Succession: Brian Cox Unpacks Logan's Final Message To His Children

Brian Cox doesn't typically mince words, and neither did his "Succession" character Logan Roy. A brusque and brutal man whose children — Connor (Alan Ruck), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) — are irreparably damaged thanks to his unconventional and often abusive parenting style, Logan is powerful, formidable, and is smarter than any of his kids could ever hope to be. In his very last interaction with them, he tells them he loves them with a huge caveat, and Cox delved into the moment speaking to Emily Blunt for Variety's Actors on Actors series.

"The scene in the karaoke bar, it's a cap-in-hand-but-olive-branch moment. Did you feel it was authentic for Logan? Is he really wanting unity back with his children?" Blunt asked, and Cox had a ready answer. "That was the first thing I asked Jesse Armstrong," the veteran actor said, referring to the showrunner and creator of "Succession."

"'Does he love his children?'" Cox recalls asking. "He said, 'Yeah, he really loves his children.' It's about trying to reclaim that love. You will always remember them when they're little. He remembers their awkwardness and their sweetness. And then he finally has to admit, 'I love you, but you're not serious people.'"

Beyond that, Cox thinks Logan simply sees his children for who they are. When Blunt asked what that means, he replied, "Well, he means they're not serious people. That they're so keen on success, keen on all the elements that are not rooted in anything. They've never learned how to deal with their entitlement."

In the scene Cox is referencing, Logan goes to a private karaoke room — rented by Connor during his disaster of a rehearsal dinner — to confront all four of his children, and to say he's met with animosity is definitely an understatement. After he screwed them out of their legacy at the end of Season 3 by essentially removing them from Waystar Royco as he plans to sell the entire company to Swedish billionaire Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skårsgard), Kendall, Roman, and Shiv aren't particularly interested in what their dad has to say, even as he kind of tries to apologize, saying, "if it means so much to you, sorry." ("You're a human f**king gaslight," Shiv responds.)

In the end, Logan storms out without making up with his children, but not before uttering a putdown that probably serves as the show's thesis statement, which Cox discussed in the interview. "You're such f**king dopes," he tells his kids. "I love you, but you're not serious people."

Then, in the following episode, Logan simply... dies, suddenly, of a cardiac event while aboard his private jet mid-flight to see Matsson in Sweden. Despite their last meeting, Shiv, Kendall, and Roman are left bereft on a docked boat meant to host Connor's wedding, crying into a phone that they love their father and that he can't die, making that last scene all that much more impactful. 

Logan is rude, but he's right; his kids aren't serious people. This becomes increasingly clear throughout the rest of the fourth and final season of "Succession," where the kids squabble over control of the company, fire people on petty whims, and generally go kind of insane trying to stop the sale from going through — except for Shiv, who's working with Matsson in secret to keep the deal alive. In the midst of all of this is Shiv's estranged husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), who, upon Logan's death, is actually closest to the Roy patriarch, and we mean that literally; he's with Logan when he dies aboard the plane.

This isn't the only reason Tom ultimately ascends to Logan's position, but ascend he does, and it's because Logan had the correct read on his children. Connor spent the show waging an utterly unserious campaign for the presidency. Shiv was smart, but showed complete ineptitude when it came to actual business practices, as did the masochistic, nasty Roman. Kendall wanted the job entirely too much, making him wrong for it too. Apparently, Tom was a serious person... and Logan likely would have approved his ascension.

"Succession" is streaming on Max now.