I don't know when but sometime
he decided not to try anymore and it was a terrible shame Godspeed my brother and God bless Of all the characters in Succession, Logan Roy
is undoubtedly the most brutal. He is abusive, manipulative, and coarse, and while he isn’t
bereft of love, he is incapable of communicating it through affection and instead uses a cruel
meritocracy as his method. Throughout the story, he is portrayed as layered, complex and nuanced,
but there are no holds barred in communicating just how awful of a person he is. And there are
bits of pretty substantial subtext across the seasons to help communicate to the audience why
he is the way he is, but it was a key element in the penultimate episode of the series, Church
and State, that helped reveal a layer that was always there, yet never palpable. Something
that had been hinted at throughout the series, but never dwelt upon, that helps us piece the
picture together more accurately than ever before. — To Rose! /// Or Ewan saying that Rose was not his
fault/logan saying hes not interested — With the information used to sabotage
an oblivious Rhea in this moment, and through Ewan’s attempts at comforting Logan,
it’s clear that it was common knowledge to all that the topic of Logan’s sister Rose was a
sore subject to say the least, and that he blamed himself to some extent for her fate. But
none of the specifics were given by any involved, and it seemed to be some sort of unsaid secret.
It’s the sort of thing that I personally made note of at the time, but it faded into the back of my
mind and I hadn’t really thought overly much about it for a while. That is, until it was explicitly
brought up again by Ewan during Church and State at Logan’s funeral. And the specifics connected
his character in ways we never could’ve imagined. — Ewan’s speech. He gave her polio. 4x9 — Regardless of whether or not it was reality,
Logan thought and was encouraged to think that it was his fault that his beloved sister
died. And the truth of the matter isn’t really relevant - whether she did or didn’t catch it
from him does not matter. What does is that he thought she did. And so from then on, it became
the truth, his truth. And this was what taught Logan to stop trying to search for more in life
- to settle and become a man that inspired this meagerness in others. We can infer that this is
what caused him to generally lose hope and heart and optimism in life after Rose succumbed to the
disease that he believed was his doing. And so the implication here, combined with the fact that
his brother ended up significantly different, but states that that was not always so, leads us
to one conclusion - that while Logan’s upbringing was rough to say the least, he did still
have the capacity to love more wholly. He had the capacity to see the world and others
with more than gray cynicism. That is - until he lost himself in grief, self-hatred and shame
and froze himself off from others as a defense mechanism in order to protect himself. There
is an ironic vulnerability here that adds this human softness to a man who otherwise seemed so
tough and unyielding, and it is appropriate that it comes out in this very matter-of-fact, almost
mundane way - as tends to be the case at funerals. It very much seems as though he did this in
defense. Obviously there are key strategic elements to being Logan Roy, and his successes
speak for themselves, but all the way back when, he became who he became in order to avoid pain and
protect himself, and he stopped trying because it was the easy way out, at least according to Ewan.
He did this in order to prevent himself from feeling, likely because feeling only ever lead
him into heartache. And he could have persisted through his guilt, and he likely would’ve been
rewarded for it with loving relationships with his lovers and children. But that would’ve
required him to keep trying. While it is strange to think of Logan Roy as someone who was
vulnerable, someone who stopped trying and gave up - Ewan’s words here help us see why he was
as much of a scared man who wanted to reach out to his children but had taught himself not to,
as he was the ruthless tyrant we know him as. And that puts into perspective the
weight in his attempts to bring his family together at the beginning of season
4. He undoubtedly cared and wanted more love, but he had conditioned himself to be the
worst possible person suited to getting it. — Jesse Armstrong - it’s key to
him. Behind the episode S4E9 — As stated by showrunner Jesse Armstrong,
this isn’t an element that fundamentally recontextualizes the entire character of Logan
Roy, but it does offer insight and an extra layer, and it does give some of his more
somber, sensitive scenes a bit more context and weight. His generation, and
most specifically, him and his brother, grew up hardened. Rougher and colder than anyone
could know, challenged by the world in ways that would push them to their absolute limits. But
while Ewan at least tried to maintain a moral core and a sense of decency, regardless of whether
or not he succeeded on every level he attempted, Logan gave up. He gave up and stopped trying
to have faith in his ability to be decent, and in the world and his place in
it. He was still capable of love, and he is not lying when he tells his children
that he deeply cares for them. But it’s a hateful, manipulative and toxic love, one that conflates
affection with brutality and abuse. He viewed the world as cruel and maybe subconsciously thought
that the only way in which he could properly show his love for his children was through showing
them how to be a killer so they could not let the world destroy them like it had done him. But
because he stopped trying, he was never properly equipped with dealing with the world in a way
that would help his children. And so all he ended up doing was breaking them in fundamental
levels. Maybe the poison drips through. But this isn’t to say that Logan lived a
life full of regret. Past a certain point, I don’t believe that he would have
changed the vast majority of how he approached life. Because after those
formative years, his trauma and pain had fundamentally altered and chisseled him and
the armor he wore became molded to his skin. He embodied his damage, and became this
magnificent, awful storm that only knew how to live in one way. And while that awesome power
of his is what will go down in history, I do still think that that tiny bit of regret, of shame, of
pain at Rose’s loss, of yearning for the affection of his kids - I think that was still there. I
think it’s plain as day during his final hours. Tiny, but palpable. Yet all that will remain
of him will be what he wanted others to know, and all that he will inspire in others is.. this
meagerness. This meagerness that brings forth all the cowardly colours of life, and this meagerness
that he would never have had if his sister had just stayed healthy. His legacy will be carried
on and his philosophies have shaped the world and the direction it would go in the future, but that
direction does not make for happy reading for all of the reasons that Ewan described. A fitting
and tragic tribute to the legend of Logan Roy. Many thanks for watching. and now people might want to tend and prune
the memory of him to denigrate that Force that magnificent awful force of
him but my God I hope it's in me he was comfortable with this world and
he knew it he knew it and he liked it and I say Amen to that
