[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Succession series finale.]
Succession‘s tragic ending does not reflect in its viewership. The Succession series finale, “With Open Eyes,” drew in series-high ratings at nearly 3 million viewers on Sunday, May 28 — 2.928 million, to be exact, marking a 68 percent increase in viewership from the Season 3 finale, which had 1.7 million viewers, HBO announced Tuesday, May 30. The numbers include Max and linear audiences.
Prior to the finale, the most-viewed episode of Succession was Season 4 Episode 6, “Living+,” during which Jeremy Strong‘s Kendall Roy gave a gutsy pitch to investors about Waystar Royco’s ambitious (and questionable) retirement/end-of-life care subscription service. The episode raked in 2.75 million viewers when it aired on Sunday, April 30.
This brings the Season 4 average viewership to 8.7 million per episode across 10 episodes, a 1.5 million spike from Season 3 average viewership. Succession first debuted in 2018, but the plot takes place over just two years in the Roy family — the last years of patriarch Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) life. Loosely inspired by Rupert Murdoch and his family, Succession explores themes of power and family dynamics through the eyes of Logan and his four grown children, Kendall (Strong), Siobhan/”Shiv” (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Connor (Alan Ruck).
HBO
Succession‘s final episodes ran a little longer than usual, with the series finale clocking in at 90 minutes. Its extended length delayed Barry‘s airtime on May 28. The Bill Hader dark comedy also aired its Season 4 series finale that night. Per HBO, the Barry series finale raked in 700,000 viewers as it aired on HBO and Max. It then nearly doubled its viewers the next day, landing at 1.35 million — a 20 percent increase over typical viewing on a Monday. Barry is currently averaging 3.4 million viewers for the season.
Succession‘s last ride answered the series-long question posed in the show’s title: Who would be Logan’s successor as the CEO of Waystar Royco? Roman and Shiv “anointed” Kendall as the heir apparent in the final episode and were primed to ruin the GoJo deal with Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård). Shiv was the tiebreaker boardroom vote, but she betrayed her brothers and voted to sell to GoJo in the end.
She herself had been betrayed by Matsson, who chose her husband, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), as the American CEO instead of her, making her husband Waystar’s new “king.” She positioned herself as close to the position of power as she could instead of handing the proverbial crown to her older brother.
Succession was created by Jesse Armstrong.
Succession, Series Finale Streaming Now, Max