What does season 3 of Succession, the series about ultra-rich Americans, have in store for us?

In the surge of

Squid Game

, we almost skipped the release, yesterday, of the first episode of the third season of
Succession.
And then no, actually… How can we forget this? It must be said that this new installment of the series created by Jesse Armstrong for HBO has been awaited for two years – Covid-19 obliges – making fans – including us – long for one thing: to find out how Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the prodigal son of the Roy clan, will be devoured. At the end of season 2, he has just revealed the villainous actions of his billionaire father (Brian Cox) to the entire American press – and therefore to the whole world. This same press that is mostly owned by this same patriarch and that is, like us since the broadcast of the first episodes in the summer of 2018, hanging on the lips of each of the members of the clan during his public – or private, in our case, speeches.

Because the strength of this series is exactly that: It takes us on a global media whirlwind, makes us scrutinize the slightest deeds and gestures of a family so rich that it travels the world in a snap of the fingers (or in a few rotations of propellers) and takes us into an ultra-perverse capitalist oligarchy… All of this, in the strictest privacy, in the manner of a reality TV show or a documentary, by accumulating close-ups on the clan and its individualities who eat each other like piranhas. In short, watching Succession is to feel both the intruder and the guest of honor of a debutante ball version of smartphones implanted in all the palms and rails of cocaine on marble basins.

This feeling of propulsion within the very psyche of a character reaches its climax when, in the first minutes of the third season, we find Kendall Roy, her face emaciated and her eyes bulging with adrenaline. He has just denounced his father Logan’s involvement in a case of crimes committed against small employees of the amusement parks he founded, Waystar Royco. And this episode opens with the beginnings of a mortal fight: who will win this first media battle, the father or his eldest son? And which of them, it is inevitable, will end up in prison?

We immediately understand the stakes of this conflict, which takes the form, from the first season, of a tearing between the four children of the clan to take back the reins of the empire. There, it turns into a war of position. Kendall hides with the team he is building in his ex-wife’s New York apartment to establish his strategy. Logan goes into exile in Sarajevo. And since this megalomaniac, cruel and shrewd strategist does not choose anything at random, his host country is important  here: he must not have signed any extradition treaty with the United States. So he surrounds himself with his loved ones, including his three children Siobhan (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck)  and his employees, to decide how he will gobble up his beloved son. Because that’s what we should expect with this third installment on the dynasty more or less inspired by that of Rupert Murdoch (the Australian-American billionaire, close to Trump and owner of The Australian, The Sun, The Times,  The Wall Street Journal or the Fox News channel): an incessant passing of the buck between a father and son ready to fight, even if it means crushing all the other members of their family in the process. And maybe the viewer with it.

Succession
(2021), season 3, by Jesse Armstrong, one episode each week on OCS.