“Kendall Roy: Why We Root for HBO’s Ultimate ‘Bro’”
“You’re the man, Mr. Roy. You’re the man.”
Kendall Roy is the main character of Succession.
I know that’s a controversial opinion, as it always is with any series featuring an ensemble cast.
And while Succession takes an exciting approach of having each of the first three seasons dedicated to one of the siblings, with the fourth focusing on who will ultimately take over the media empire. The story of the show, reduced to its simplest terms, is that of a man struggling to attain what may or may not be his proper birthright.
But how can you be your own man when you’re trying so hard to be your father?
We wish we could ask Kendall this question as we spend four seasons watching him painfully fumble around, persistently refusing to acknowledge the many ways he’s ill-suited for the role.
Succession’s docu-series style of filming, a technique employed by some scripted shows like Friday Night Lights to mimic the authenticity of documentaries, lets us live in Kendall’s intensely chaotic mind. More than any other character on the show, we feel like we are him.
And this makes Succession both an exhilarating and frightening rollercoaster.
Sympathy for the Devil
Unsurprisingly, many show fans don’t empathize with Kendall like the show seems to encourage.
Perhaps it’s because the writing team is mainly British. But, to Americans, the subculture of “bros” is often seen as inconsistent with the American vision of bootstrapping one’s way to the top.
Not only is Kendall Roy culturally fitted in young, wealthy male culture, he’s also the most elite of the elite.
When we’re first introduced to the oldest child, he’s rapping lyrics in the back of his limousine, appropriating African-American culture. At the same time, his driver offers him hollow words of encouragement he’s more or less forced to utter because of who Kendall is, “you’re the man, Mr. Roy. You’re the man.”
Yet, there’s something endearing about Kendall’s privileged innocence. He gets to live in a world many of us are forced out of by the time we’re fourteen.
The entire world is this man’s playground to explore, and he doesn’t even realize how rare of an experience this is.
What prevents Kendall from being just another douchebag trust fund baby is that he earnestly wants to be seen as worthy of being his father’s son. His ever-youthful disposition makes you want to forgive some of his more selfish qualities. We want to believe he can change — that he can be better than he is.
The biggest advantage the character has in eliciting sympathy from us, however, is that there’s a much colder, meaner man in his life, his father, Logan Roy, we can compare him to. We quickly identify how Logan emasculates his son, using his superior intellect, grit, and power to undermine Kendall’s authority at his company as well as his son’s self-esteem as a man. Logan’s oldest child doesn’t just take his father’s abuse, however. He ruthlessly fights back.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that I’m the man, but if there were a man, he might look a lot like me,” Kendall brags to his ex-wife after publicly humiliating his dad to the press.
But, even when Kendall attempts to separate himself from his lineage, he shackles himself further into its prison because he doesn’t see that the only true escape only exists in walking away from his abusive father.
No Michael Corleone
Before we even witness Kendall and his father, Logan, interact on screen, the heir apparent is already being emasculated at the workplace.
The Roys are negotiating a takeover of a company with its CEO. But, the chief executive officer is taking advantage of Kendall’s inexperience, getting the younger Roy to offer an outrageously high price to close the deal.
Of course, it isn’t long before Kendall and Logan are face to face. And at this point, the elder Roy takes the opportunity to add to his son’s humiliation over the deal. “I heard you bent over for him,” Logan taunts his son.
Oddly enough, Kendall’s father singles him out as the “important” child when he arrives at Logan’s birthday party, much like Don Vito Corleone did with his son, Michael, at the beginning of The Godfather. Yet, Succession twists the narrative of the legendary mafia film by immediately following up this warm embrace with soulless bullying.
“Are you going to [explicit] cry?” Kendall, are you [explicit] crying?” Logan gnashes his teeth as he stares down his well-intentioned albeit incompetent son.
As an audience member, you can’t help but be mesmerized by Logan’s domineering presence.
Yet, you also can’t help but notice how unfair he’s being to his oldest boy.
Logan gave Kendall everything, yet now he resents Kendall for being soft and spoiled.
It’s almost as if the media mogul intentionally stunted his child’s growth so he could never be replaced. The logic here is that no one will want the elder Roy to step down from the top position if the heir apparent can’t rule in his stead.
The wealth and access Logan gives Kendall and the rest of his children come complete with binding chains.
Big Egos and Bigger Insecurities
“Where’s the vision? Where’s the growth? All our charts go down!” Kendall screams at his father at the beginning of Succession.
Many viewers have speculated that Logan and Kendall Roy are based on real-life father and son Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.
It’s pretty easy to see how this could be the case.
Yet, Kendall is much more aggressive towards his father than Lacklan has been known to be and a lot more morally bankrupt. “The truth is that my father is a malignant presence, a bully, and a liar, and he was fully personally aware of these events for many years and made efforts to hide and cover-up. He had a twisted sense of loyalty to bad actors…” Kendall tells the press in an attack against his dad.
Kendall often claims the moral ground over his father. Yet, behind closed doors, he does equally terrible things. Ironically, Logan’s son, on some level, realizes this about himself — telling those close to him that he’s not a good father or man. Yet moments later, he’ll go back to pretending as though he’s a kinder, more human version of the man who gave him life.
Even despite his flaws, many viewers see the big brother to Shiv and Roman as more of a tragic figure than a villain. His darkness is driven by a desire to be like the great man whose shoes he can never quite fill.
“My dad’s a bastard. They need to know I’m a bastard, too,” Kendall tells his lieutenant at the company.
Sadly, Mr. Roy forgoes the person he is for the man he believes he’s supposed to be — and it’s this misguided ignorance that makes Kendall quite endearing as a son who just doesn’t get that he will never live up to his father’s legacy.
He has to forge his own.
