The Most Crucial 'Succession' Characters Ranked, From Bad to Worse
Who is the worst 'Succession' character? We took 15 of the best, most devious, and most important characters, and ranked them from bad to worst.
Image via HBO
18.
Now in its fourth and final season on HBO, Succession is hands down the best-written show on television. It is Game of Thrones (circa Seasons 1–3) with none of the swords and dragons but with all of the intrigue and betrayal and an incredible group of complex characters that pull it all together.
It’s also the smartest show on TV from a narrative perspective. The writers make every second count, every interaction, every conversation—even the outwardly trivial ones—tell us something about these characters’ motivations and values. The writers never “cheat” by resorting to murder or dumb coincidence to solve the conflicts, but instead have used each character as a tool to tell a full, complete, and riveting story from the start. Every decision, every action that a character makes or takes, matters more because nothing has a neat resolution.
And lastly—unlike Game of Thrones—Succession knows not to overstay its welcome. The show is in its final season, and not a moment too late; a major death at the start of Season 4 sent the show hurtling toward its final act. Now as the remaining characters scramble to find their way forward after their loss, viewers are seeing them all for who they really are.
We’ve seen these characters stoop low, but their depravity has no bottom. So unlike other shows where there are clear heroes and villains, Succession’s characters—like the siblings Kendall, Shiv, and Roman—have few redeemable qualities that make it difficult to truly root for any of them.
As the show speeds toward its end, the question of who will come out victorious is still up in the air. In the meantime, we have 15 of the best, most devious, and most important characters on Succession, ranked from the bad to the worst.
17.Frank Vernon
Played by: Peter Friedman
Frank is the company doormat. Logan didn’t respect him, despite three decades of loyalty. Roman despises him. And Kendall uses him as a crying towel when daddy tells him how useless he is. Frank hasn’t taken a stand for himself since he tried to oust Logan with the vote of no-confidence in Season 1. And since then, he’s been a toothless yes-man, on an ignoble, slow-motion slide into irrelevance. His alliance with Kendall, his final remaining ally, is his only chance at survival.
16.Hugo Baker
Played by: Fisher Stevens
The in-house weasel, Hugo works in communications, and he’s useful when the Roys need PR to cover for them—which is to say, he’s useful every single week. We don’t know much about Hugo beyond his function as an employee, but competency and common sense, as it turns out, aren’t so common. We know that he can take abuse without flinching, which is a necessary, prized quality in his line of work, especially in this company. He’ll be alright, as long as continues to kiss the right asses.
15.Karl Muller
Played by: David Rasche
The Tweedledum to Frank’s Tweedledee, Karl is another ossified holdover from the Royco heyday. But unlike Frank, Karl is still fighting for his place at the table. His loyalty was to Logan—he lets both Tom and Kendall know, in no uncertain terms, that he’d rather skin them than bend the knee. But if that’s the case, it’s more likely he’ll end up with a severance package than a position of power. The Roy kids need loyalty at a time like this, and they’re not going to get it from this snake in the grass.
14.Kerry Castellabate
Played by: Zoë Winters
Being Logan’s sidepiece had its advantages. But then, Logan keeled over 35,000 feet in the air and left said sidepiece with no parachute, not even a pillow to soften the fall. Then Kerry barges in on Logan’s wake—a crying mess—stripped of all proximity to power. Unless Kerry’s pregnant with Logan’s son—and that is, indeed, a popular fan theory—we’ve probably seen the last of her.
13.Marcia Roy
Played by: Hiam Abbass
Logan’s kids dislike Marcia for what she represents—a replacement for their mother and a potential gold digger who stands in the way of their inheritance. But we learn, very quickly, that Marcia is much savvier than your average third wife, and she genuinely loves Logan. She also sticks the landing; she leaves after he cheats on her, but comes back after he’s dead to sell off their apartment. That’s cold.
12.Connor Roy
Played by: Alan Ruck
The oldest Roy brother has neither the ambition nor the brains to run Royco, so instead, he spends his time indulging his delusions on political pipe dreams, assuring he’ll never have to answer for them. His run at the presidency was doomed from the start, but he might peel off just enough votes to be a kingmaker. And really, the spoiled son of a businessman becoming the president of the United States? Stranger things have happened, for real.
11.Karolina Novotney
Played by: Dagmara Dominczyk
If you’re at the bottom, you make noise to get noticed. If you’re at the top, you bluster to assert dominance. But if you’re somewhere in the middle—safely ensconced between two layers of bureaucracy—your best course of action is to keep your head down, do your job beyond reproach, and wait for the perfect moment to strike. Karolina has flown under the radar for four seasons now; as the head of PR for Waystar Royco, and a member of the company’s legal team., she’s mastered the art of stating uncomfortable truths in the most delicate, non-triggering way possible. It’s telling that everyone wants Karolina on their side when they go to war. And midway through Season 4, she makes her move, taking the reins to control the narrative after Logan’s death, while he’s still being given CPR in the other room. A serious publicist knows to never let a serious crisis go to waste.
10.Willa Ferreyra
Played by: Justine Lupe
Some people marry for love. Some people marry for a better station in life. And Willa, bless her heart, falls into the latter group. The former escort-turned-Mrs. Roy was with Connor for the money, but she was always open and upfront about it; Connor knew all along that their relationship was transactional. But somewhere along the line, it became more, with Connor falling for Willa, and more recently, with Willa falling for (tolerating?) Connor. How is it that these two are the most well-adjusted couple on the entire show?
