Out of all the messed-up things the Roys and their offsiders have said to one another across four very stressful seasons of Succession, there was one line in the finale that hit extra hard.
As the three younger Roy siblings attempt to get back on the same page during the climactic board meeting, with Shiv suddenly the deciding vote as to whether the company their father built will be sold off to a Swedish tech mogul, Kendall’s panic-entitlement cocktail goes to his head.
“I’m the eldest boy!” he shrieks (committing a very common level of Connor erasure).
“And, you know, it mattered to him. He wanted this to go on,” Kendall adds, meaning family control of Waystar Royco.
“She’s the bloodline, though,” says Roman, meaning Shiv and her pregnancy. “If you’re going to play that card, dad’s view was that yours weren’t real… not real real. They’re a pair of randos. … One is a buy-in, the other is half Rava and half some filing cabinet guy, right?”
Oooft.
And you thought that terrifying, stitch-splitting hug was brutal.
What did Roman mean by the “bloodline” comment?
Translating from the Roys’ maximum-emotional-damage dialect, we can take this to mean that neither Sophie nor Iverson are Kendall’s biological children. Sophie, whose background is never discussed explicitly but is played by Indian-American actor Swayam Bhatia, was evidently adopted by Kendall and Rava; while Iverson is implied to have been conceived with sperm from a donor.
There’s a whole backstory of fertility struggles implied there. Not all parents who adopt are physically unable to have biological kids, but an adoption and donor sperm suggests that this might have been the case for Kendall. And just imagine telling the heir apparent to Logan Roy’s legacy that being a Real Man has very little to do with the clinical qualities of one’s jizz — it’s not rational for people struggling to conceive to feel like failures, but feelings don’t care about your facts.
Credit: HBO
So hiding in plain sight all this time has been yet another reason why Kendall is so desperate to prove himself worthy in the eyes of his father. It’s not hard to picture Logan, who was abusive towards his own children and once hit Iverson with a can of cranberry sauce during a game, dismissing Kendall’s children for not having a lick of actual Roy genetic material between them.
That said, whatever happens in the post-finale future, Sophie and Iverson will certainly inherit the Roy legacy of trauma, and I don’t just mean their rabbit’s bagel-induced demise. Rava had to beg Kendall to consider the very real harm that was already happening to their daughter as the Menckenites felt empowered by the rhetoric being amplified by ATN. (And while Sophie’s wealth will protect her from some of life’s hardships, it can never fully insulate her from racist comments or abuse, let alone the unique struggles of transracial adoptees.) And Iverson will probably dread Thanksgiving for the rest of his life.
Freed from his all-consuming goal of following in his father’s footsteps, Ken could actually dedicate himself to fatherhood, repair his relationship with his co-parent, show more of the tenderness towards his kids we have seen in a few moments across the series. But the damage of his neglect and his bloody-minded focus on corporate intrigue for its own sake will have taken a toll on the kids even if he can do better.
