‘Succession’ Season 4 Episode 3 Recap: “Connor’s Wedding”

When we left the Roys in Succession Season 4 Episode 2, Connor had just wrapped up the night of his wedding rehearsal dinner by confirming that, despite appearances, his bride had not decided to leave him forever. We pick up Episode 3 the next day, and indeed, this is going to be one of the most memorable days of Connor’s life — just not the way he probably thought.

As we know, any event the Roys put on — wedding, birthday party, shareholder meeting — is doomed, and Connor’s wedding is no exception. Not only is the groom’s father ditching it to go shore up a business deal with “the Swedes”; he’s still trying to get Roman to come with him. Since Logan’s invitation at the end of “Rehearsal,” Roman has apparently decided that supporting Connor is more important than GoJo (Connor’s having told him in so many words that he doesn’t need love stuck with Roman, it seems), so if Roman’s going to be at the wedding anyway, Logan decides he might as well be the one to fire Gerri; Logan’s reasons for letting her go are vague, but everyone seems to agree that it actually comes down to her being the (mostly) innocent recipient of Logan’s son’s dick pics. And Gerri’s not the only female senior citizen to be swept out in Logan’s house cleaning: Logan tells Tom today’s the day he’s going to “talk to Cyd.” So it’s a very high-spirited Tom who boards the Sweden-bound PJ with the rest of the Top Teamsters! 

Not so Roman: he’s barely absorbed Gerri’s icy acceptance of his bad news — “This is nothing at all,” she claims — when he leaves Logan a voicemail. Traditionally the most docile of Logan’s offspring, Roman is upset enough at knifing his second favorite person at Waystar Royco that he questions whether Logan is just “being shitty” with him, repeats how untoward it is for Logan to miss his own son’s wedding, and states that Logan can’t keep expecting Roman to “bend over” for him; two forms of a very profane “C” word are also deployed. Logan had wanted Roman to bring his particular flavor of spice to ATN, but will Roman regret having dumped out an entire bottle of cayenne on this old man?

Elsewhere, Connor is kicking off with the event staff on the bunting-draped yacht that will be bringing the wedding party to the appalling Liberty Island ceremony. Remember in the show’s first season, when the Roys held a gala and Connor lost his mind about the ice-cold butter on the tables? That was a relatively low-stakes catering problem compared to what he’s facing now. While Connor just tells the planner that the cake is “inadequate,” and that he doesn’t want to see “the internal qualities” once it has been sliced, Willa hears something about “a loony cake.” Kendall explains: when Connor, as a child, was told that his mother was going to be institutionalized for mental health treatment, he got cake; Connor ended up eating Victoria sponge for a week, and now it’s followed him to his wedding. Willa should keep this in mind before smashing a piece in his face later; he might just prefer a piece of fruit.

Having gotten past this catastrophe, Connor tells his other siblings his plan to keep them upstairs while Logan makes a dockside stop. No sooner have Roman and Kendall deputized Shiv to go break the news to Connor that Logan is on his way to Europe than Tom calls from the plane: Logan is very sick. A flight attendant is performing CPR, and no one is really sure what’s going on, but Frank feels the kids should take their “last chance” to speak to Logan. 

Needless to say, neither Kendall nor Roman is equipped for the moment, because the man they’re addressing never equipped them; they may be “love sponges,” as Connor accused in the last episode, but they evidently never learned how to, you know, wring those out — not even in the obviously insincere way we saw Logan do it in “Rehearsal.” Roman babbles as though Logan is a six-year-old who fell off the monkey bars and Roman’s trying not to make too big a deal out of it: “You’re okay! You’re going to be okay, because you’re a monster and you’re gonna win.” When Roman runs out of strength to keep talking, he hands the phone off to Kendall, who decides this is the moment for radical honesty: Kendall says he can’t forgive Logan, but “it’s okay….and I love you.” As Kendall and Roman are both trying not to say more, Tom interrupts: he thinks Logan is gone.

Kendall retrieves Shiv, whose response to “They think Dad died” is to burst out crying and yelp, “I can’t have that!” Given the phone, she manages, among other things, “I love you, you fucking—” and if that’s the very last sentence fragment he hears before departing this dimension, it feels appropriate.

Also appropriate: it takes everyone a while to remember that Connor is also on the yacht and that they’d better tell him. “Oh, man,” says Connor. “He never even liked me.” He quickly changes his mind: Logan liked him, but Connor never got the chance to make him proud. (Maybe true, but hey, at least now he’s also free of the pressure to try and, inevitably, fail?) 

From here, it’s like a much darker version of the season premiere, as we cut between the kids huddled together, and the executives surrounding Logan. Roman “casually” tries to find out whether anyone thinks Logan listened to Roman’s voicemail before his episode — no voicemail in particular, of course, and certainly not one that likened him to a female body part! Roman also orders everyone to stop saying Logan has died when they technically don’t know that he has…

…and on the plane, while the Top Team are quietly making to-do lists of the next steps they’ll have to take once they land, Kerry emerges from the compartment that still contains Logan’s body. 

As we already know from her ATN anchor audition, there may be a disconnect between Kerry’s emotions and her face, but still, between her grin that Logan’s collapse was “fucking nuts” and Roman’s insistence that Logan actually could, maybe, possibly still be alive, part of me thought, “…………..is he?!” I mean, Roman’s right! We don’t know! We haven’t seen Logan’s face since he boarded the plane!

But the Top Team seems pretty certain Logan’s gone, as they discuss how best to avoid a “stock price rodeo” and prepare to draft a statement. Not even they are tacky enough to suggest keeping the plane circling until the markets close — that notion comes from Shiv, which, yikes. Kendall finally has the sense to remind his younger siblings that books, SEC filings, and congressional hearings are going to revolve around everything they do today; they can’t destroy their future by putting a foot wrong. The Top Team give them every opportunity to abrogate responsibility — they can let Karolina et al handle the official statement; they can skip the board meeting “on compassionate grounds” — but we haven’t spent 3+ seasons watching a show called Succession for Kendall, Shiv, and Roman to flee Waystar for bartending school or something: they draft their own statement making it clear the kids are still in control, which Shiv delivers at a brief press conference.

Afterward, Shiv lets Tom hug her. The stock price does, in fact, plummet. And Roman, alone among his siblings, is at the plane when Logan’s body is removed.

NOW we can say he’s dead. Goodbye, you furious old man! Or, as your countrymen like to say, off you fuck.

Margin Calls

• Okay?: Obviously I know why HBO did’t get into all the details of this episode in its official blurb, but “While Logan doles out an unsavory task ahead of his trip to meet Matsson, Connor fixates on minutia at his wedding” still got a legit LOL from me.
• And speaking of the wedding: Connor knows they should probably call it off, but once Willa admits that she isn’t not with him because of his money, and that she’s not going to leave him — at least, not today, the two do make it official in front of a tiny crowd. After all the cake talk, we never actually do see anyone eat it. If the ferry’s still stopping, maybe they can just send the wedding planner (Jamie Chung!) to grab a dozen bags of Skittles from the snack bar instead.
• No more special relationship?: If the Season 3 dick pic incident wasn’t what finally brought Gerri to her senses regarding Roman, his firing her may be it: they’re alone when he tells her he’s sad about the loss of his father, and she not only doesn’t hug him but doesn’t even give him a kind touch on the arm as she might any other human being? Yikes.
• Swede avoidance: All the younger Roy kids want to be in charge riiiiiiiight up to the point when someone has to call Matsson and tell him Logan’s dead. Guess we’ll see who pulls that short straw next week.
• Poor Colin: He’ll never have a job like this again.

Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.