CE-Bros Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) notched a huge win for Waystar Royco on paper, but they certainly don’t feel like celebrating. In “Kill List,” the fifth episode of the final season of Succession, the whole Waystar Royco crew travels to Norway at the behest of GoJo CEO Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skaarsgard). Of course, things don’t go as planned when Mattson reveals that he wants to buy the entirety of Waystar Royco—including ATN.
“My theory is that Matson’s company is maybe kind of a house of cards,” posits Richard Lawson on this week’s episode of Still Watching. “I’m wondering if something is about to collapse at his company and he needs something concrete to hold it up.”
While Mattson’s motivation for changing the terms of the deal are somewhat unclear, what is clear is that Kendall and Roman no longer want to the deal to go through. In a power-hungry move, Kendall convinces Roman to join him in his attempt to tank the GoJo deal so that the two of them can remain on the top of the Waystar Royco foodchain. However, the move blows up in their face when an emotional Roman tells off Mattson on the top of a mountain, spilling the beans that the brothers have zero intention of selling the company to him. Roman’s screed against Mattson was honest and fair, notes Still Watching co-host Chris Murphy, but he ultimately shot himself in the foot.
Elsewhere, the Waystar Royco staff are reeling after Mattson’s team sends a list with names of Waystar employees who will likely not have a position if the deal goes through. Frank (Peter Friedman), Karl (David Rasche), and Hugo (Fisher Stevens) are all on the chopping block, but the women of Waystar Royco, specifically Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) and Gerri (J. Smith Cameron), live to fight another day. J. Smith Cameron also drops by Still Watching to discuss Gerri’s rollercoaster of a season at Waystar Royco, as well as the hat that she wore to Connor’s wedding—which started out as an idea from the lighting department. “I think a hat is sort of subliminally a kind of a statusy thing for a woman these days,” she said. “I thought of it a bit like, ‘I’m gonna show up in my finest and bluff this out.’”
Halfway through the final season of Succession, it’s clear that it’s best to expect the unexpected when it comes to the Roy family. Listen to the latest episode of Still Watching to hear Lawson and Murphy discuss the fifth episode of Succession season four. For your own questions, comments, and final-season theories, please email [email protected].
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