Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4 Episode 9 of Succession
The women aren’t above committing power plays like the men in Succession. Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones) can apologize for the kerfuffle her migraine causes, deliberately after she hears the right price to start negotiating. Shiv (Sarah Snook) connives her way into an executive offer, knowing the CE-bros are pushing her out. Jess (Juliana Canfield), the long-suffering assistant to Kendall (Jeremy Strong), is pushed to disclose her plan to resign, receiving a temper tantrum from Kendall as a result. But it wasn’t these women who managed to make a big, albeit quiet scene at the funeral for Logan (Brian Cox).
That iconic moment belongs to the exes of the man who could rope them into his orbit as quickly as he tosses them aside. A funeral of this magnitude is bound to ooze bad blood. The surprise is how the Roy clan buckles, while Logan’s ex-lovers unite as the ghosts of Logan’s past, except they are alive while he’s the one lying in the casket. Aside from still being alive, how else do these exes emerge victorious?
At Logan Roy’s Funeral, His Second Wife Is More at Peace
As the final penultimate episode titled “Church and State,” the tragicomedy tale of the Roy family nears its end. Logan’s children have done egregious harm with the power they wield through Waystar, doing their part to elect a right-wing extremist as the next president due to a sibling squabble. Outside on the city streets, there is pandemonium as protesters react with rage, while inside the church, there is a sense of solidarity. Lady Caroline Collingwood (Dame Harriet Walter) orchestrates it all, whose boldness knows no bounds as the second wife to Logan, and mother to all the Roy siblings except Connor (Alan Ruck), Yet, she has no relationship with any of them.
Harriet Walter has always been excellent in playing Caroline’s imprudence, who is at her core, a shit-stirrer with a biting sense of humor. There’s the mocking chuckle Caroline gives, especially during uncomfortable times, that reeks of her pompous entitlement and lack of compassion. Caroline isn’t the only toxic sort-of, kind-of parent played by Walter. She was in Killing Eve’s third season as Dasha, a Russian gymnast-turned-killer, who trained main assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and returns to be her handler. When Villanelle impulsively acts out as usual, she takes a baby from a dead target and Dasha is left infuriated. The last straw is when the baby throws food at Dasha, who proceeds to pick up the infant and places it in a public trash can nearby. It’s dark, hilarious, and a passing thought that could have easily put a smirk on Lady Caroline’s face. On Succession, Logan wasn’t a good parent, but his second ex-wife isn’t any better.
‘Succession’ Brings Together the Ex-Wives and Mistresses
Wearing black with a knuckle-sized broach, Caroline learns of Shiv’s pregnancy in the church, responding with short words. The difficult relationship between this mother and daughter has no signs of healing. In Season 1, Caroline was going around Shiv’s pre-wedding gathering, asking, “How long do you give it?” In Season 3, she admits, “I should have had dogs.” So it isn’t too surprising in Season 4 when Caroline laughs and shrugs off Shiv’s pointed comment about her baby being devoid of a caring parent. “I’m just gonna do the family way,” Shiv says. The compassion she can’t give to her daughter, Caroline gives to someone else back at the church.
She finds Kerry (Zoë Winters), still out of sorts and jittery, although faring better than the shaky laughs she was resorting to when Logan died. As Kerry’s last interaction with the Roy family didn’t go so smoothly, she’s brought along a lawyer friend (just in case there are entry problems) and her brother. While Kerry’s brother has no dialogue, the fact the show has him resemble his sister with the same, long dark hair, minus the bangs, is a little detail too good to ignore. Lady Caroline asks, surprisingly not too snobbishly, “It is Kerry, isn’t it? Not Kelly?” Within seconds, Caroline notices and pulls Kerry along to introduce Sally-Anne, with Brian Cox’s real-life wife Nicole Ansari-Cox playing the character that's been mentioned briefly in past seasons. This is the mistress Logan bought a harp for, and whose name referred to a period known as “Sally-Anne and the Summer of Horses.”
This group’s ringleader escorts the ladies up to Marcia (Hiam Abbass), explaining how “Sally-Anne was my Kerry.” With that, this entourage of Logan’s ex-wives and mistresses is complete, all of them taking a seat in a front pew. “God, Logan would hate this,” Caroline states, a big grin on her face. There’s a mutual understanding that the past is the past, especially when Logan’s fiery energy is no longer even at a dim glow. What makes this moment in “Church and State” so surprising is how it lacks any kind of aggression. In a Vulture interview, Harriet Walter offers her view on Caroline’s actions during the funeral: “This is the father of her children. When someone dies, you go back to the past, usually to fond memories. Usually we think of the best things about someone once they’ve gone.” And on bringing the women to Logan together, Walter adds, “There’s only four of us in this whole congregation who know what it’s like. Maybe I can reach out to these people. It makes her richer, that she can extend her imagination to those people rather than always taking the bitchy move. I just think it’s more interesting.”
For the recent wife-mistress duo, their last interaction is curt. Marcia threw Kerry out of Logan’s wake, brutally saying, “We’re calling her a taxi to the subway so that she can go home to her little apartment.” But Logan’s funeral makes for a different setting. Marcia can’t be given too much credit, though. At this point, there is little Kerry can pick at from the Roy riches, so it makes plenty of sense Marcia sits down with the others, notably sitting right next to Kerry. It’s Marcia who breaks the ice with the women, remarking, “At least he won’t grind his teeth tonight.” When Kerry sobs from hearing this, Marcia holds her hand this time. It’s a difficult position for them, and Succession fans saw the hard-headedness Marcia had to deal with when it came to Logan. “You hear what you want to hear, then you punish me for something I didn’t say,” she once told him.
The Characters Are Still Messy in the Final Season of ‘Succession’
Marcia even extends kindness to Shiv, the two always being at odds prior, telling her, “He broke my heart. And he broke your hearts, too.” Leave it to the ex-wives and mistresses to confront their past histories with a maturity the men lack. If Waystar lackey Karl (David Rasche) isn’t calling Kerry “Chuckles the Clown” when she was in shock after Logan croaked, then he indulges in replaying a recording of Roman’s (Kieran Culkin) breakdown. Kendall’s new lapdog, Hugo (Fisher Stevens) points out incredulously how Kerry is getting a place in the front of the church. And newly elected president Mencken (Justin Kirk) can’t help himself but also poke fun at Roman’s sobbing.
All of Logan’s widows, both the ones who were married and the ones who were not, have reaped some rewards from their time with the Roy patriarch. On a scale from Caroline to Kerry, some are left with more grief, but they don’t have to live with the grand lack of resolution that the Roy kids do. That heavy sense of no closure will be hurting them for a long time. Thankfully, Succession doesn’t pit these women against one another for laughs. Instead, at the funeral of the man who used them in many ways, these exes pay their respects, and maybe sit together in solidarity at Logan’s expense. As Caroline puts it, it’s all water under the bridge, anyways.