The third episode of HBO’s “Succession” has left us shocked, confused, and feeling all sorts of emotions for the severely broken, damaged, and messed-up children of Logan Roy after the inevitable happened. Logan Roy collapsed on his way to finalize the deal with GoJo’s Lukas Mattson and was pronounced dead—news that evoked the saddest of emotions, even from the son who hated Logan the most. Kendall wept while talking on the phone as Logan’s assistants held the phone near the unresponsive behemoth’s ear, and the “number one boy” confessed that he did love his dad, despite everything. However, on the business end of things, the situation doesn’t look good for Waystar Royco, and the Roy children might be stranded on a sinking ship with no lifeboat in sight. Here are the manifold issues that are closing down to strangle Waystar as it suffocates under the ever-increasing pressure in the absence of media mogul Logan Roy.
Spoilers Ahead
What Becomes Of Waystar Royco?
When a titan falls, there’s a massive power vacuum in the universe that needs to be filled at the earliest possible time, but it’s not easy to replace the fallen behemoth. Logan Roy, the founder and CEO of Waystar Royco, was the Titan who spent five decades of his life making his brainchild into the international conglomerate it had become, even though it wasn’t doing the very best in the last few months. Logan’s death came out of nowhere, and it’s a testament to how unpredictable human life is: one minute, the Titan says they need to be a lot more aggressive in their expansions, and the next time we see him, his face isn’t visible, and the cabin crew is doing futile chest compressions on him. With Logan’s death, Waystar experienced a significant crash in the shares even before the markets were to open on Monday, and now, three children who spent their entire adulthood fighting their father are stuck with a collapsing company in their hands.
The Deal With Lukas Mattson
Logan’s heart gave out when the team was heading to Sweden to meet Lukas Mattson to discuss the terms of the Waystar sale, and now the question is, will the Swedish genius be interested in buying such a haphazard company with its captain gone? Of course, Waystar’s content streaming app had amazing content to offer, which might be a motivation for Mattson to take over the failing organization, and he might actually get it for a bargain. With the collapsing rate of shares and no absolute leader to guide Waystar through such a situation, the scraps Mattson throws in to purchase the organization might be the only saving grace the dying company might hope for. As bad as Logan was as a father or a husband, he was a shrewd businessman with tremendous market acumen. His children, Ken and Shiv in particular, become such fragile messes upon hearing about their dad’s death that they can’t make a single straight decision. Giving them the reins of this suffering organization can only mean even further humiliation for the children as well as Waystar. Unless Mattson steps in now, Waystar might become non-functional within the year.
Just two episodes ago, Ken, Shiv, and Rome had presented a united front and planned to buy their father’s biggest object of desire, Pierce Media, and were ready to use the money they’d receive from Waystar’s sale. With Logan dead, if Mattson backs out of his decision to buy the organization, not only will the children not get the billions they were promised for their shares, but also their plans to purchase PGM will have to be bade farewell for good. Thus, it’s extremely necessary that the younger Roys convince Mattson to purchase the dying company if they want to have a payday at the end of this fiasco. The trailer for next week’s episode shows Mattson will be present with the children, and the group will be partying, but it can’t be said for certain what plans the Swede might be devising behind his cold eyes.
The Divorce Drama
It’s additionally tough for Siobhan, who now has to handle the bubbling pressure in her professional as well as personal life. Professionally, she’s stuck trying to acquire PGM with her brothers, but the purchase won’t happen unless they can secure funding by pushing through the sale of Waystar. Personally, her soon-to-be ex-husband Tom Wambsgans has tied up every popular divorce attorney in the city, and now she’s left with nobody to represent her, meaning Tom will be coming out victorious in the divorce battle. Although Tom isn’t feeling all that powerful either now that the blessings of his benefactor father-in-law are no longer on his head, with Logan gone, Tom is the director of ATN, and he’s clueless about what the next move is going to be. In Episode 2 last week, Logan said he had big plans for ATN and would be seen a lot more frequently in the HQ, and he’s dead the next week. Even if we ignore the irony of the events, without the Titan, Tom is much more likely to make a mistake the very next day at work that might reduce ATN to a laughing stock, much like how he had become during the congressional hearing. Perhaps the best move for the couple right now is to stay together, brace for the storm that’s about to crash onto their doors, and wait it out before undergoing the divorce procedure.
Internal Struggles
As if that’s not enough, Logan’s lackeys, like Karl, Frank, Gerri, and Karolina, have begun moving by themselves and are drafting documents and making decisions for the board members. In Logan’s absence, the subtle hunger for power will now become unbound, and these decades-long assistants of Logan will be fighting amongst themselves to be chosen as the CEO, even if it’s of a dying company. Instead of being united at the board meeting, there are multiple factions inside Waystar, which further weakens the positions of the Roy children and the company’s standing in the market. The death of Logan Roy marks a massive descent into chaos for Waystar, with seemingly no rescue.
