Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers from Season 4 Episode 1 of Succession.As the Roys go to war over the Great Royco Empire in the final season of Succession, there remains one unexpected figure who could be the family’s greatest threat: Scandinavian tech guru Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skårsgard). With Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) finally teaming up to go “full coup” against Dad (Brian Cox), the younger Roy generation put all their eggs in one basket by over-bidding Logan on the PGM acquisition. Capping out at the staggering price of $10 Capital-B-Billion, the siblings have essentially gambled the entirety of their livelihoods on the PGM deal not only paying off, but on the acquisition pulling through to begin with.
The problem is how much of their spending capital is tied up in the yet-to-be-signed GoJo deal. “After the GoJo sale we’ll have, two, three bil,” Shiv ballparks it like it’s no big deal. Considering that this 3-ish billion is essentially the bulk that other investors would build upon, any possibility of the deal not following through would consequently tank the Roys’ purchase. Logan and Matsson having reached an agreement, if significant, doesn’t mean anything is guaranteed, though; and even beyond that, Matsson’s unexpected interest in taking over Waystar could prove to create further complications for the Roy kids. No matter what way you slice it, Matsson could be the greatest threat to the Roys in Succession’s final season.
Lukas Matsson’s Impulsivity Could Tank the GoJo Deal
Lukas Matsson is the type of immature young billionaire who almost seems inconvenienced by his own status. He quite literally sees financial success as a formula that merely needs the right variables to plug in ("analysis plus capital plus execution," he says). Nothing about his staggering wealth interests him. He’s constantly bored. At Kendall’s extravagant-if-indulgent birthday bash in “Too Much Birthday,” surrounded by fabulously wealthy people doing wealthy people things, he’s found sitting lazily in a chair playing games on his smartphone. It isn’t until Roman suggests that he quite literally pisses on Waystar’s StarGo app that he shows any interest in the gathering.
That’s the thing about Matsson: he acts with a boyish impulsivity that could very plausibly become a significant obstacle to the GoJo/Royco deal. For one, Matsson could spontaneously pivot and flop on the deal, bored and disinterested at the prospect out of nowhere. For another, Matsson's tendency to act impulsively could theoretically lead to stock value plummeting, leaving the Roys with a much lower value to cash out with. As we've seen, Matsson's affinity for memes and bizarre social media posts lead to stock values shifting. If Matsson does indeed take the reins of Waystar, it's highly improbable that he'd treat Logan's company with any more reverence than he treats his own. He seems thrilled at the prospect of fluctuating a billion dollar market with dick emojis, and his trolling online personality feels like one of the rare outlets for Matsson to be genuinely interested in things.
When meeting with Roman after his strange string of tweets, Matsson talks about failure being one of the few things he finds interesting. "As much failure as possible as fast as possible...that’s interesting," he says with rare passion. It's clear that his absurd wealth — and the business success that acquired him said wealth — barely matter to him, so what's to say that his acquisition of Waystar wouldn't be a thrilling experiment for him...and an opportunity to screw around with billions of dollars and the livelihoods of countless people.
Part of what makes Succession such a significant piece of drama is the way it mirrors real-life figures. Matsson feels like an amalgamation of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Daniel Ek, and other eccentric billionaires, and if Succession draws from the real-life headlines some of these guys find themselves in, it would be unsurprising to see Matsson's acquisition of Waystar and his trollish antics tanking the value of GoJo, Waystar, or both.
Lukas Matsson Could Strategize Against the Roys
All of which isn't to say that Matsson became rich by accident. He knows what he's doing, and he surely didn't get to where he is through integrity. He all but admits that his cryptic tweeting spree was an illicit attempt at raising his stock price through sharing vague, unverifiable information. For the Roy children and any employees grandfathered in before the deal, Matsson claims that they'll all be "assessed according to their abilities," which essentially feels Muskian for "I'm about to fire a shit load of people." His alleged Scandinavian affinity for socialism seems wholly insincere considering how massive a fortune he has built for himself with little help to others.
So much of what he does feels strategic, too. He flakes on a meeting with Logan, possibly out of a trollish instinct to humiliate the man. Once he actually gets a sit-down with Logan, he quickly backpedals on his alleged initial interest, stating instead that he wants a merger of equals after which he, Matsson, would be in charge. Roman is repulsed, but Logan is a different story. It could just be his recent health scares, his impending heavy legal fines from the cruise ship scandal, or the fact that he kind of really hates all his children, but for one reason or another he eventually agrees to sell to Matsson and cash out as a very, very rich bastard. Matsson, meanwhile, assures Logan that he'll structure the board "so fuckin' nice" for the old-timer, but there's essentially nothing holding him to that beyond his shaky word.
Who else could possibly threaten the Roys as drastically as Matsson? Even Logan is beginning to lose his touch, as we saw in the Season 4 premiere, with him uncharacteristically off his game while under- strategizing his PGM bid. Meanwhile, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Greg (Nicholas Braun), the self-proclaimed “disgusting brothers,” lack the calculated pragmatism of Succession’s greatest minds. While they're undoubtedly capable of scheming against the Roys, they're really just opportunists at best. Greg's in a permanent state of improvisation and adjusting to the situations he’s placed in. His copying of crucial documents in the Great Cruise Ship Scandal had some strategic potential, but it’s a risk that almost blew up in his face. Meanwhile, Tom’s betrayal of Shiv by warning Dad about the siblings’ coup attempt can’t really be included among Succession’s greatest power moves, considering that it operates entirely on the absurd assumption that Logan has any sense of loyalty whatsoever to anybody but himself.
The threat of Lukas Matsson (or, Hans Christian Anderfuck, as Logan so poetically christens him) can most succinctly be attributed to the utter unpredictability of his actions. It all feels like a game to him, one in which little to nothing is off bounds. His mental space isn't exactly the healthiest, either. He thinks everything's "pretty fuckin' boring." In “Chiantishire” he shows signs of clinical depression. He's kind of a wildcard that could just as easily be 100 percent Machiavellian as an anti-social internet troll. Either way, with the Roys gambling billions of dollars like they're goddamn poker chips, one thing is clear: they need to keep an eye on that Scandinavian weirdo.
New episodes of Succession Season 4 premiere every Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.