Yes. Also, remember that Colin is aware and helped Kendall with the kid who drowned in the lake. Not sure if that will come into play, but better to have Colin close by you and on the payroll I suppose.
I think Tom and Greg take it all. As you said, I think Mattson really just wants to screw all of the Roy kids. Mattson sold Mencken on the idea of a “US CEO” but didn’t go into more detail than that.
Shiv thinks her pitch for herself went well, but Mattson knows she’ll never be a real lapdog, and he’s not going to hire someone who has a kid. He’s just using her to outflank her brothers.
Kendall of course is no-go for Mattson to keep. Too ambitious and dangerous. Mattson disposes of him in a dramatic fashion (maybe some SEC violation).
Roman of course has bad blood with Mattson, and some daddy issues, so the logical endpoint is that he has to watch Mattson hand his daddy’s empire over to a non-Roy. Roman has some kind of crazy meltdown.
The person who (IMO) would be safest cat’s paw for Mattson, and would troll the hell out of the Roys, is Tom. You heard it here first!
yes, I was expecting one big set-piece at the funeral but to get three one after the other was remarkable. It was a real left-hook, gut punch, right hook.
Ewan’s had the emotional heft, Roman’s breakdown was utterly tragic and Kendall showed that he actually has a little more in his locker than he previously thought.
And is it just me or is Kendall becoming more like his dad now that Logan is gone?
Before he seemed to be trying to play the role but since his death Kendall feels to me like more of a “serious person”. Someone who is seeing things a little more clearly?
What the means for the finale I have no clue. A redemption arc feels a little too standard.
Shiv thinks she is a shoe-in for US CEO, Perhaps not Pinky.
Kendall has some steel back and is making the right noises, does the tragic figure win?
Roman fell apart, in front of everyone, surely no way back?
Seems like the blood story and the hooky figures may be true after all and Mattson is no super schemer, perhaps he has true feet of clay but is duplicitious enough to pull it off anyway and will happily discard Shiv.
Greg? no, surely not Greg for the top.
Tom? Mattson does the deal and installs Tom as Waystar US CEO?
I have a sneaking suspicion that someone is playing a long game here that we aren’t quite privy to.
But pretty much anything is still possible, I’m still massively interested and I’m glad that we get a final reckoning and an ending. That a pretty good endorsement for the quality of the series.
You could well be right!
It would tie in well with Tom’s “I like money,” chat with Shiv, and he’s certainly pissed enough at her by now to do it. Her champagne drinking with his baby on board was maybe the last straw.
Tom has shown himself to be a total “woof woof” time and again. And Greg has Gregged himself to the top beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, so of course he comes along to head up HR. There will be many firings.
It would all be quite fitting!
no problem, he is a little quiet, generic and unobtrusive which, given the character, is I suppose a mark of good casting.
Kendall’s approach to Colin was one of the weirdest moments of the episode. Comes right up to him and announces indelicately that the guy has been seeing a psychiatrist. Colin says peevishly “that’s supposed to be confidential!” and then Kendall persists in needling him about it, then offers Colin the opportunity to work for him. Colin says “I don’t love it”, then Kendall replies “I don’t love it either” but continues pressuring him, and Colin seemingly agrees.
Coupled with Kendall’s conversation with Hugo in the same episode, in which he calls him “his dog” and offers him “scraps” worth millions of dollars, is the theme here that Kendall’s eulogy was so good that people are confident enough in his leadership potential that they’re willing to work for him even after he treats them in a condescending and arrogant manner? Is that what we’re supposed to take from this, that Kendall’s most Logan-like tendencies are coming to the forefront?
I can understand Hugo, who seems totally amoral, accepting this trade-off, but I thought Colin had more integrity (plus he knows about Kendall’s incident with the dead waiter) - actually is that why he wants to work for Kendall - because he knows he’ll always have something to hold over his head?
right, I feel like Tom’s arc is interesting in that from the beginning he’s coded as an obsequious, servile climber, almost a comic foil for others. Then as the others are revealed as being so scheming, unstable, and unreliable, Tom starts looking a lot better.
It would be a huge screw-you to the Roys if the guy who succeeds them is the guy with the simplest and most honest apprach. No complicated mind-fucks, no elaborate games. Tom likes wealth, he’s willing to be an honest(ish) servant to get it. It’s plausible.
I know she was committed, but nothing’s ever been said definitively one way or the other about her current whereabouts. But I guess as a no-show at the wedding and funeral, she would be presumed dead.
Marcia would be an interesting choice and fuck-you to the kids. She’s always struck me as as cut-throat as Logan was, and ambitious to boot. It probably won’t be, but early on in this season, I thought it might be her to win it all.
I still largely think it’s going to be Mattson alone ftw.
