do. He’d want this, for the firm. So action that. But soft. No prints.”

Oh, and don’t tell Roman or Karolina.

“Down low. Just get on it. Unless you want me to pull out the strap-on,” Ken tells a hesitant Hugo, referencing the conversation he overheard at the start of the show.

Best One-Liners:

Nothing expresses the kids’ real feelings about their dad as well as when they “translate” lines from a namby pamby newspaper obituary.

Ken pats him on the shoulder. Back in room, asks about obits.

Shiv: “The Courier, you need a codebook for this one. You ready? ‘A complicated man.’”

Ken: “Threw phones at staff.”

Shiv: “’Sharp reader of the national mood.’”

Rome: “He’s a bit racist.”

Shiv: “’He was very much a man of his era.’”

Ken: “Again, racist. Also relaxed about sexual assault.”

Shiv: “’Business genius.’”

Rome: “’Never paid a penny in U.S. tax.’”

Shiv: “’Well-connected.’”

Rome: “Now that’s not fair. Well-connected is generally accepted to be a euphemism for pedophile, and no one ever suggested that he would, y’know …”

Ken: “F—k a child? Yeah. He wouldn’t even hug his grandkids.”

Then they all share a laugh.

Stray Observations:

Keeping almost all of the episode’s action inside Logan’s apartment made for textbook hothouse drama. Even though issues of national and international import are on the line, this staging strategy turned even the most abstract business dealings accessible. Never seeing the board vote, or Waystar’s Scandinavian suitors, kept the impact of every move personal and intimately agonizing. Turns out we didn’t need a splashy announcement that Shiv’s expecting to be fully, emotionally invested.

Exceptional use of language in this installment, even by the series’ superb writing standards. How the executives go from extra-careful phrasing to withering attack mode in split-seconds, the way a Swede speaking English conveys passive aggression without overtly seeming to, the debate over what Logan’s “disturbing” paper really means, everything that comes out of Marcia’s permanently sideways mouth. And while there are fewer “f—ks” to be heard now that Brian Cox is no longer around, the profanities in this episode seem to mean more, plot- and character-wise. As they should.

Now that she’s married into the family, Willa is really asserting herself. While everyone else is focused on the succession issue, she’s showing her mom what she plans to do with Logan’s plush apartment now that her husband Connor’s agreed to buy it from stepmother Marcia (whom Willa just put down with minimum words and maximum effectiveness). She’s starting to look like executive material; is Waystar’s board watching?

The judge overseeing the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News has issued a one-day delay on the start of the trial to Tuesday, raising the possibility of a settlement between the cable news network and the company that designs voting machines for federal elections.

“The Court has decided to continue the start of the trial, including jury selection, until Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. I will make such an announcement tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. in Courtroom 7E,” Judge Eric Davis said in a statement on Sunday.

TheWrap has reached out to Fox for comment.

More to come…