A billionaire’s heirs made a hostile bid for their own inheritance.

Intro.#

In the first episode of Succession¹, Roman Roy writes a groundskeeper's son a $1 million check² for a home run, then tears it up when the boy is tagged out. It's a joke about money, and it's the whole show in miniature. Across four seasons, the Roy family treats everything, including one another, as something to be offered, promised, or pulled back at the last second. Logan Roy built an empire, and his children spend 39 episodes learning what it's worth to them, and what they're worth to him.

Here's the plot.#

Logan Roy (Brian Cox) founded Waystar Royco, a global media and hospitality conglomerate, and has no intention of letting go. When his health wavers, his children start maneuvering to replace him: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the heir apparent who keeps losing the job; Roman (Kieran Culkin), the family's crude provocateur; Shiv (Sarah Snook), a political operator turning her sights on the company; and Connor (Alan Ruck), the eldest, who has his eye on the White House. Around them orbit Shiv's husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), and a board that votes whichever way power seems to be flowing. The series ran on HBO from June 3, 2018 to May 28, 2023.

Things you didn't know.#

The cast held its first table read of the pilot on Election Day 2016, then watched the results at Adam McKay's house; McKay, who directed the pilot, later said the night convinced him they were making the right show. The production kept wealth consultants³ on hand to coach the actors on how the ultra-rich carry themselves, down to how they step off a helicopter. Improvisation was built into the method: the cast shot the scripted takes, then looser ones, and every conversation at the pilot's birthday lunch was made up on the spot. Kendall's Season 2 tribute rap to his father, "L to the OG"⁴, was built on beats composer Nicholas Britell made in college, and Britell's Emmy-winning main theme⁵ turned into a meme of its own.

The showrunner's bet.#

Jesse Armstrong⁶ came to HBO from British comedy, not prestige drama. HBO ordered the pilot in June 2016, with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay among the producers, and committed to a full season in May 2017. The early returns were thin: the premiere drew well under half the audience of its Westworld lead-in. HBO renewed the show anyway, just two episodes in. Armstrong placed the final bet himself. Despite ideas for a fifth season, he decided to stop after four, telling The New Yorker, "There's a promise in the title."

The cast, and the roles that almost went elsewhere.#

Two of the show's defining performances nearly landed in the wrong roles. Jeremy Strong first auditioned for Roman, not Kendall, and read for Kendall a month later. Kieran Culkin was asked to read for Cousin Greg, decided after Greg's first line that he was wrong for the part, and sent in tapes of Roman's scenes instead; Armstrong called him a "slam dunk." Both swaps paid off. Strong won the Emmy for Lead Actor in a Drama in 2020, and the final season took three of the four top drama acting Emmys: Culkin for Lead Actor, Snook for Lead Actress, and Macfadyen for Supporting Actor.

Where it came from.#

Succession is an original story, but it has a clear ancestor. Before the series, Armstrong wrote a screenplay about the real Murdoch family that never got made⁷, and he has described it as the show's predecessor. The finished series is fiction, loosely inspired by several media dynasties, including the Murdochs, Redstones, Maxwells, and Sulzbergers. The resemblance was close enough for at least one of those families to notice: James Murdoch has said he doesn't watch it, and Brian Cox has said Elisabeth Murdoch finds it hard to.

The invisible hand.#

Money is everywhere in Succession, but what the Roys actually fight over is control. Waystar is a public company, so the throne isn't simply passed down; it's decided by votes, from board members and shareholders as much as from Logan. Ownership and power aren't the same thing, and the real Murdochs hold onto the second through dual-class voting shares⁸ without owning most of the first. Season 4 turns that abstraction into a number. Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) wants to buy Waystar for his tech company, GoJo, and during a tense retreat in Norway his offer climbs to $192 a share⁹ while Kendall and Roman try to sink the deal. That's the show's long-running joke: every child wants the crown, the market only ever offers a check, and sooner or later everyone names a price.

The tech behind the tale.#

GoJo is the show's sharpest piece of economic realism: a Swedish streaming company¹⁰ chasing an old-media empire because Waystar has the content and GoJo has the technology. Its value rests on subscribers, so it matters when Season 4 reveals that Matsson has grossly inflated GoJo's subscriber count in India¹¹; in a subscription business, a padded count pads the price. The deal mirrors a shift the real stock market made over four decades. Energy made up nearly 28% of the S&P 500 in 1980, and information technology was still under 7% in 1990. Then came the internet, the cloud, smartphones, and now AI and the chips that run it, and by mid-2026 tech made up roughly 39% of the index¹². Apple became the first U.S. company worth $1 trillion two months after Succession premiered; Nvidia became the first worth $5 trillion¹³ in October 2025. The Roys spent four seasons arguing over who would inherit Waystar. The market had already decided which side of the table held the leverage.

