Succession final season: One head, one crown | The Leader podcast

ES Audio From the Evening Standard in London, I'm Rachelle Travers and this is The Leader. Warning, this episode contains strong language as well as major spoilers for Tailgate Party, episode 7 of the final season of Succession. This week it's Election Eve on Succession and a group of America's most influential players have gathered at Chiven Toms before the big day. But of course, this isn't just any social event. Last minute allegiances are in the works, game changing details are revealed about Gojo, Kendall's plan to lose the co from his CEO title is revealed and there is the mother of all arguments involving a scorpion and a snake. Every Tuesday until the final of Succession, we'll be reviewing each episode after it drops on the Leader podcast. Be sure to listen to hear analysis, insight and general fandom around one of the most talked about TV series ever.

Joining me this week are… I'm Elizabeth Gregory. I'm a culture writer. And I'm Haymish McBain. I'm the Deputy Leader of ES Magazine. So first of all, there's Tailgate Party, episode 7 of the final season. What happened? So this week it's the same crew as usual, but everyone is in New York now and they are all gathered on the eve of the election at Tom and Schiff's apartment. Lots of important individuals and influential people, political advisors, journalists, businessmen, all meet to kind of like make back room deals and influence each other on the eve of the election so that they kind of have some relationships formed for when the political landscape changes.

And so yeah, everyone's there, Matt's and show's up and as usual, all the drama kicks off. And obviously lots of stuff happened, but one of the most significant things was about Gojo's numbers. Haymish, can you just tell us what happened there? Well the numbers are bullshit basically. To cut a long story short, the numbers have been inflated through the opaque prism of India. Matt's and describes India as wet cement, which I took to mean that basically their numbers are enormously inflated by things that are going on in India that nobody really understands, which is significant if you buy into a company like Waste Our Roycal, which is suddenly public interest and the Senate want to know what's going on and the FBI want to know what's going on and they could all be in really, really big trouble if his numbers are fraudulent. So yeah, suddenly this clever idea of Shiv to kind of puppet master Matt's and it seems like she's the one who is being played. Do we think this is the sort of final nail in the coffin for the Gojo deal? Is it going to be the beginning of the end for it? I certainly do.

Yeah, because I think the Gojo deal is 50% cash, 50% stock. So if the stock drops, then it's worth nothing. So and I think Kendall has been wanting to have some sort of proper ammo like this for weeks and now he has it, he's not going to let it go. I mean, Kendall wants to kill it. We knew that even when he thought it was a genuinely bona fide good deal. So now that he knows it's genuinely not bona fide good deal, he's 100% going to want to destroy it. So he's already commandeering Frank to come in as his kind of straight man number two.

He said that really sinister line where he said, I love them, but I don't love them or whatever. So he's just gone full old school Kendall narcissist. I'm the king of the world. One head, one crown. Yeah, one crown. There you go. He's just got his eyes on that now.

And there's also the idea that was floated by Kendall about waste are actually acquiring Gojo instead. Yeah, reverse biking. Reverse biking. Will that come off? Yeah, well, that was the original plan, wasn't it? That was the original pitch to Mattson. The original pitch was let's buy you. And Mattson was the one who turned it round. But at the end of the day, if the numbers are provably fraudulent, then it's over.

Like the board will just go, no, we can't do this. And then he is really, really, really screwed. Lovely jacket or no lovely jacket. Yeah, let's just take a moment for the jacket. Yeah, can we just have a moment? Oh yeah, very good jacket. Yeah, well, that was a good jacket. It upstage King Charles, if you ask me.

There's been so many tweets and comments and articles about that jacket. It's already sold out everywhere, I believe. Do you know what the jacket is? Yeah, Hamish. God, I do. It's needles. It's needles. I actually spent more time than anyone who isn't sad should probably spend researching and trying to find out.

