Succession Episode 6 of Season 4 opens with the last person you’d expect to see: Logan Roy (Brian Cox), apparently back from the dead.
Is it flashback? memory? No, it’s an old video recorded at Waystar Royco’s investor day before Logan’s death, in which he talks about the company’s plans for a new product called Living+, while berating the employees behind the camera (“You’re as bad as you fucking stupid kids!”)
It’s not initially clear why interim co-CEO Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) and his team are watching the footage in the present day, but it ends up playing a major role in the episode. So what exactly is going on, and what is the true significance of Logan’s cameo?
“Succession” Season 4, Episode 5: Breaking GoJo’s Deal
Why is Logan Roy’s video so important in the episode?
The whole episode is light black mirror I feel so, with Waystar’s Living+ (essentially, a luxury retirement home that aims to extend the lives of residents through Waystar’s health connections and technology) feels like something straight out of Charlie Brooker’s mind. Logan’s cameo is very much in line with the dystopian treatment of technology in the Netflix show, where Kendall and Greg (Nicholas Brown) quickly find an editor to manipulate footage of Logan into saying exactly what Kendall wants him to do – deepfake his father.
Kendall and co-CEO Roman (Kieran Culkin)’s goal in the episode is to keep trying to ruin the GoJo takeover deal, this time by inflating the potential value of Waystar Royco to the point that GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) offered $192 per share that appears to be It is no longer good enough. Using manipulated footage of Logan allows Kendall to do so without angering the company’s CFO Karl Muller (David Rasche), who gives Kendall a stern lecture before the presentation about not giving Mattson any numbers he didn’t personally agree to.
So, Kendall’s workaround is to have his dad say it to him, with Logan commenting about “a huge increase in our parks department’s profits” that is suddenly “double the profits of our parks department”.
In the audience, Carl doesn’t seem convinced. But Logan is the only guy he hasn’t questioned, and Kendall knows that.
Why does Roman keep watching this deepfake of his father at the end?
In addition to Logan’s video becoming a major weapon in Kendall’s arsenal, it’s also something Roman eventually turns to as an odd mixture of comfort and self-flagellation. After dumping his brother to do his Investor Day speech alone (because he expects it to be received horribly), Roman doesn’t know how to deal with him when the reaction to Ken’s speech is largely positive. He’s already spent the episode questioning his decisions after Jerry (J. Smith-Cameron) berates him for firing a Waystar studio executive, and the reception of Kendall’s letter is the final straw for the younger Roy.
In the car alone, Roman watches a meme adapted from his father’s video in which Logan says, “I’m convinced Roman Roy has a small penis and always gets it wrong.” He listens to the clip over and over, closing his eyes and holding the phone close to his ear. It’s an expression of his unprocessed grief, a means of self-punishment, and a way of highlighting the low opinion Roman has of himself – something he’s clearly been dumped on over the years by an abusive father who still haunts him from beyond the world. dangerous.
Succession Streaming now on HBO Max(Opens in a new tab)with new episodes airing at 9 p.m. ET Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.