“Succession” wasn’t going to leave anything on the table before closing out the series.
Showrunner and creator Jesse Armstrong said in upcoming book “‘Succession’: Season Four: The Complete Scripts” (as excerpted by Vulture) that he was determined to do a “full-fat” final season instead of splitting up Season 4 into parts, like fellow HBO series such as “The Sopranos” or AMC series “Breaking Bad.”
“Once season three was complete and aired, in December 2021, I got my fellow executive-producer–writers together […] to look at the alternative future-season shapes I’d written up on the walls: one final season of 10 episodes, or two of six or eight episodes,” Armstrong wrote. “My sense was that we should do one last full-fat season rather than stretch it out,” Armstrong said. “But I was wary of saying goodbye too fast to all the relationships and opportunities, of leaving creative money on the table, regretting all the subplots that would go unwritten, the jokes left untold.”
According to Armstrong, the “Succession” team formed a “little committee on whether to whack the show” and ultimately decided to have a 10-episode final season.
“No other way of going forward felt persuasive,” Armstrong said.
“Succession” writer and executive producer Lucy Prebble added, “We could, if we wanted, keep going with a show that became increasingly rangy and fun — a climbing plant grown leggy but still throwing off beautiful blooms now and then. But the 10-episode season was the muscular way to go out.”
The “Succession” finale set a viewership record at HBO. Actor Jeremy Strong shared an alternative ending involving his character Kendall Roy. “It’s a much stronger ending philosophically, and has more integrity to what Jesse’s overall very bleak vision is of mankind — which is that fundamentally, people don’t really change,” Strong said of what Kendall’s ending actually turned out to be, however. “They don’t do the spectacular, dramatic thing. Instead, there’s a kind of doom loop that we’re all stuck in, and Kendall is trapped in this sort of silent scream with Colin there as both a bodyguard and a jailer.”
Strong previously added if the suicide scene were to be shot for the finale episode, “My God, it would’ve been hard to do. But I think you even feel on a cellular level the intention or the longing to cross that threshold. The way [series creator Jesse Armstrong] leaves us with a kind of ambivalence stays true to his vision.”