And it is by a Japanese streetwear brand called Needles, which is just so great. Because you can just like, when's he ever going to buy a Japanese streetwear? He's obviously just getting sent loads of crap by various people all the time and just picked it out. But I did read a couple of really cool interviews with Alexander Skarsgard about Lucas Mattson's wardrobe. We actually did it in the magazine this week. We've done a piece on how he's a new kind of CEO style icon. But he talked about in the Swedish retreat episode, he turned up in his own clothes, just really basic trackies and a crumpled t-shirt. And that he went into the wardrobe, tried five or six different outfits on.

And in the end, he said, look, I just think Mattson would be wearing what I was wearing. And so he literally just wore the crap he just turned up to set on. And he also said that the jacket, he was like, he needs to drop a golden bomb on this party. Yeah, because it's more flamboyant than he would usually dress. Absolutely. Yeah, he's much more subtle and you wouldn't necessarily know he's the richest man in the room potentially. Do you think it was a message? Was he trying to.

Yeah, absolutely. He was trying to throw his weight around and say, look at me. I'm the Gojo boss. I'm coming to your fancy New York party. I don't want to be here. I also think he was kind of having a joke because he knew that everyone else would be in cocktail and would be in suits and would be taking themselves over seriously at this party with all these influential people there. And he's like, yo, I'm such a big cheese that I'm going to show up in this stupid bomber.

And you're all going to want it. Exactly. Number one, you're all going to want it. And number two, everyone's still going to want to work with me and hire me and I'm going to buy their company. I mean, let's not forget that he referred to the party and a tax the shivers. Bullshit pre-election, brain dead, AOL era, legacy media, putrid stuff, mushroom, fuck fest. Yeah.

He basically turned up and his number two was completely off his face. Yeah. On Eddables, he said. Yeah. So they turned up to basically just in a very literal sense rather than tax sense to disrupt. But Eba, can we talk about Eba? Oh, yeah. I love her.

I love her. I'm like, why are you still there, Eba? Like, get out of the situation. You've got so much power and you know so much. I know. Maybe she should have been the top of the power ranking. Yeah. Poor old Eba.

It's like. I think she's like fantastic. Yeah. I just love her exchanges with Mattson. What did he say? It's like you have tenure just because we mingled, which is such a horrible word for him to use the fact that they dated. And then she like stares at him like with this fury. Yeah.

She was also the one who at the end of the day leaks the India info to Kendall. Yeah. So she's toppled the deal basically, assuming that it doesn't go through. She is the one that keep us. He wouldn't have known about that. Let's go to the ads. Stay there to hear our predictions for next week's episode.

Please buy succession creator Jesse Armstrong as potentially the most shocking one for fans. Welcome back. Still with me are the evening standards Elizabeth Gregory and Hamish McBain. Where do you think that this all leaves Shiv then? Because obviously it wasn't a very good episode for her to say the least. I think I still put her at number one in my power rankings this week. Oh, interesting. Just because I still can't see anyone who's more kind of competent than her.

And at the moment, I mean her brother's absolutely not Jerry's out or says she wants out. And then Mattson as we can see he's wobbling and potentially bombing out. So I thought she's still got it. But I think it's her time's limited now because, okay, so Tom saw that she was siding with Mattson, didn't he? And he was there in the room as she was making all of these deals with Mattson. So I think that in a couple of weeks Tom's going to turn on Shiv, especially after their fallout and expose her. And then her brother's going to turn against her. That seems very, very feasible indeed, doesn't it? I did wonder why she was sharing so much information with him when he's already been a trader before.

So I don't really understand this. Well, she's playing an incredibly risky game because all these people she knows for well will trample over whoever it takes to get what they want. The fact that she's been kind of behind the scenes cheating on her family with Mattson is definitely going to come out. And she's just going to be just not aligned to anyone if she's not careful. I really think she's in big trouble. And then you've got the Tom personal stuff. I was quite surprised.