Or maybe the South Koreans nuke us, and it all ends in a fiery World War. “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity!”
I’m pretty sure that you’re not the first person to say that in this thread let alone all over reddit but it’s likely. The only reason that I am leaning against Tom is that the end of the last season was a huge Tom twist and he’s a known backstabber. I’m still with Gerri.
We also don’t know that Mencken wins the election. I think that Jimenez will be the ultimate winner and that throws things into chaos for the Roys who backed the wrong horse. Then Mattson doesn’t need an American CEO at all.
As was mentioned upthread, the final episode is 90 minutes long and they damn well better nail the landing.
You’re correct that we don’t have a definitive answer but if she’s a literal raving lunatic, they would keep her locked up and not let her at the event.
I read a similar interesting tidbit that Kendall is the oldest but it’s never been revealed who is older between Shiv and Roman.
Tbh, I’ve always half suspected Logan just had her committed out of the fact that he’s a monster and he perhaps wanted to be done with her. Also, his personality is a bit…much… for a normie to deal with without losing their shit a bit. He married some tough women later in life, but maybe his first one was just a regular gal who got chewed up and spit out.
Connor said he didn’t see his dad for three years when he was a kid, so I wonder if he was living with his mom then, or at boarding school or what.
I always assumed Roman was the baby, but now you’ve got me thinking.
I always got a twins vibe from them, or at least really close in age.
I need to watch the episode again but did someone mention something about establishing a”pan-Hapsburg” alliance to replace the European Union? Sounds like someone is nostalgic for the German Empire of the early twentieth century.
And I was also amused watching the Roys and others trying to curry favor with the presumptive POTUS-elect.
It was Connor, he was floating it as an idea to POTUS. He’s having delusions of grandeur already.
I have to say though, If there is a series to be made of “Connor Roy - the adventures of a diplomat” then I’m in.
I think that’s exactly it. Kendall is becoming more Logan. And he’s the one that realizes he needs people like Hugo and Colin to do the skullduggery stuff.
That reminds me of Connor’s eulogy. We don’t know what he prepared, but Shiv’s response after reading it that this “leaves us open to legal action” is hilarious.
I think that’s part of it. Colin told Kendall that he was talking to a psychiatrist because he didn’t have anything to do, which is kind of a strange thing to say. I think he was implying that if he had something else to do, he wouldn’t need to see a psychiatrist and, you know, maybe talk about the things he’s seen and done. And Kendall topped his offer off with “and you can talk to me”. I’m sure he’s willing to pay pretty well to keep the waiter incident and other information just between them.
That’s a really good take. I initially took it at face value, but yea, that’s probably exactly the implication/negotiation that was happening…Pay/Hire Colin money to stop talking.
A very powerful episode. I really liked it.
Classy of Caroline, Logan’s brittle British ex, to include both Kerry and the woman who’d been Logan’s mistress when she had been married to him among the mourning women in the same pew - and for Marcia to then actually squeeze Kerry’s hand, comforting her.
The American flags were on the wrong side of both the funeral home limo and the hearse. A subtle indication that Logan wasn’t really the patriot he held himself out to be, or a signal as to the trouble the country is now in?
Agreed. Very powerful stuff.
James Cromwell was born in 1940 and was indeed a kid during WWII. Brian Cox was born in 1946, but certainly looks old enough to have been a kid then, sent overseas with his brother and sister to be safe.
Roman’s breakdown was a great scene, especially given his earlier overconfidence and insulting treatment of both Kendall and Shiv. His creepy, funny, incestuous banter with Shiv in the limo was par for the course. (I always assumed he was the youngest, BTW).
Yes! Although I was a little surprised that Connor didn’t insist, after his three sibs had all had their say, on marching up to the podium himself. (His neo-Hapsburg nattering to Mencken just shows what a total flop he’s going to be as an ambassador).
Weird to me that Kendall would mess with Colin the former bodyguard/driver like that, mentioning his psychoanalysis. Time after time, he shows just what poor interpersonal skills he has.
There was a quick view of a picture of Logan with an elderly Nancy Reagan on his arm at the reception. Nice touch.
Delightfully awkward conversations with Mencken and the Roy dudes at the reception, with Greg trying to inject himself into the group. Loved Shiv’s line, “I’m your extraction team,” as she pulled him out of there to go talk to Matsson (although Mencken’s talk with him didn’t go all that much better).
One of the production team referred in the post-episode wrapup to Roman’s “ecstasy of nihilism” in the mob scene at the end. Good line. Really thought he might get himself killed.
Very much agreed that Gerri deserves a moment in the sun in the series finale.
Did you notice in the preview that Kendall’s long-suffering assistant Jess was walking behind Shiv, pretty clearly now in her orbit?