Why critics say Succession's new leaders have already lost

With Logan Roy gone, the question hanging over Succession's final season is simple: can his children actually lead? This week's episode offers a devastating answer. As Kendall and Roman attempt to steer WayStar through a crucial merger with Lukas Matsson's GoJo in Norway, critical observers from multiple outlets note the same fatal flaw — the brothers are fundamentally out of sync, unprepared, and outmatched by a predator who smells blood in the water.

The setup is stark. Kendall arrives at the corporate retreat hyped on his own mythology, convinced that 24 hours in the interim CEO role has made him competent. Roman follows his lead without the conviction or clarity needed to close a deal of this magnitude. Matsson, meanwhile, has rigged the game from the start: a corporate "cultural compatibility check" that's really a stress test of whether these brothers pass his vibe check. They fail immediately.

"Are you Scooby Doo-ing me here?" Matsson asks, pushing and pushing until Roman's composure shatters into confessional despair. What emerges from that breakdown captures the show's central tragedy — the unbridgeable gulf between inherited power and earned leadership. The brothers walked into a room where power matters. Roman's own monologue says it best: "My brother's a mess, and I'm gone. It's over for me."

But where the brothers collapse under pressure, Shiv repositions. Both outlets emphasise how sharply different her approach is. She reads Matsson's needs, flatters him on his PR instincts, and positions herself as an ally without visibly throwing her brothers overboard — not yet, anyway. One critic observes she "walked a fine line between cosying up to Matsson without throwing her brothers under the bus... for now." That word "for now" deserves underlining. Shiv's loyalty, like everything else in this family, is a tool. Her position is contingent. She's learning, painfully and in real time, what actual power requires.

The deal itself becomes a proxy for their powerlessness. Matsson leverages their desperation into a higher offer — $192 per share, up from $144 — betting that a board desperate to cash out will override the fumbling interim leadership's hesitation. The brothers imagine they're negotiating a merger. Matsson is orchestrating a conquest of a sinking ship piloted by amateurs.

Both outlets arrive at the same conclusion: Logan built this company through an almost supernatural gift for power dynamics. His children have inherited his name, his company, and his resources, but not his instinct. Shiv is learning, through trial and humiliation, what real power looks like from the outside. Kendall and Roman are discovering they were never the heirs apparent — they were contingent heirs, entirely dependent on a father's shadow for any authority they wielded.

The episode's terrible genius is in making this obvious. The Roys are being dismantled, and they're only now realising it.