Let’s Talk About Succession‘s Bombshell Season 3 Finale

This story was originally published on December 13, 2021. We’re republishing it ahead of Succession’s season 4 premiere on March 26. If you need to refresh your memory ahead of the new episodes, catch up below.

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Big spoilers for Succession season 3 below.

Still processing the Succession season 3 finale? So are we.

The HBO drama’s latest installment, “All the Bells Say,” concludes with a Roy family showdown within the stone walls of an idyllic Italian villa. Logan (Brian Cox) plans to sell his media conglomerate, Waystar-Royco, to the streaming service GoJo, owned by Swedish tech entrepreneur Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard), for a $5 billion payout, leaving his kids in the dust and crushing their dreams of taking over the company. Three of his heirs—Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin)—team up to try to stop him and protect their positions in the business, saying they’d withhold their votes to block the sale. But their mother, Caroline (Harriet Walter), has already helped Logan, her ex-husband, by giving him the votes he needs to overrule his kids’ supermajority and push the sale through.

secure his victory by handing him her shares in the company, thus giving him the supermajority he needs to move forward. The Roy kids are, as the family would say, totally fucked, and part of the reason is that someone warned their father of their incoming coup. That someone was Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s husband.

Tom has taken L after L throughout his journey on Succession and usually at the hand of his own wife, from Shiv suggesting they have an open relationship on their wedding night in season 1 to her telling him “I may not love you, but I do love you” in the penultimate episode. So when Shiv tells him about her and her siblings’ plan to overthrow their dad with no consideration for Tom’s safety, he taps Greg (Nicholas Braun) and makes “a deal with the devil”—betraying his wife to help Logan win.

“As the season progresses, he’s slowly feeling less connected to Siobhan,” Macfadyen, told Vulture. “Because they always had a plan as to how they would progress up the pole of Waystar—maybe she would be the boss and he would be head of whatever it was but involved. It was always the two of them. And he feels that’s slightly changing. There’s a lack of trust there. There’s an awful, growing, gnawing feeling that he’s not in control at all, that she’s got a different agenda. Subconsciously, he knows that more than he lets on.”

Macfadyen learned of the twist “quite early on” and had a discussion with showrunner Jesse Armstrong about Tom’s trajectory, he told GQ. According to the actor’s understanding, Tom starts making his decision in the previous episode, when he and Shiv are “playing a sexy game and she implies that she doesn’t love him. Something is very off there. Then the following day she talks about freezing their babies. But then maybe it’s a subconscious decision.” But there were other turning points too, like when Shiv wasn’t fully relieved that Tom wasn’t going to prison.

“There’s a collection of incremental things that he’s noticed with Shiv that’s made him think I have to look after myself. I can’t rely on anybody. My wife doesn’t trust and believe in me,” Macfadyen explained.

And while Tom’s sneak attack comes as a surprise, there were signs throughout the whole season (even in one of the promo posters), which audiences eagerly shared on Twitter after the episode aired. There was Tom comparing himself to the Emperor Nero, who killed his wife and then castrated and married his servant Sporus (Greg in this allegory). There was also Tom turning down an alliance with Kendall in episode 6, telling him, “Having been around a bit, my hunch is that you’re going to get fucked, because I’ve seen you get fucked a lot. And I’ve never seen Logan get fucked once.”

In the finale’s final moments, Tom arrives on the scene once the Logan vs. Kids confrontation is over. As Logan leaves, he pats Tom on the shoulder to show his approval and gratitude. Shiv catches the exchange and gives a look that could kill, but it seems Tom doesn’t know she saw his moment with Logan. Tom walks over to comfort Shiv as she sobs and kisses her on the head, twisting the knife.

According to Vulture, the cast filmed a few variations of that final scene. There’s one where only Kendall sees the Logan-Tom shoulder pat, and another where Shiv doesn’t see it all. Snook didn’t know which one would be chosen before the broadcast, but she explained how the ending could impact season 4 regardless. “At the end of an episode, having something that narratively projects into the next season sets it up quite nicely,” she told the site. “If Shiv knows, but her brothers don’t, and Tom doesn’t know that Shiv knows—there’s a lot of potential there.”

Macfadyen described filming his entrance scene to GQ: “So I was waiting outside to come up. We did it in one [take]. It was brilliant to come into that room, with what’s hanging in the air following Logan shouting and screaming. It’s a powerful atmosphere to walk into.”

Snook added to Entertainment Tonight that the season 3 finale marks “an exciting shift,” which is certainly an understatement to passionate Succession viewers—some of whom compared the episode to Game of Thrones. As the wait for season 4 begins, all eyes are on Tom and Shiv now (and sure, you too, Greg).