Why Succession's Writer Told Kieran Culkin Season 4 & 5 Ideas - And Then Trashed Them

By now, fans already know that the three Roy siblings each failed in their respective bids to succeed their late father, the volatile Logan Roy (Brian Cox), as CEO of the multimedia conglomerate Waystar Royco in the "Succession" series finale.

Instead, the coveted title went to Shiv Roy's (Sarah Snook) estranged husband and company sycophant Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), who knows going into the coveted position that he's essentially just a puppet whose strings are being pulled by the new company owner Lucas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård). As such, the new hierarchy leaves the CEO wannabes — Shiv Roy, Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), and Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) — wandering aimlessly into the future with no positive development in sight.

Yet while the award-winning series clearly succeeded in decisively wrapping up its four-season run, Culkin told "Fleishman is in Trouble" star Claire Danes in a Variety "Actors on Actors" conversation that "Succession" creator Jesse Armstrong started Season 4 not knowing for sure if it would be the show's last.

"He told me before the season started that he thinks this is the end, but he doesn't know," Culkin revealed to Danes. "I'd actually stopped asking what was coming later. And that was the thing: I liked it. I liked not knowing! And then this year, he mentioned that it might be the end before we started shooting, so I started asking him questions."

But Culkin's questions got the actor more than just answers to the events of Season 4: They tapped into Armstrong's creative impulses and got the showrunner thinking about a possible Season 5 and beyond.

Among the biggest answers Kieran Culkin got from Jesse Armstrong as Season 4 went into production was the confirmation of Logan Roy's death, which shockingly came in Episode 3 — for those who haven't heard, Brian Cox believes Logan should have survived a little longer. After that massive reveal, Culkin recalled for Claire Danes that Armstrong "explained the entire [fourth] season to me. And then when he got to the end, I said, 'Well, that seems like that's the end of the show.' And he goes, 'Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Although' ... And then he just started talking about all these different ideas off the top of his head."

From there, Culkin said to Danes, Armstrong went on a roll, "And then he just pitched an amazing fifth season and then another and another."

But instead of bursting Culkin's and his castmates' balloons by saying Season 4 was for certain the end, Armstrong opted to keep the cast in suspense all season long. "There were some of us that were so sure that there was not going to be another season," Culkin told Danes. "Sarah Snook, the entire time, until the very end was like, 'There's going to be a fifth season.' And had very clear ideas on what it was. And it was after the table read for the final episode, he told us [there wouldn't be]."

Regarding the reason Armstrong gave to the cast that "Succession" was over with Season 4, Culkin told Danes, "He felt like the story was complete, and creatively that was it? He's like, 'I feel like it's complete.' I feel like he's satisfied as a writer."