'Succession Is Ending After Season 4

Publish date: 2024-05-03

HBO's hit drama Succession will end after its fourth season. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was the plan all along, even as the show racked up accolades like Emmy Awards and helped give HBO the acclaim and attention that it needed after its success with Game of Thrones. 

Creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong told the New Yorker about the plan, saying, “There’s a promise in the title of Succession. I’ve never thought this could go on forever. The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From season two, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?”

He went on to say that he didn't want the show to stray from the course that he'd set out, which can happen to many successful series (ahem, Game of Thrones, again). Instead of having Succession become an empty shell of itself, Armstrong said it was better to end things while fans and viewers were still interested.

“I got together with a few of my fellow writers before we started the writing of season 4, in about November, December, 2021, and I sort of said, ‘Look, I think this maybe should be it. But what do you think?’" he noted. "And we played out various scenarios: We could do a couple of short seasons, or two more seasons. Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks. Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference.”

Season 4 of Succession returns to HBO on Mar. 26 and the network hasn't issued any formal statement about the end just yet. The show earned an Emmy for Best Drama Series for its second season and managed to get another for its third. The cast, which includes Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Nicholas Braun, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Macfadyen, and Sarah Snook, have all become regulars on the awards circuit since the show premiered in 2018.

Courtesy HBO

Fans may have some hope for a spin-off, however. Armstrong told the New Yorker that the option is there if HBO wants to continue the Roy saga.

“I do think that this Succession story that we were telling is complete,” he said. “This is the muscular season to exhaust all our reserves of interest, and I think there’s some pain in all these characters that’s really strong. But the feeling that there could be something else in an allied world, or allied characters, or some of the same characters — that’s also strong in me. I have caveated the end of the show, when I’ve talked to some of my collaborators, like: Maybe there’s another part of this world we could come back to, if there was an appetite? Maybe there’s something else that could be done, that harnessed what’s been good about the way we’ve worked on this. So, that is another true feeling.” 

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