The first moments of Succession’s new episode, “Kill List,” feel familiar for good reason. The episode opens with Kendall (Jeremy Strong) in the back of a chauffeured car pumping himself up with music ahead of walking into the empire his father built, Waystar RoyCo—“a throwback to the pilot,” points out director Andrij Parekh, who was also the cinematographer on Succession’s first episode, “Celebration.”
In that episode, four seasons ago, Kendall’s father Logan (Brian Cox) was still alive; his psych-up track was Beastie Boys’ “An Open Letter to NYC;” and the words he chose to open his meeting were, “Are we ready to fuck, or what?” This time around, Logan is dead, and Kendall and his brother Roman (Kieran Culkin) have recently been given the Waystar reins. So, Kendall’s psych-up track is, aptly, Jay Z’s “The Takeover.” His opening words to staff are similarly jarring: “All right, look at you fucking chumps.”
Kendall has experienced a lot since the Succession pilot—most notably, his Chappaquiddicking of a cater-waiter, his near drowning, countless humiliations by his father, and, now, his father’s death. But the opening sequence of “Kill List” and the ego high that Kendall rides most of the episode make you wonder whether the entitled Roy heir has matured in four seasons. “I don’t know that he’s changed,” Parekh laughs. “I think he still wants the same thing.”
Though the brothers have been elected equals by the Waystar board, they approach their new roles differently—Kendall jamming out to Jay Z and peacocking in front of his subordinates, while “we find Roman in the office almost business as usual, avoiding mourning,” and curled up in a corner, Parekh says.
Whereas the last episode, “Honeymoon States,” took place almost entirely in one location, Logan Roy’s penthouse, “Kill List” “suddenly explodes the other way,” Parekh says. Two days after their father’s death, at Lukas Matsson’s (Alexander Skarsgård) insistence, the siblings and senior Waystar crew fly to the GoJo summit in Norway to attempt to close the deal their father started. “They go to a foreign country where they’re total fish out of water,” says the filmmaker, who has directed at least one Succession episode each season. “It’s this double whammy of not being in their own element, but also emotionally being on the back foot, with the patriarch having passed away.”
Upon arrival, Kendall and Roman meet Matsson for an initial conversation on the top of a mountainside in a glass-enclosed restaurant. Despite all of their private-jet prepping for the showdown, the brothers clumsily fall over each other in conversation. “We’re watching Matsson become the new alpha” in negotiations, Parekh says. Kendall and Roman, meanwhile, “quickly fall into the same pattern they had with their father—they’re responding to an alpha male, as opposed to becoming alpha themselves.”
Roman is still very much grieving—and when Matsson reveals that he wants to buy Logan’s prized possession, the ATN news network, Roman visibly smarts. “For Roman, his relationship with his father was much more sacred than Kendall’s,” says Parekh. “The ATN deal for Roman is a very personal and touchy subject. When the idea comes up, Roman is immediately like, ‘No way.’ He digs his heels in—‘We’re not going to do this.’ Whereas [Strong] kind of plays it as Kendall may find something interesting in that deal.”
Negotiations culminate with a cinematic meeting atop an actual mountain. The Succession cast and crew traveled to the fjords of Norway, between the Molden viewpoint and the Ålesund port town, to film the episode, and “you kind of want to go to Norway for a reason,” Parekh says of choosing the majestic backdrop. “I wanted the scene to feel very dangerous for the brothers—the fact that they have to take this tram to climb this mountaintop and there’s nobody around…. You don’t know what’s going to happen and nobody’s going to witness it.”
Though Roman’s been emotionally frayed since Logan’s death, he reaches a breaking point on the gondola ride up after receiving a picture from Connor (Alan Ruck), back in New York, who is with Logan’s body at the funeral parlor.
