5 burning questions we have ahead of Succession’s third season

Here are the biggest questions we’d like to see answered in the HBO drama’s season 3, debuting on Sunday, October 17

By Saloni Gajjar, Laura Adamczyk, Gabrielle Sanchez, Cameron Scheetz, Gwen Ihnat | October 15, 2021 | 5:00am

TV Features Succession

5 burning questions we have ahead of Succession’s third season

Clockwise from top left: Matthew Macfadyen as Tom, Sarah Snook as Shiv, J. Smith Cameron as Gerri, Brian Cox as Logan. Jeremy Strong as Kendall, Kieran Culkin as Roman Graphic: Rebecca Fassola

It’s been two whole years since HBO’s award-winning drama Succession ended its second season with a jaw-dropping cliffhanger. 2020 felt like it lasted a decade, so if you need a reminder on everything that went down, here’s a quick summary: Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) finally revealed to the public that his father, Logan Roy (Brian Cox) was fully aware of all the problems within the company. It was a total power grab on his part.

The season-two finale, “This Is Not For Tears,” also put Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom’s (Matthew Macfadyen) marriage on the rocks, left eldest son Connor (Alan Ruck) without a purpose, and saw Logan’s wife Marcia (Hiam Abbass) check out after learning he had an affair.

In time for the show’s highly anticipated return, The A.V. Club staff is hoping to get answers to some pivotal burning questions in season three as Logan and Kendall scramble to make allegiances to emerge on top of this corporate—and familial—war.

You can also catch up with the Roys before the October 17 premiere with this in-depth recap.

Will Kendall’s actions in the season-one finale come back to haunt him?

It may be hard to remember back to the season-one finale, as so much has happened since, but it was just as eventful as the last. In “Nobody Is Ever Missing,” Kendall, drunk at Shiv and Tom’s wedding, crashes a car into a lake with a busboy in the passenger’s seat, who doesn’t make it out alive. When Logan finds out, he uses the information to blackmail Kendall into dropping his and Stewy’s (Arian Moayed) hostile takeover of the company, a.k.a. the “bear hug.” Throughout season two, it seemed as though this was all a settled matter, with a dead-eyed Kendall doing his father’s bidding.But now that Kendall has named Logan in the cruise corruption scandal, will the death of the busboy resurface? We can’t imagine Logan will reveal anything, since he was complicit in its coverup, but what about Marcia? She’s never been close with the Roy children, and after discovering Logan’s affair with Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), she and her husband haven’t been particularly simpatico lately either. It’s not Marcia’s style to do anything big and public, but we can imagine her saying something sotto voce to the wrong/right person during a cocktail party. [Laura Adamczyk]

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