By the numbers.#

Succession premiered on HBO on June 3, 2018, to 582,000 live viewers. The audience grew season by season: the Season 3 premiere drew more than 1.4 million viewers across platforms, and Season 4 averaged 8.7 million viewers per episode across platforms, by Warner Bros. Discovery's count. The May 28, 2023 finale set a new series high, with 2.9 million viewers¹⁴ that night. Along the way the show collected 75 Primetime Emmy nominations and 19 wins¹⁵, including Outstanding Drama Series in 2020, 2022, and 2023, plus nine Golden Globes. It ended after four seasons with its audience still growing.

Why it endures.#

Succession endures because it understood that in a family like the Roys, love and money run on the same ledger, and everyone eventually learns their price. Real life has kept making the point since the finale. In September 2025, the Murdochs settled their own fight over the family trust¹⁶, with three siblings taking about $1.1 billion each and Lachlan Murdoch taking control. A year later, on October 6, 2026, HBO itself changed hands. Paramount Skydance, led by David Ellison and backed by his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery at about $31 a share after a bidding war with Netflix¹⁷. A son, his father's fortune, a streaming rival, and a price per share: the show that once looked like satire now reads like a deal memo.

Side notes#

1. Succession — All 39 episodes, from the June 2018 pilot to the May 2023 finale, stream on HBO Max, and the show's IMDb page carries the full episode guide and YouTube hosts the official trailer. Watch on YouTube ↩

2. A $1 million check — The scene comes from the pilot, "Celebration," which Adam McKay directed on 35mm film in late 2016; Logan's apartment in the episode is the American Irish Historical Society on Fifth Avenue. Learn more ↩

3. Wealth consultants — The advisers weighed in on how the ultra-rich live, starting with what they wear; Kieran Culkin recalled being told that someone raised around helicopters knows where the blades are and never ducks. Learn more ↩

4. "L to the OG" — Britell assembled the track from beats he made in a college hip-hop group, while writers Will Tracy and Adam McKay wrote the lyrics; because it reused older material, Britell never submitted it for an Emmy. Learn more ↩

5. Main title theme — Britell's theme layers Roland TR-808 drums under a piano line that paraphrases a passage from Beethoven's "Pathétique" Sonata, and Pusha T released an official remix in 2019. Listen on Spotify ↩

6. Jesse Armstrong — Armstrong co-created the British sitcom Peep Show with Sam Bain, wrote for The Thick of It, and shared an Oscar nomination for the adapted screenplay of In the Loop. Learn more ↩

7. Murdoch — Armstrong's unproduced screenplay about the real family, titled Murdoch, made the 2010 Black List of Hollywood's most-liked unproduced scripts before he set it aside and returned to the idea as fiction. Learn more ↩

8. Dual-class voting shares — Companies with two share classes give one class far more votes than the other; at Google, founders' Class B shares carried 10 votes each while public Class A shares carried one, letting insiders keep control while selling equity. Learn more ↩

9. $192 a share — Matsson's earlier offer stood at $144 a share; in the Season 4 episode "Kill List," he raised it to $187, then $192, after the brothers' attempt to derail the deal. Learn more ↩

10. GoJo — The Ringer has argued GoJo sits closer to Netflix than Spotify, and that Waystar's own streaming service, StarGo, captures legacy media's problem: strong content, weak technology. Learn more ↩

11. India subscriber count — The reveal comes in "Tailgate Party," which aired May 7, 2023, when Ebba, after a falling-out with Matsson, tells Kendall and Roman; Matsson later admits the inflation to Shiv and bets the scandal will fade behind the acquisition. Learn more ↩

12. Tech's share of the index — No sector's lead has proved permanent: industrials made up 85% of the S&P 500 at its 1957 launch, and financials held 20% to 22% in the years before 2008. Read the CME analysis ↩

13. $5 trillion — Nvidia crossed the mark on October 29, 2025, about four months after becoming the first company worth $4 trillion; a day earlier, CEO Jensen Huang said the company expected $500 billion in AI chip orders. Learn more ↩

14. Series-high finale — The 2.9 million counted viewers across Max and HBO on finale night alone, 68% more than the Season 3 finale, and the episode ran long enough to push back the start of Barry's own series finale that evening. Read the press release ↩

15. 19 Emmys — The final season's wins were handed out in January 2024, after the writers' and actors' strikes postponed the ceremony by four months. See the Television Academy page ↩

16. Murdoch family trust — The payouts are funded by selling about 14.2 million News Corp and 16.9 million Fox Class B voting shares; Lachlan gains sole voting control of the family's holding company, and the trust's term now runs through 2050. Learn more ↩

17. Paramount's takeover — Netflix had agreed to buy Warner Bros. and HBO in December 2025, then walked away in February 2026 when Paramount raised its hostile bid to $31 a share; Paramount covered the $2.8 billion breakup fee owed to Netflix, and Larry Ellison put up $45.7 billion in equity. Learn more ↩