This article contains spoilers for Season 4 of SuccessionSuccessionwill end this run with its current fourth season. There are still many thingswe hope to see in this last season, and none other is more important than who will end up running Waystar Royco when everything is said and done. Here are the many candidates.
10Connor Roy
Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) is the black sheep of the family and, at the same time, the forgotten sheep. His bid for being president is at 1%, so all the “Con-heads” are not enough to make him and Willa live in the White House. Connor might be a strange person, but in this fourth season, he’s shown he might be the most emotionally mature in the whole Roy clan. Could he end up running the company? Let’s say he has even fewer probabilities of becoming head of Waystar Royco than of becoming President.
9Lukas Matsson
Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) is trying to buy the company, so it would make sense that he could end up as the boss. Having said that, from what we’ve seen from him in the fourth season (in episode two), he looks much more unstable, and messy than when audiences first met him last season. After the death of Logan in the episode “Connor’s Wedding”, he might not be interested in buying Waystar Royco at all, or he’ll try to renegotiate the price as the company stock is going down with every second, making the family refuse the deal.
8Kendall Roy
Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) should be the perfect candidate to run the company. He’s the first-born (sorry Connor), and that has been his objective his whole life. His role is one of the many reasonsSuccessioncombines the Murdoch family and King Lear. The problem is, Kendall isn’t as good at his job as he believes. He might know how to use business and tech words to look smart, but at the end of the day, he has never done anything by himself, and he’s not suited to run such a big company. And if he does, he will run it to the ground faster than you’re able to say Waystar Royco.
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Shiv (Sarah Snook) started the show outside the company bubble, having her own aspirations and idea of what she could do in her life. In the second season, Logan thought she could be his heir to the company throne, and she proved she couldn’t. The problem with Shiv is she believes she’s much smarter than everyone else, while also never having been in this corporate world, where everyone is always angling to get a better position while doing office politics. Shiv doesn’t know how to play that game, and she wouldn’t be a great company president, as her interests and how to get there, and the companies are as far apart as they get.
6Roman Roy
Roman (Kieran Culkin) might be the smallest of the kids, but during the show, he has looked like the one who has inherited his father’s business intelligence. Other than the space rocket that exploded, most of his business instincts have been correct, and he was the one that made Matsson interested in the company in the first place. His problem (at least in his father’s eyes) is that he doesn’t have a killer instinct. He can see the plays, but he suffers too much emotional turmoil to do whatever is necessary business-wise. That’s why, even if he might’ve been the best of the siblings to take the reins, he in charge wouldn’t work either, as he couldn’t make the tougher decisions.
About being cast in the role,Kieran Culkin told The Guardian: “I liked the script enough to read on and when Roman walked in, his first line was “Hey, hey, motherfuckers”. The way he spoke just looked like fun. They weren’t auditioning for Roman yet, but I picked three scenes, put myself on tape, and sent it in any way. [Series creator] Jesse Armstrong saw it and cast me.”
5Stewy Hosseini
Stewy (Arian Moayed) is a shark. He doesn’t care who he hurts, and what happens to any company if it makes him a cent richer. His character is one of the most fun and one that showswhySuccessionis one of the best workplace dramas. His appearances are spare, but every time he talks with any of the Roys, you see he’s always two steps ahead. We don’t know if he’s from a rich family (it looks like it, as he knows Kendall from when they were both in school), but what’s for sure is his much more business savvy, and knows how to get richer and richer without having family trauma, and that would be a welcome difference from someone running the company.
4Marcia Roy
Marcia (Hiam Abbas) starts the show by making Logan ask his kids for more power for her in the form of two votes on the board and getting his son a big job in the company. She loves Logan, but she also knows she should get more agency, as her husband’s health is not great. Marcia disappeared from Logan’s side in the third season, after knowing her husband was having an affair. Before he left, she got more power and money for herself and her family. The last we heard of her was that “she’s in Milan shopping. Forever.”
Now that Logan has died, he could come back. She always knew to maneuver for herself, so she would probably be one of the best people to run Waystar, as she saw firsthand how Logan did things, who to trust and who to hate, met people outside the company that could help, making her a good leader, even if Logan’s kids would hate that, much more than anything else.
Related:Why Succession Ending After 4 Seasons Is a Win for Fans
3Tom Wambsgans
Tom (Matthew MacFayden) doesn’t start the show in a position of power. He’s dating Shiv, but he’s mostly seen as a wannabe without the spine to play at this business level. Logan even tells his daughter that he’s dating him, so she can feel superior. And yet, during the show, Tom becomes one of the smartest players. Bit by bit, action by action, he keeps getting more and more responsibilities, money, and power, even if his relationship with Shiv goes the other way. His treason in the last episode of the third season proves Tom has learned a lot about how the family works, and which is the best way to keep rising. That’s why him, ending up running Waystar wouldn’t be such a surprise.
Matthew MacFayden’s performance is one of the best of the show, and has evolved as the character has gotten more sure of himself in the family and the business world. His “I wonder if the sad I’d be without you would be less than the sad I get from being with you.” is as crushing as they come. About the actor,Sarah Snook told the New York Times: “I don’t know how he’s managed to make such an obsequious and bullying character likable, but he has,”
2Cousin Greg
Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) starts the show as a joke. He’s inside a costume in one of the parks and vomits through the character’s eyes after smoking a joint. He then goes to Logan’s birthday and starts being part of the inner circle. Although he’s mostly a joke (and his scenes with Tom are incredibly funny), Greg shows he can be business smart in many moments during the show’s run; he knows when to not delete documents, what member of the family he has to be close to, so he can get a better job, and when to just shut up and endure what’s happening to him (even if its verbal humiliations like “Gregg, the egg” or “You can’t make a tomlette without breaking some Gregs”).
For all those reasons,his rise is one of the most surprisingin the show, and the culmination would be with this awkward kid falling upwards and running Waystar at the end, as it would say so much about the show, but also about the society we live in. If someone with Roy’s blood going through their veins is to end up on top, Greg is our best candidate.
1Gerri Kellman
Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) has been working for Waystar Royco for most of her life. She’s ascended inside the company and has become one of Logan’s most trusted lieutenants. Gerri knows how Waystar works and how the company breathes, and has saved it from legal problems before. She knows how to do office politics, can work with the Roy siblings, and is a self-made woman. All those qualities would make her the perfect candidate to run the company after Logan, as she would know how to mix the old with the new, giving Waystar a new angle to keep making them rich.
That would be our pick. Having said that, and knowing the show is a satire, any one of these candidates could end up running the company, and most of them would run it to the ground. In a few weeks will know which of our predictions is the real answer. We can’t wait to see.
