The apotheosis of Tom Wambsgans

I’m going to spoil the whole finale of Succession’s third season, so this is your last chance to turn back if you don’t want that.

In the finale, “All the Bells Say,” Tom becomes a Roy. A real Roy, not just in name or marriage. He effectively slits the throats of Shiv, Roman, and Kendall by alerting Logan of their plans to stop him from selling Waystar, screwing them out of the company and leaving them with what’s tantamount to nothing. (In the company, anyway. Of course they’re all still fabulously wealthy.)

Like most of Succession, this was set up from the very beginning of the season (and, arguably, the beginning of the show). For one thing, Tom has been legitimately scary at times this season. We’ve seen him freak out and toss water bottles at Greg, but that was just impotent rage. This season we got sinister Tom as he tells Kendall he’s going to get fucked, but he’s never seen Logan lose. We got sinister Tom as he reminds Greg of “Who has ever looked after you in this fucking family, huh?” (Note that Tom is placing himself firmly in the family here.) On the Greg front, there’s also what Tom said to Greg earlier this season, which, as my friend pointed out, really spelled out everything that would happen:

But it was Shiv that made Tom a Roy. She told him she didn’t love him and that he wasn’t good enough for her, constantly used him, and clearly didn’t care when the gallows called for him. Shiv may love Tom, but she loves the broken Tom. Like how Logan’s cruelty made his children finally unite to (try to) take him down, Shiv turned Tom against his creator. She never saw anything she loved that she didn’t want to kick it just to see if it would still come back. And Tom does come back—after detonating their marriage. Kendall and Roman are really just caught in the blast radius. What finally wakes Tom up is lovelessness, and there is nothing more truly Roy-like than that.

When the door of their gilded hell opens, real Roys can never walk out. There’s only scrambling for scraps and Daddy’s affection. And while this broke Kendall, Tom has succeeded more than anyone this season. Logan loves his children when they’re subservient to him, and Tom has been the only one who was actually going to put his head on the chopping block for him. He chose Logan over his own marriage (ailing as both may be). Real, successful Roys know that Logan always comes first.

Remember the end of season 2, when Kendall asks if it was ever him and if he could ever truly succeed Logan. Logan says this: “You’re not a killer. You have to be a killer.” Kendall tried and ultimately mostly ended up killing himself. But Tom has become Logan’s son, and he’s done something Logan’s biological son could never do: deliver a truly killing blow.

I truly have no idea what’s going to happen next. We’ve seen so much of the same these past few seasons. We all knew that Shiv didn’t truly love Tom, but he always tags along anyway. Until now. Shiv obviously knows that Tom just sold her out, and while he can be a buffoon at times, he’s not stupid. If it’s even a question to him if she knows, it won’t be for very long.

The last two season finales at least gave us a hint as to what’s coming. Season 1 had Kendall driven back to his father’s arms, season 2 had him ready to burn it all down. (Which, uh, didn’t happen.) But the focus isn’t on Ken anymore. As a person and as a character, he’s functionally dead.

The last shot of the season belongs to Tom and Shiv. He towers over her in the frame, protective on the surface but also overpowering, his hands almost around her neck. Shiv, for her part, stares into an uncertain future. “Mom fucked us,” she says, but her mother was a known quantity. In a family full of backstabbers, she never realized the one she was creating until it was too late.