TV & Movies

The Kendall Hive Is Losing It Over The Latest Succession Episode

The Jeremy Strong Emmy campaign begins now.

by Kadin Burnett
Dasha Nekrasova as Comfry, Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy, Nicholas Braun Greg Hirsch, and Annabelle D...
Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO

Succession Season 3, Episode 3 pushes the Roy family warfare to new levels of spite. At the outset of the episode, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is relishing in the public eye, speaking to reporters, strong-arming his way onto talk shows, and delighting in mean tweets about himself like a masochist. Logan (Brian Cox) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) have set up a company-wide town hall to address the cruise line controversy currently embroiling Waystar, while Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) has realized that he’s probably going to prison and offers to be the fall guy for the scandal. Roman (Kieran Culkin) takes sort of a back seat, running PR campaigns on behalf of his dad and fabricating reputation-saving stories that didn’t technically happen while his siblings duke it out.

The climax of the episode comes at the town hall, which sets off a chain reaction of betrayal. With Icarus-level confidence, Kendall returns to Waystar headquarters and interrupts Shiv’s speech by blasting “Rape Me” by Nirvana. In retaliation, she releases an open letter about Kendall detailing his substance misuse, mental deterioration, and failings as a father moments before he’s set to appear on TV. But before the dust can even begin to settle, the FBI shows up at Waystar’s offices ready to raid the premises. As one viewer put it on Twitter, you’ll need to run 10 laps just to calm down after watching — or at least doom-scroll through your timeline to see how everyone else is processing.

Fans were both horrified and impressed by Kendall’s level of confidence.

As well as Shiv’s precision cruelty.

In one of the smaller tragedies in the episode, Greg (Nicholas Braun) spent $40,000 on a watch he thought was going to be a gift...and it doesn’t work.

He also continues to sit on the fence of the Roy family conflict.

Overall, though, the episode undeniably belonged to Kendall, and fans are already campaigning for Strong to win his second Emmy for the show.

In the meantime, the Roys have more pressing matters to deal with.

Several shots have been fired in the Roy family war, and it’s only a matter of time until casualties start piling up: the preview for Episode 4 teases the first meeting between Kendall and Logan since the end of Season 2.