“Succession”: Dearly beloved, the Roys cordially invite us to a wedding we won’t soon forget

Believing we’ll go on forever is one of the cruelest tricks humans play on themselves. Such a mindset seduces us into delaying tough choices, putting off the things we meant to do and say until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Deceiving ourselves that way is foolish; using that lie to string along our loved ones is pitiless.

“Succession,” for its part, has been upfront as to where Logan Roy (Brian Cox) was steering his family’s ship from the first season when the 80-year-old Waystar Royco CEO emerges from suffering a hemorrhagic stroke and trumpets his intent to remain on the throne.

Instead of establishing a succession plan, he continued taunting and goading his children into hating each other and despising him. It looked like it would go on that way ad infinitum. But nothing lasts forever.

All great series hit a point that firmly establishes the end has begun. Only “Succession” would be gutsy enough to hide that pernicious alarm in cake and champagne.

Sunday’s episode “Connor’s Wedding” doesn’t show any signs of Logan slowing down, including to honor his eldest son’s nuptials. Any day that ends in the letter Y and isn’t focused on Logan is just a day. And the day of his first-born’s wedding, he phones his youngest son Roman (Kieran Culkin) from his airport-bound limo inviting him to go with him Sweden to sweet-talk Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård). Ensuring ATN’s sale to GoJo is locked down tight is more important than anything.

Roman, to his credit, is firm in his decision to stand with his oldest brother, and asks Logan if he’s going. “Mmm . . . we got him some, uh, Napoleon things?” Logan replies. “Napoleon and Josephine letters,” Kerry (Zoe Winters) clarifies. An exorbitant gift will have to do. Logan directs Roman to tell Connor (Alan Ruck) he’ll call him “when I have a minute.”

Brian Cox and Matthew Macfadyen on “Succession” (HBO)Then Logan directs Roman to fire longtime loyal counsel Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) at the wedding, since she’s going to be there instead of on the plane to Sweden. Logan tells his son to call him when it’s done.

“I think it would be nicer coming from you. I mean you two, you know, you were close,” Logan says, spreading thick buttercream over the twisted relationship between his most senior female employee and the son who sent her unsolicited dick pics. Then Dad gets sharper. “I mean, you are with me. You aren’t just f**king me around!” Logan growls, adding, “We’ll make it tidy afterward. Just give her the word today.”

Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Karolina (Dagmara Domińczyk) greet Logan as climbs the stairs to his private jet. He lets them know that he’s icing Gerri and, since he’s in a mood, axing Cyd too, instructing Tom to stay on Roman to make sure he doesn’t punk out.

“You push Cyd, Roman knifes Gerri, all in a day’s work!” Tom chirps approvingly.

Business as usual. 

But that’s the big joke, isn’t it? Not even giants can know when all mortal business will cease.

Throughout its episode “Succession” hits an array of thematic notes beyond the obvious concerning the Roys’ dysfunction and the callousness of the wealthy. “Connor’s Wedding” evinces this with the final demonstration of Logan’s arrogance. In refusing to indulge all manner of foresight beyond that which concerns profit, and his corporate legacy, he’s left his company imperiled. In messing with their personal lives, he leaves his children adrift.

The stunner, though, is the way Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod, push us into the endless deep right alongside Shiv (Sarah Snook), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman, and, Connor. Unbeknownst to Logan’s children and us, Connor and Willa’s (Justine Lupe) wedding would not be remembered for their exchange of vows. Instead it will be seared in their memories for the grimmest reasons.

First, Roman rolls into the pre-wedding reception ruing the position his father has placed him in. He’s left hating himself when he gives Gerri the dreaded “head’s up” and understandably, she shoots the messenger, rights herself and stalks off. Roman dutifully phones dad to report the murder, but it goes to voicemail. 

Then, at long last and at such a late hour, the whelp nuts up. “Are you kind of just being s**tty with me?” Roman rants into a message. “Because your son is getting married and you can’t f**king keep expecting me to bend over you for, like, being c**ty so . . . I’m just asking, so uh, yeah, that’s the question: Are you a c**t? Gimme a buzz!”

Connor, in the meantime, is suddenly out of sorts about the wedding cake, referring to it as a “loony cake.” When Willa asks, Kendall explains that when Logan committed Connor’s mother to an institution, he fed his son Victoria sponge cake for a week to smooth things over.

Otherwise brothers and sister good-naturedly trade insults when Shiv’s phone buzzes – it’s Tom. She sends him to voicemail. Tom rings again, and she ignores him again. Then Connor comes in and happily reveals that Kerry told him Logan planned to drop by to wish him well, which is a lie. After he walks away, the boys send Shiv after their older brother to break the depressing truth.

Shiv departs, and Roman’s phone rings, and again, it’s Tom. “Hello, f**ky-sucky brigade, how can I help you?” Roman deadpans.

This is where the fun slams to a halt as death does what it does best, blindsiding us at the height of our revelry.

For a sense of how little of “Connor’s Wedding” is about Connor or the wedding, the call comes around 14 minutes and 30 seconds into an hour-long episode.