Were you guys surprised that she didn't tell him that she was pregnant? Yeah. I really felt when it was all coming to her head on the terrace, especially when he was like saying you shouldn't have children and things like that. It's like, well, there's an ultimate card to play here. But yeah. Does that mean it's not his potentially? Or is it just that she didn't want to reveal it in that moment because of what he'd said to her? Yeah. And apparently one of the things that her mom said to her, I think at the wedding, yeah, she said, you know, you shouldn't have kids or something along those lines. And I think it was some people aren't meant to have children or some people just right.

Like it was basically saying she's just one of those people that should never have children. Yeah. Because she's so horrible. Yeah. So it's, you know, obviously a raw nerve for her already. Exactly. So her mom said it and now her husband said it.

And there she is carrying this child. And you could see that that was like of all of the things that he said, that was the one that actually got to her. Yeah. What do we think of the scorpion present? As well, it came in a red box. I was like, oh, Cartier or something. And then out came this scorpion thing. But it's tricky because I feel like Tom, for someone like Tom, who is not from money, I remember in the very, very first episode, there's a, he's talking to Sheva about what the hell do I get Logan as a birthday gift.

And she says, whatever you get him is going to mean an equal amount of nothing. So just something around 50 K and that's fine. Yeah. So I think I actually thought that the, the scorpion thing was his incredibly misguided and silly way of doing something a bit cute. And because he's, he's still got that insecurity around money where he's not born into the kind of wealth that they are. And, you know, he can't just buy her a Cartier bracelet or whatever, you know, it's just meaningless. So he's tried to buy something that has a little bit of quirkiness and meaning to it.

But it just was very, very strange. I think that's like being very kind to Tom, because I feel like it was like a manipulation or like it was a way to get at her. I know obviously they have a strange relationship, but buying someone a scorpion when it's not an inside joke or anything is literally just being like, this is what reminds me of you. Yes. I don't know. I just, I think there's like, you know, there was a double meaning behind it. What do you think? I agree.

I think it was a kind of quite a vicious thing. Yeah. One thing I wanted to talk about is I saw that in an interview, Jesse Armstrong's, the succession creator actually said that one of the most shocking episodes for fans might be episode eight, which will be next week. We know that the title of next week's episode is America Decides. Presumably it's the election. What do we think could happen? So I think there's going to be a little surprise with Connor. And I think he's going to do better than we all think, which is, which would be so fun to see him.

I don't know what position he'd get. I don't think obviously he's going to win at all, but wouldn't it be so fun if he does get something? And it would be, I think, very representative of what's going on in American politics at the moment where anyone can come out of nowhere while kind of, if you're a squillier. And actually become a kind of powerful politician. And I, yeah, it was one of my favorite parts in this week's episode that the conversation between him and Willa and Roman about him potentially becoming an ambassador for an area in the world. And I'd love to see more of that kind of dialogue. I agree. I think that he finds himself in a classic Lamo politicians position, which is you're never going to win, but you have somehow clawed together enough influence that you can swing it for somebody else.

And that's a very, very big bartering tool. So I could easily see him and he up with some crazy, benign, but incredibly important office, because they literally do, you know, in politics, you have offices that don't really mean very much and render that whoever's in them largely ineffectual, but are, you know, big honors. And people get given those offices for exactly this kind of reason. So, you know, vice president, I don't think it's out of the question. And that would actually be lovely to see in the power play between all the different siblings as well, because he's always been kind of ignored by the younger Sibs. And wouldn't it be cool if he actually had some power? Yeah. And they actually had to take him into consideration.

And he wasn't like the butt of the joke and the idiot anymore. I think that would be a nice arc for Connor. I can see, I think the Connor thing, it needs to be something really, really ridiculous. Yeah. Like, it's not going to be that funny or interesting if he gets given, you know, ambassador of Somalia and whatever. Whatever, whatever, it was suggested this week. Yeah.

It's going to be something big and juicy and funny. I'm going to go on record now and so I think he's going to get off advice president. Succession is available to watch in the UK, on Sky Atlantic and now. And that's it from this episode. We'll be back next Tuesday with more succession insight. The Leader podcast is back tomorrow at 4pm.

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