Logan Roy is preparing for war and ready to go full beast mode in Succession season 3 trailer
The new trailer sees the Roy family scrambling to maintain control of Waystar Royco
TV News Succession
Logan Roy is going “full fucking beast” in the upcoming third season of HBO’s Succession. The family drama returns with Kendall (Jeremy Strong) on a power trip, Shiv (Sarah Snook) running to whoever can offer her more control, and power couple Greg (Nicholas Braun) and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) scrambling to avoid being buried in the investigation. Meanwhile, Roman (Kieran Culkin) is having sarcastic conversations in clubs about his father (Brian Cox) finally kicking the can.
As the third season picks up right where season two left off, Kendall’s opening line in the trailer goes, “I dropped a bomb.” A bomb he did indeed drop, as the second season closed with the son naming his father as the mastermind behind Waystar Royco’s illegal doings. After seasons of everyone groveling to the cruel patriarch, Logan’s children now scatter from him in order to avoid implication in the company’s crimes. As Logan tries to keep his own ship from sinking, Kendall seizes control of Waystar Royco while trying to avoid going to court himself (remember when he committed vehicular manslaughter?).
In the trailer we see all of the Roy’s former foes come from the rafters to witness the elite family’s downfall and pick up any of their empire they happen to drop along the way. Even the peacemaker Cameron (Alan Ruck) finally gets in on the race for power within media conglomerate. As he sums it up: “Roman is a knucklehead, Shiv is a fake, and Kenny is screwy.” Let the fight for the “knife in the mud” begin.
The entire cast of the messy Roy family returns, as well as series regulars Hiam Abbass, Peter Friedman, J. Smith Cameron, Juliana Canfield, and Arian Moayed. Adrien Brody and Alexander Skarsgård will appear as a guest stars in the season, as a treat. Creator Jesse Armstrong continues to helm the Emmy-winning series. The third season of Succession premieres one month from today, on October 17 on HBO.
30 Comments
Stick.It.In.My.Veins!Wife and I have started to re-watch S1 & S2. We forgot how much we enjoyed this “shit show” of a family! Give me Greg and Tom and the allll the absurdity.Not too mention, Jeremy Strong is in fact incredible. S2, the scene where he and Shiv talk about what’s going on with Kendall and wo will take over (Yeah, it ain’t gonna be me) when they are in the big office and Kendall allows himself to “feel” or drops the façade for about 10 seconds, it is incredible, powerful acting. The amount of emotion relayed in that scene with hardly any words, again, incredible.I can’t wait!
There is nothing better on this show than when Cox and Strong are alone together- there’s the conversation their characters are having and then there’s the conversation they’re *really* having in all the emotional subtext they’re exuding. And I just love when Brian Cox starts roaring like a cornered lion. Logan may be on his way out but he is NOT going quietly and he is happy to take anyone he can down with him.
My favorite Cox and Strong scene is in S1 where Logan invites Kendall over to the condo and it just happens to be the night before Kendall tries the hostile takeover. Cox has no idea what Strong has planned, he just wanted to see his son, which kind of shocks Kendall. They eat a burger together and watch sports, and they don’t really say anything to each other, but it felt so much like a real father-son connection where they just are there to be around each other, without saying ANYTHING of note.
I have a full on Pavlovian response to the theme music now.
BOAR ON THE FLOOR
Interesting how each trailer gives a different impression of which character is on top and which one is scrambling. This one makes Kendall out to be in the pole position while the last one certainly did not.
Yes! It feels similar to the release of the three different promotion posters that show how there’s no way of knowing who will end up on who’s side.
I just saw that, too, and thought it was brilliant. After the first poster, I thought, “okay, interesting how the factions are forming.” Totally fell for it. Great strategy!(especially since at first I thought Kendall’s team was just Tom and Greg and figured, well, he’s fucked…)
Hey, you can’t make a Tomlette without breaking a few Gregs.
I just rewatched season 2 and somehow this trailer made me feel like I could watch this show on an infinite loop.
I’m on my 4th watch through of the series, timing it out so I finish S2 right before S3 debuts. I cannot wait.
This show is so much better than it has any right to be. Not a single weak link in the cast.
I think what I really appreciated about this show when I binged it a couple months back is how nuanced a character Kendall is. Based on The Discourse, I kind of thought Kendall was just going to be an easy satire of a dumb, privileged rich kid playing at business, and I like how that’s not really the case. He’s not dumb. In fact, he’s almost genuinely smart, which is kind of his tragedy. It’s as though he’s in the Intelligence Uncanny Valley — just close enough to actual intelligence while falling short of it that it’s more offputting than if he was an actual idiot.
