S4E10 With Open Eyes

The Succession finale divides audiences on first watch and tends to reveal its intelligence on the second. 'With Open Eyes' resolves the succession question with the only honest answer the show's premise ever permitted: the Roy children were never going to inherit their father's empire because the empire was never actually about inheritance. The board vote sequence is constructed as classic dramatic irony - the audience understands the structural logic before each character does. What Shiv does - and the precise, terrible reason she does it - is the most complex moment the show has written for her: a betrayal, a grief response, a power calculation, and an act of self-destruction operating as a single gesture. Tom's elevation lands as dark comedy and as the show's thesis statement about who corporate power actually rewards. The final sequence of each sibling alone - Kendall on the street, Roman at a bar, Shiv in a car with a man she does not love - is filmed with the restraint of a director (Mark Mylod) who trusts the accumulated weight of 39 episodes. The episode was divisive for audiences expecting conventional catharsis. The RT consensus called it the only ending consistent with what the show was always saying. That reading is correct. Succession is one of the two or three best American drama series of the 2010s-2020s, and this finale is entirely worthy of what preceded it.