My grandfather died six years ago this September. At the time, I lived in a dingy, musty, dimly lit two-bedroom apartment in the heart of East Lansing, Michigan. On a good day it was about 500 square feet in size. The only window in the “living room” saw only two hours of sunlight from dawn to dusk – before the sun rose and set in turns appearing as a makeshift horizon under the four-story parking lot – and that made the days feel particularly short. .
Sitting under 40-watt light bulbs on an uncomfortably hard leather couch (so graciously provided by the big rental company that almost monopolized nearly all of the property in the small university town), my parents told me on the phone that my grandfather had died. He had lung cancer and was 85 years old so it’s been a long time, but his death was one of the first deaths I’ve encountered in my “adult” life. The sudden void left by a deceased loved one in your life feels like an abyss, a feeling I can’t consciously grasp – until I understand it.
This grief was compounded by the unfortunate fact that I had experienced his death over the phone, another rite of passage in my life dictated by modern technology. Instead of being with my family in a moment of remembrance and mourning, I was in an apartment in the middle of Michigan barren, surrounded by the intense aroma of smoke-stained walls and a growing pile of empty pizza boxes. At eye level I could see the FIFA pause screen and a half-eaten Uncrustable on the coffee table – not a very picturesque place to grapple with an eye-opening moment of life.
Even though I had spent a significant part of my life with my grandfather and cherished nothing but good memories with him, I felt a vague sense of guilt. Just a few weeks ago, I had traveled home during a break and watched a recent Detroit Tigers game with him (luckily, he wasn’t self-conscious enough to see the Tigers succumb to the White Sox in the episode), which felt like the right thing to do. But at the time of his death, I still felt that distance and never reconciled, and this became the norm in later years.
Most deaths I’ve experienced since then feel the same way. There is a disturbing mismatch between the concrete and real relationships you have with people and the inhuman and momentary nature of the way we learn about death today. So on Sunday evening Subrogation The episode, which was an instant classic when show host and media giant Logan Roy died suddenly on the plane, made a lot of sense.
In a show backed by incorrigible modernity and late capitalism and all its sad realities, it never made sense for Logan’s death to be comfortable and peaceful. The boss and his reprehensible family have built generations of wealth by making this world a crueler, more dystopian place. His value was built on an air of unpredictability and quick business decisions, so it always made sense for his death to do the same.
From the first part, Subrogation Roy showed his children panicking at the apparent possibility of Logan’s impending death. She recovers, and Kendall, Shiv, and Roman struggle forward in their quest for succession. Logan’s mortality looms over the conscience of every main character in the series as they position themselves for a post-patriarchal life, but that life often feels like a distant world. Of course, the show is literally called Subrogation. In retrospect, Logan’s death was less likely and more certain throughout the show. It was only a matter of time. But the writing was so good that collectively, as the audience, we seemed to forget that this show always implied that a successor was imminent. Logan’s brute strength, mental toughness, and toxic resilience flowed so powerfully through the cracks of the show that we forgot to remember that he was always going to die.
Then, in the third episode of the fourth season, “Connor’s Wedding,” Roman answers a phone call from his estranged brother-in-law, Tom Wambsgans. The children are at their brother’s wedding in a quiet room on a boat sailing to the Statue of Liberty where the ceremony will take place. Logan is on a flight to Sweden and misses his eldest son’s big day to extort money from his deal with Lukas Matsson and Swedish tech giant GoJo. Tom is involved when he betrayed his wife, Shiv, to get close to Logan. When the grave medical emergency first occurs, Tom tries in vain to search for the bride he hasn’t met, then calls Roman. Summarizing, possibly hoping to gather information about the GoJo deal, Roman overhears Tom saying, “Your father is very sick.”
Roman Roy’s world comes crashing down in that moment, with Kendall soon arriving and Shiv, who later retreats into the room to bid him farewell. Tom explains that Logan died on the phone. saying the word “dead” that caused the brothers to struggle to process the news. They may have secretly wished him dead for years, but now that this has finally happened, everything is too sudden and jarring to handle. They’re about to watch their eldest siblings jump into a wedding out of comfort rather than love, on the verge of a momentous moment for the future of their company, Waystar Royco, and their father has just died from a fall from an altitude of 15,000 feet. .
Like everything that happens in both the Roy’s and our own lives, death almost never comes at the right time. There are no certified medical personnel on board, delaying meeting with GoJo could ruin the deal, and right now the entire family is drowning in dysfunction and internal conflict. It’s never been said, but it’s clear—like my deep gloom in a cheap college flat—the Roy kids didn’t expect to experience their father’s death miles away on a boat to Liberty Island to watch their half-brother fake it. marriage. This is their version of a filthy licensing office – it was never meant to be like this.
It was a shocking, touching and epic television hour, partly due to the shocking timing of his death so early in the series’ final season. But it makes sense. This show is shrouded in familial realism through an unattainably rich veil. Death is also shocking and steep in real life, and it is certain to be disturbing. Since the dawn of the “golden age” of television, there has undoubtedly been an exciting trend for great heroes (or anti-heroes) to die in grand theatrical or biblical ceremonies. Adrianna was dragged to her own death by a family member she trusted. sopranos. Gus Fring, Breaking BadThe chicken man and an unprecedented figure of evil ended up in the nursing home at the hands of a bomb that detonated half his face. The list goes on. But in the context Subrogationand his profound display of the human condition and all its instinctive suffering, Logan’s death seems just right. An untimely and most importantly an uncertain death.
The only major character death in television history to have affected me in this way was another one of the greatest of all time: Omar Little in Phone. A man who seemed to be immortal in gunfights died suddenly in an ordinary corner shop with a single bullet in the back of his neck. The disturbing reality of death runs a little deeper into your soul when you feel it so real.
For all the people Logan had physically in his back pocket, in his immediate circle and beyond, he died alone more than most of us. That’s something he’s started to notice early this season, especially in the food scene in Episode 1, which has become quite forward-thinking. With an unusual display of introspection and vulnerability, Logan asks the bodyguard Colin if he believes in an afterlife and if humanity has a purpose. He finishes dinner by calling Colin “my friend”, a stark and tragic spectacle of solitude from the otherwise impenetrable figure.
Logan Roy’s death scene is another masterclass from Jesse Armstrong and others in series directing and screenwriting. Subrogation crew. Again and again, they are able to present crucial moments in a way that is shocking and sobering at the same time. Early flashbacks of “Connor’s Wedding” put the episode in an elite mood and were instantly engraved in film history and pop culture canon. But it’s not over yet; seven chapters remain; In this episode, we will likely see either a new heir crowned or the empire falling apart forever.