Yeah, I love that about him, along with the fact that he’s definitely a shark, but not a great white like his dad. He’s like a mako shark who thinks he’s a white shark. Capable of inflicting some damage, may even take some folks down, but not nearly the ruler of the seas. Kendall wants to be his dad and feels ashamed when he doesn’t measure up in terms of ruthlessness and lack of empathy. For the rest of us, having empathy would be a good thing. In the Roy family, it is a weakness to be exploited, and Kendall’s dynamic with his father illustrates that so perfectly. It’s great. Kendall wants to be his father but cannot bring himself to do the things that his father does in order to succeed him at Waystar Royco. That is, until Kendall drops the bomb in the S2 finale. I can’t wait for season 3.
Yes, the major throughline for Succession is clearly the battle over Kendall’s soul. I’m rewatching now and you can see how they try to show (especially in the scenes with his exwife) that there is somewhere a shadow of a good person deep inside Kendall but that the asskissing, money, drugs and power plays keep grinding it out. He’s had a bunch of different inflection points where he could have chosen to walk the “good person” path but keeps just getting more and more like Logan instead. At some point I expect that battle will be fully lost and instead we’ll see if Kendall brings any real skill to being Logan 2.0. There are some great books about family dynasties that talk about how the heirs just haven’t done the work. The book about the family behind Barney’s includes an anecdote about how one of the sons can’t identify the designers or prices on an outfit one of his lawyers is wearing, while his grandfather could identify fabrics down to the mill with just a touch.
Maybe it’s because I’m a political buff, I find Siobhan and her endgame fascinating.
Only girl out of the 4 kids. Aside from Connor, the only one to not actively have had a role in the business. Absurdly good at her chosen field (Roman is a rake, Connor is delusional, Kendall is/was a junky and decidedly not a killer like his father). Yet she’s in a relationship with someone who, ironically enough, is very much like her father (ambitious to the point of sociopathy), cheated on him and told him on their wedding night, was more than willing to throw Kendall to the wolves, and is fence straddling like a motherfucker.
She doesn’t need the money (political consulting pays big bucks). She was an adviser to the soon-to-be President. I wonder, echoing the line she said at the wedding, whether she only truly cares about the name, and everything that comes with it?
Honestly, I can see Connor, Roman, and Tom making a play for the company against Siobhan and Kendall (who I think are gonna team up), with Logan acting on his own. Also, and I can’t recall if they brought this up again after the first episode of season 1, but considering much of what matters is gonna concern board seats, cousin Greg could very well be a pivotal player since his grandfather (Logan’s estranged brother) still has a board seat and could easily give it to Greg just to spite Logan.
Didn’t Ewan effectively disown Greg because he refused to stop working for Logan though?
He basically said he wouldn’t leave him an inheritance if he continued to work for Logan. Which is why Greg has gone full Team Kendall because he’ll make more money in the long run if he’s Kendall’s #2 running the company than he would if he quit now and waited to cash out when his grandfather dies.
He did. He dangled his $250m inheritance if he quit working for Logan. Greg kept working for him.
Thing is, Ewan still has the board seat, and Greg is still his grandson. Not saying it will definitely play a role this season, but Ewan and the board seat is a significant wild card all the same.
Ooh, completely lacking a moral compass does NOT make Tom the same as Logan – he’s just too weak. Tom wants to be close to power but doesn’t have the stones to make tough decisions or take on anyone more powerful than him, so being a high level toady at a big company is the perfect role for him. A next-generation Logan would start his own gig instead – more like the Asian guy who was sparring with Kendall in the first season.
The discourse is fucking stupid though. It was dismissive of those show before it even aired with the whole “Do we really need another show about rich white people? Who wants that?” Without seeing a minute of it.Of course this show turned out to be fucking amazing.
Well said.
Whoever writes Logan’s dialogue when he flies off the handle should win all the awards. They absolutely nail “unhinged white man throwing a temper tantrum who thinks he’s looking super Alpha while he does it.” I mean, it’s great. “We’ll fucking beast him. We’ll go FULL. FUCKING. BEAST.” I can 100% believe that that is something a rich entitled asshole would say and think sounds dominating and threatening, when to the rest of us it just sounds desperate and lame. So much of Succession is perfect in this way. They nail the tone and bluster, the sound and the fury, signifying nothing, that Logan thinks means everything.
I’m thinking maybe one more season after this one, and then it’s time to close up shop. I really want this to be a rare example in American television where they end strongly, perhaps even going out on top.
I believe I read somewhere that the creator said five seasons tops, but they’re seeing where the writing takes them, so maybe you’ll be correct on four.
The producers have said they don’t expect to go past 5 seasons, and may wrap it after 4.
Oh, nice, I didn’t know that. Thanks for the scoop.
Where my Con-heads at?! Connor actually making the case to Logan for being the best choice, he had some good points!
“Even the peacemaker Cameron (Alan Ruck) finally gets in on the race for power within media conglomerate”You mean Connor, Cameron was his character in Ferris Bueller.