In 2021, "Succession" closed out its third season with a dramatic finale that viewers were SO not ready for. After yet another installment full of power grabs and high-stakes moves, episode nine of "Succession" season three delivered some unexpected plot twists that resulted in the ultimate betrayal of the Roy siblings — Roman (Kieran Culkin [1]), Shiv (Sarah Snook [2]), and Kendall (Jeremy Strong [3]) — and gave Shiv's ambitious yet spineless husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) the last laugh.
One of the biggest twists from the season three finale was undoubtedly Logan Roy's (Brian Cox) negotiated deal leading to him selling his company, Waystar RoyCo (the grandiose centrepiece of "Succession"), to tech entrepreneur Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård [4]) — which both secures its future and ends any chance of passing the company down to its heirs. That shocker was then followed by Tom's backstabbing decision to warn Logan of his children's "full coup" [5] against him as they attempted to push him out of the company for good. In the end, Tom sold out Shiv to solidify his place at the top of the Waystar RoyCo ladder.
The explosive episode left a lot of viewers reeling, but according to Macfadyen, the way everything went down made perfect sense. "It's an accumulation; it's a pivot by a thousand cuts," he previously told Deadline [7] of Tom betraying his wife. "From the very beginning, he's had to take a lot. She speaks of an open marriage on their wedding night; it hasn't been an easy ride for Tom, he's had to take a lot of sh*t from the brothers and from his father-in-law and everybody . . . I think something flipped. But when I read the last episode, I was like, 'This makes sense.'"
More Roy family drama is absolutely guaranteed in season four [8], which is also the show's final season. Has Tom and Shiv's marriage hit rock bottom? Who comes out on top [9] in the messy battle for control of Waystar? We can only hope all of this is answered by the time the show comes to a close.