9.Nan Pierce
Played by: Cherry Jones
A wolf in sheep’s clothing, Nan is the biggest hypocrite on a show full of them. She’s a blue-blooded liberal who lives in a palatial home on Long Island—a woman who finds it unseemly to discuss money while engaging in a ruthless bidding war. Logan may be a pig and a villain, but he comes by it honestly, and he embraces it head-on. By contrast, Nan’s “manners” and “good taste” are far more offensive, and they highlight the cognitive dissonance between who she is and who she claims to be.
8.Gerri Kellman
Played by: J. Smith-Cameron
Serve as interim CEO for long enough, and eventually, you’re just the CEO. Of all the people in the Old Guard, Gerri is the one who has her act together. She’s a shrewd master at flying under the radar, picking her spot, and coming out in one piece. She knows where Royco/Waystar’s bodies are buried, and she’s got enough dirt on Roman and the rest of the family to bury them, should she need to. For there to be any sort of “happy ending” on this show, Gerri needs to win. We’re all rooting for her.
7.Greg Hirsch
Played by: Nicholas Braun
The first time we meet Greg, he’s a gangly, awkward kid, puking his guts out in a theme park character costume. Fast forward, and Greg is still a gangly awkward kid, but he’s taking on adult responsibilities, like shredding documents and coldly firing scores of employees via conference call. Not bad for someone whose defining characteristic is being a sputtering, stammering mess, albeit one with a keen sense of self-preservation.
6.Tom Wambsgans
Played by: Matthew Macfadyen
Shiv’s beleaguered, cuckolded husband is a jerk. He takes all the humiliation that Shiv foists upon him, and he projects it onto the people beneath him, especially Greg. And to the people above him, he is loyal to a fault, with a disturbing ability to do their bidding with unblinking indifference. This is more than a game to Tom; it’s his ticket out of his middle-class existence. Could he be the last man standing? Shiv has pushed him past his edge, and maybe he’ll take some of that hard-earned loyalty and spend it on himself.
5.Lukas Matsson
Played by: Alexander Skarsgård
What makes Matsson so enraging, and so insufferable to his enemies, is how much he simply doesn’t give a damn. The Swede holds neither reverence nor nostalgia for American media. He has none of the Roys’ adherence to jingoistic “rugged individualism” and none of the Pierces’ neoliberal lip service to the “time-honored tradition” of journalism. He’s a predatory capitalist looking to make money, and he would strip Waystar Royco for spare parts, with no regard for its legacy or history, if it suited his bottom line.
The Roys are an American establishment, but out in Norway, at a mountain retreat away from their home turf, they’re made to feel like outsiders—a bunch of uncultured vulgarians peddling the corporate equivalent of porn. Matsson has successfully turned the Roy siblings against one another. Were it not for his own litany of personal scandals and secrets, he’d have already won. But it’s a classic folly, endemic for as long as assholes have been assholes. Pride goeth before the fall.
4.Kendall Roy
Played by: Jeremy Strong
Kendall is a pathetic figure—a rehabbed frat boy who hates his father but can never get out from under his thumb, due to either his cowardice or his stupid, impulsive decision-making. For four seasons, we’ve seen Kendall bite off more than he can chew, screw things up, and then reacquire enough power to repeat the cycle again and again. When does his privilege run out? Maybe never. Kendall is the CEO that Royco deserves, yet he’s nowhere close to the one that Waystar needs.
3.Roman Roy
Played by: Kieran Culkin
The youngest Roy sibling is a smug edgelord—a walking PR nightmare who should never be in front of a live mic. Roman inherited all of Logan’s vulgarity and verve, but none of his scruples or substance. Dig a little deeper, and there’s some crippling vulnerability to Roman—an inability to cast the tiebreaker vote against his dad’s ouster, a loss of control in front of Mattson over his dad’s death, and a litany of psychosomatic sexual dysfunctions. Thanks to the latter issue, Gerri has him over a barrel. Not everything can be solved with a quip and a crass joke. And with just a handful of episodes left, the bill is coming due.
2.Siobhan Roy
Played by: Sarah Snook
Shiv is the perfect nickname for Logan’s backstabbing golden child who, like Nan, is a hypocrite—a chameleon who cares more about attaching herself to a winner than to any moral code or principles. She’s a progressive political power player until she gets the opportunity to run Royco, the biggest house organ for the Republican Party. She’s against the proto-fascist candidate running for the White House, but she still relents to take a photo with him at Logan’s insistence. Siobhan is the smartest of the four Roy children, but she’s still not as smart as she thinks she is. And that arrogance might be her undoing, especially when she’s conspiring against all three of her siblings at the same time.
1.Logan Roy
Played by: Brian Cox
An irredeemable monster from the moment we meet him, Logan Roy did not grow up rich. He made himself a success. And that hard-scrabble approach, that take-no-prisoners ethos and work ethic, made him a killer. Some people gain empathy from their suffering, while others double down on their cruelty, reasoning that if they could do it, everyone else can, too. Logan belongs to the latter category, and he saved his most virulent contempt for his children, whom he raised in a life full of unbelievable wealth and privilege, and then disparaged them for being soft and spineless. What chance did they have?
And now he’s dead. Logan started dying in the first episode of the first season, and he finally finished dying four seasons later. Just as the world revolved around Logan when he was alive, he continues to exert influence now that he’s gone. No one can move on, and all his children second-guess themselves. “What would dad have done?” “What would dad have said?” “What would dad think of what just happened?” Because he died without leaving any solid succession plan in place (except a questionable handwritten note)—because he cared more about his money and “winning” in the short-term than setting his family up with a path to move forward— he has no legacy other than the resentment and acrimony he left his family to deal with.
Good riddance Logan. And in your own words, “fuck off.”