Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) may be the new co-CEOs of Waystar Royco, but Lukas Matsson's (Alexander Skarsgård) shadow looms large over them both. This week's episode of Succession, "Living+" showed the true reach of the Swede mogul, especially after his huge offer to buy the Roys' company is all but accepted. The whole episode revolved around a tug-of-war between those two parts, Matsson wanting Living+ killed in the womb, and the CE-Bros (mainly Kendall) aiming to ace the product launch to solidify their claim that it's better if the deal doesn't go through. With Matsson so determined to pull the strings of the company even before it's been properly bought, the question begs to be asked: what does he really want with Waystar Royco?
We first met Lukas Matsson back in Season 3, in the episode "Too Much Birthday". Then, Kendall prepared his extravagant birthday party, complete with a replica of his childhood tree house, where the VIP area was located. The whole thing was designed to create the appropriate environment for him to negotiate with Matsson, as both he and Logan (Brian Cox) wanted to buy the Swede's streaming service, GoJo. A few episodes later, the tables turned, and Matsson offered an incredible buyout offer for Waystar, and Logan agreed. Now, Logan is dead, the deal was renegotiated and Matsson is eager to take over as soon as possible.
Lukas Matsson Is a Wildcard and Power Player
Matsson is definitely one of the most enigmatic characters in Succession. We met him as an anti-social up-and-coming entrepreneur, who wouldn't even mingle at a birthday party, but now have a completely different image of him in our heads after subduing Kendall and Roman in their meetings in Norway. In "Living+", he reminded us of yet another aspect of his character with his erratic behavior during Kendall's Investor Day presentation, with a very poor-taste joke about Living+ posted on Twitter.
What all those different situations have in common is that Matsson has always subverted them to be in control. He is a power player by nature, the kind of person to whom money doesn't really matter, nor does business. It's all about the hold he has on others. At Kendall's own party, Matsson made others seek him out. When the Roys were vacationing in Italy later, he made Logan and Roman go to him. He made the whole of Waystar Royco do the same in Norway in Episode 5 of the current season and kept on making Kendall and Roy climb mountains to see him as if they were chasing a god.
In business, this may even count as a valid strategy, but on a personal level, that's highly problematic. Again in Episode 5, "Kill List", he revealed to Shiv (Sarah Snook) another sick joke he pulled: sending bricks of his own frozen blood to his ex-girlfriend and current GoJo head of communications, Ebba (Eili Harboe). This is proof of his character deviation (or straight-up psychopathy), something he does so he can feel good and superior compared to her, not caring at all whether what he's doing is illegal or harassing an employee. He's so full of himself, he didn't even consider that he was actually giving Shiv an ace to maybe even win the whole thing and come out on top of the whole Waystar Royco issue.
Right now, Matsson is having and probably even enjoying himself looking at how Kendall and Roman are attempting to tank the Waystar-GoJo deal. The CE-Bros are always inches away from failing spectacularly in their quest, but so far they are still in the running, and Matsson just burned himself with his tweet. Shiv was right, if he wasn't careful, American media would eat him alive, and that was his first warning in that sense. Still, for someone with his ego (and Succession is a show with lots of fragile egos), he might not have understood the damage he caused.
Matsson's Intentions Mirror the Evolving Tech Industry
But that's the personal aspect of the character. Something that Succession does very well is having its characters embody current issues of the market and industry, and Matsson proves it. While the Roys are likely inspired by the Murdoch family, Matsson is the new generation of tech moguls that the old media has such a hard time grasping. On one side we have a traditional family company that has property across multiple media, like TV, cinema, newspapers, etc. On the other, a company that provides content on streaming with a platform that can be accessed basically anywhere the client wants, something a company like Waystar Royco could never understand how to properly do. That's the clash that the Waystar-GoJo deal represents.
And it was also the reason the whole thing started, too. Waystar Royco tried to invest in streaming, but their platform was notoriously bad to use. So bad, in fact, that even the opening titles of Season 4 show the app crashing as a joke. So Logan, being the traditional business executive he is, doesn't even try to understand this new streaming market, he just wants someone to do it for him. What he failed to see at first is that his business is in decline, while Matsson's is on the rise. The Swede tech mogul's move to acquire Waystar Royco is the trend nowadays, as we see many streaming platforms looking to expand their operations. They don't limit themselves to original content anymore and instead are investing in live programming, like sports, reality shows, ceremonies, etc., all to consolidate streaming as the future of the industry. This is happening right now with companies like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery expanding even further in the media business, and Netflix, Amazon, and Apple following. GoJo started as just a streaming service, so Matsson's move mirrors this sector's trajectory in real life. Having his own media company allows him to have his way with the information consumed by the people, and to have his own narrative be one of the most visible.
On a personal level, though, Matsson is also a mirror of real life. Many of those traditional companies pivoting to digital media and the ones that are already consolidated in it are led by a single person calling the shots, either executives that built their businesses from the ground up and are now seen as innovators or more traditional ones, who have been in the business for decades and were wise enough to adapt to this new reality. Matsson is the clever embodiment of both. He tweets jokes to try and have people like him as a way of disguising his own despicable nature (something we see a lot in real life, especially about the owners of certain social media platforms around), and wants to acquire Waystar Royco as a way of consolidating his own business as a powerful one in this sector. For him, in the end, this is the perfect way of satisfying both his own egocentric needs and the needs of his company.