Alan Ruck and Justine Lupe on “Succession” (HBO)Armstrong constructs that scene and all that follow to take everyone by surprise and ensure maximum wreckage. Logan is hale and full of bluster in his limo on the way to his flight, giving no hint as to what’s coming. First Tom tells Roman Logan isn’t doing well, then says he’s non-responsive, then informs him they’re doing chest compressions. Tom advises them to get Shiv, then tell the boys he’s holding the phone up to Logan’s ear so they can say whatever final words they desire.

Culkin’s and Strong’s agonized panic is remarkable in the way it marries with the direction and dialogue. Armstrong’s script precisely captures the cyclone of terror, sorrow and fear that spins the brain when a person knows this is the last time they’ll speak to a loved one. If you’ve ever been in their situation, you know there is never another time when you’ll speak with more savage honesty or lie with so much love in your heart. You will demand the impossible and you will screw reason.

First Roman talks. “Hey, dad . . . I uh, I hope you’re OK? You’re OK. You’re going to be OK because you’re a monster. And you’re gonna win. Because you just, you just win and, uh, and you’re a good, you’re a good man, you’re a good dad. You’re a very good dad, uh, you did a good job . . . no, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to do that.”

Then he hands the phone to Kendall: “Hang in there, yeah? Um, it’ll be OK. We love you, dad, OK? We love you. I love you, dad. I do. I love you, OK? And, it’s OK. Uh, even though you f**kin’ I dunno, I can’t forgive you. But uh, yeah, I uh, it’s OK. And, and, and, and . . . I love you, uh. . .”

Then they remember Shiv, poor Shiv has no idea. The camera jogs along with Ken as he holds back snot and tears, doing his best not to alarm the carousing guests. He finds Shiv in the crowd, interrupting her bright socializing. A long shot tracks them as Kendall quietly ushers Shiv back to the room, capturing each second of her face falling as the force of the instant hits her. At first, she thinks the bad news is about her mom; later she admits that she wishes it were.

When Roman blurts out that Logan’s gone, handing Shiv the phone, her tearful squawk is heartrending. “No. I can’t have that?”

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The terrible splendor of all this is the means by which Armstrong uses Logan’s death to explode the landmines Logan set in his children’s paths in all the episodes, hours, and minutes leading to this, not caring that they would run over them. Counting on that, perhaps.

Whatever you’d call Roman’s imbalanced relationship with Gerri she took his side in past difficult passages. Not now. In a brief beat when they’re alone, he voices his sadness. “I’m a f**king mess,” he pleads, and all she can quietly offer as she walks out on him is, “Yeah. Room’s all yours.”

Shiv, too, is abandoned, with Tom at her father’s side instead of holding her hand. “Tom, is he even alive?” Shiv says when her estranged husband offers to hold the phone up to Logan’s ear, before uttering some of the saddest words she’s ever said: “Are you just being nice to me?” (Tom, for his part, knows he’s probably done for, and so is Greg.)

Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook on “Succession” (HBO)All that Shiv has in this moment of sorrow are a pair of brothers who would rip her to shreds on any other day. Connor doesn’t even have that and never did. “Oh, man. He never even liked me,” the dry-eyed failson says upon hearing the news. “Sorry. You know what? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t even know what I mean. I never got the chance to make him proud of me.”

Also, if Victoria sponge wasn’t ruined for all time before for Connor, it is now. Nevertheless, after talking it over with Willa, the two tie the knot anyway, allocating the appropriate level of importance to his absentee father’s demise.

Whatever mixture of adulation and loathing we hold for these people, Armstrong uses these details and notes to remind us of their raw vulnerability. Life lays them out the same as it does all of us, whether it happens by their father’s hand or the blow comes to an adversary they have no hope of defeating. The children of this media god are small humans after all.

In that way, the first shockwave brings Shiv, Kendall and Roman down to our size. The second rechecks our reality against theirs; one of the horrors of fresh grief is the way life goes on and how obscene that feels. As Shiv and Ken sit in a daze and Roman refuses to believe Logan is dead, the party boat pulls out of the harbor and Logan’s team calls them from a plane, letting them know they’re going to draft a statement.

Quickly the three decide to get out ahead of the leadership’s maneuvers and, with the help of Gerri and Hugo (Fisher Stevens), take a boat to shore, and pull together a statement they give to the press at the airfield where Logan’s plane lands. Shiv, for a beat or two, sinks into Tom’s arms and accepts his embrace before gently pushing him away.

“Are we going to be OK?” Roman asks Kendall. “Yeah. Yeah,” Ken replies warmly, “We’ll be OK,” as he rubs his baby brother’s back.

Then Roman, with all the love in his heart, puckishly spits, “You’re not going to be OK,” which Kendall lobs back at him, adding, “You’re f**ked.” “You’re totally f**ked,” says Roman, continuing the reassuring call and response of business as usual with the Roy clan.

New episodes of “Succession” premiere at 9 p.m. Sundays on HBO.