Contains spoilers for this article Subrogation Season 4 Episode 3
As expected, Subrogation‘s jaw-dropping death scene takes place not in a hospital, but during frantic phone calls.
On Sunday’s Season 4 show, Subrogation creator Jesse Armstrong succeeds in the end he teased from the start; killed the once indestructible Logan Roy. A corporate giant in his professional life and an abusive tyrant in his private life, Logan has spent very little we’ve seen this season quietly wondering what awaits him on the other side, simultaneously planning his ninth (or tenth or twentieth) life. . It’s understandable that Logan isn’t convinced there’s anything after this life he’s completely conquered; As he said last season, “Life isn’t knights on horseback. It is a number on a piece of paper. A fight for a knife in the mud.”
… and ah, the scum that Logan Roy left behind. Perhaps none of this would have happened if he had swallowed everything and came to his son Connor’s wedding with a paternal attitude. Then again, we all knew he would never bother. And so, billionaire, media mogul, and sadistic game designer Logan Roy spent his last moments in the air, miles away from his family, with a handful of hired staff by his side. Would he like it otherwise?
The children are all on a yacht bound for Ellis Island for the wedding, and Kendall and Roman receive a call from Tom telling them that their father is seriously ill and has chest compressions. Their father skipped the ceremony without notice for a job interview.
You can see the abusive dynamic Logan nurtured among his children by looking at how they reacted to his death. His two sons, Roman and Kendall, whom Logan mocks for the promise that they will replace him someday in their lives, pass the cell phone back and forth as he tries to digest the fact that their father is probably, almost certainly, but not certain. do not die. It takes a while before they go to the trouble of picking up Shiv, Logan’s only daughter and the only child he calls by a genuinely endearing nickname: Pinky.
Logan may never have taken his only daughter seriously as his successor, but he is nonetheless the person the brothers chose to bring the news of her death to the public.
Shiv would have been the first to call Tom – had he not been ignoring her ex-husband’s calls because, among many other things, he had conspired with Logan to suppress an offer to take over him and his brother’s family business. last season. He’s the only Roy boy to receive the affectionate nickname from his father: “Pinky.” This is probably because Logan never took him seriously as a potential substitute for himself. One day he had signaled that he should give the crown to his daughter, but that actually sounded like an empty promise to a daughter he would never have chosen over his sons.
And then naturally there’s Connor, the forever rejected bastard, last to get the news. None of his brothers would bother to come and get him so he could say his last words to Logan. Instead, they tell him only after their father is long gone – at which point, after a refreshingly candid conversation with Willa, he decides to marry anyway. He admits he might like his money but hey, he’s also happy in his orbit. After spending a lifetime with these emotionally stunted weirdos, it’s not hard to imagine how that felt like validation.
The episode feels like a game SubrogationThe Season 2 finale in which Logan tries to sell Shiv and other family members in exchange for a “blood sacrifice” (Kendall) while still on a yacht. Small details throughout the episode are reminders of the damage Logan has done to his children. Rejected and disempowered, Connor can be seen torturing the food crew during the episode, just as he did at Logan’s birthday party. Kendall, the ever-groomed successor, switches to full manager mode when it’s revealed that her father is dying, and makes phone calls to coordinate a response team even after Logan’s fate has been definitively determined. Roman has just finished leaving an obnoxious voicemail to his father after (another) episode of serious emotional abuse, but is also terrified because he forgot to say “I love you” to his beating father.
And Shiv? It goes back to Tom, a tearful and emptied husband whose manipulative streak matches his own. (For the record, Tom isn’t in great shape right now either; he’s spent years oiling Logan, overseeing his bathroom visits, and offering to go to jail for him. Now, as he sadly told Cousin Greg, “”protective.” )
Killing Logan in his final act is just SubrogationThe smartest maneuver ever. Something was needed to interrupt the Roy’s cyclical pattern of abuse, and Logan’s loss further impacts the series’ core question: Will his children truly be successful professionally and personally? Is there a future for them beyond their father’s legacy? successfully (sorry) convinced them that they could never be “serious people”.
Given everything we know about Logan, it makes sense that he shouldn’t worry too much about what his kids will say after his death. However, it might embarrass him to see how incompetent they seem to manage not only his loss but also the company he left behind. Previews for the remainder of this season chronicle a power struggle between the boys, Logan’s colleagues, and the countless corporate vultures standing in between, all of whom are likely hoping to take over.
By refusing to let his children become strong enough to rival his greatness, the Waystar Royco patriarch has jeopardized the one thing he truly values: his legacy. The empires everyone remembers are the ones Logan tried to emulate, spanning generations. Will the last one be ten years after his death?
As irreparable as it all may be, there is reason to be hopeful in Roy’s lineage – professionally at least. Logan’s death hits them all like a live wire, but they eventually come together to make a statement before fully accepting that he’s gone. (Well, except for Connor, who gets a well-deserved respite to marry his sugar baby.) That’s clearly not healthy grieving behavior, but in the absence of their father’s despicable intervention (plus, perhaps, many billable hours) could that be? do all the kids just … get along? Logan would call that thought “fuck you”.
In the end, Logan seems to have left this world exactly in the conditions he expected, with numerical proof of his greatness. In an impressive moment towards the end of the episode, after Shiv makes his public statement, Roman checks his phone and confirms that everyone now knows that his father is dead. “And this is Dad,” Roman mutters as the kids look at a chart showing Waystar Royco’s stock plunged on the news.