Laying Logan Roy to rest

Let’s eulogise this fucker.

Like...a funeral truce?

Every funeral is a networking event. A chance to connect with people and establish relationships in the wakes of a perceived shared tragedy. Your mother and aunt hugging beside their brother’s grave. The cousins sharing a drink in the corner of your wake. A sympathetic text from that friend you lost contact with years ago. And, for some, it’s flocking to the fascist President-Elect in an undignified fashion while everyone watches and giggles politely.

But that’s just the end.

Before Logan Roy can finally be buried, he must be eulogised, and each person who takes to the stand smears his name a little bit more. Only one of them means to, but with every word, his legacy tarnishes a bit more. The great secrets of his life aren’t necessarily let out into the world, but the vision of brilliance he cloaked himself in is embroidered with tales and indications of cruelty and sadness.

When Ewan Roy takes the stage, against the wishes of everyone attending, it’s not to give a speech that just denounces his dead brother. It’s to ensure that everyone knows that the man is going to Hell. That by the day he died, that little humanity he had inside of him was extinguished. As cold as his corpse.

There’s a lot of talk about what Logan had inside of him. Nobody can get enough of what Logan was like internally – a line that a certain Roy would use to make yet another incest joke. Roman waxes poetic about his tendrils of power in the speech he cannot bring himself to give, Kendall uses his time to convince himself in his own power through the lens of his father, and Shiv…forgive him. Yes, Shiv is in a forgiving mood on this day.

That magnificent, awful force of him.

So much will be made about Ewan and his grand stage taking turn. The “sad, little sob story” about one of the greatest traumas two children could ever go through. The conclusion of Rose Roy and her tragic death finally revealed as due to polio. He is offended that nobody would want him to speak, that they would dare hold him back. It is his birthright to rip his arrogant and often delusional brother one last new one. The two men’s rivalry is not dead, even if one of the parties is.

But even there, he can’t help but exalt the man they’re burying. Logan may have been “meagre”, but it was that meagreness that allowed him to speak to the souls of others. He responded to them the way they wanted to be spoken to. Ewan has never seen this ability as a gift, but on even this day, reading people is clearly something that not everyone can do. He feels the need to nod towards a special ability of sorts. The ability to communicate to an audience is something that many aspire to and few can accurately do well.

In contrast, it’s Kendall’s speech that feels the most damning, despite trying for the opposite. He has the least love in his assessment of his father. The son is in awe of the man in the coffin, but he isn’t anguished in the same way everyone else is. Roman might make a show about “pre-grieving”, but it’s Kendall who has already processed the death and decided to follow through on a plan. An evil one, but a resolution that places him beside the man, not below him.

He is repeating the Logan Roy formula to a T. The type of man he refers to – at his funeral ­– as a brute. That’s not a nice word, but it does denote strength. We see a lot of Kendall playing tough this episode, but unfortunately, he is bad at it. Bad enough that he won’t get to keep his children, his position, his assistant, and considering his incompetence, a large chunk of his money. The man can be charming, but he lacks the ability to dominate a conversation. He’s easily driven over by everyone. Shiv. Roman. Connor.

Greg!

It’s pathetic.

He was hard on women. He couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head. But he did ok. You did ok, dad.

Kerry’s appearance in this episode is one of the most startling things in an hour filled to the brim with shocks. That she was let in is an astonishment. Guests? Almost too unbelievable. But when Caroline collects her and creates a row of Logan’s women, it’s perfect. They all vied for his attention at one point. Sally Anne was Caroline’s Kerry. But without him there, they’re just four women contemplating life without his influence. Marcia squeezes Kerry’s hand, and you almost forget she kicked her out to the subway mere days ago.

Because the reality is that, even in that moment, Marcia was not doing to Kerry anything worse than Logan had done to his own flesh and blood. Roman may be distraught and Kendall might be sad, but Shiv is trying desperately to forgive him.

The world she lives in, the one that hates her, is directly his fault. She schmoozes with men who think of her as subhuman, because he and his sons made the world in their image. Mencken can always point to their picture together, because of him.Shiv’s eulogy feels the most rehearsed because this is what she’s been saying since he died. Her lose feels greater than her brother’s because she adored him. He was the literal centre of her universe, and everything has just gotten worse since he has gone. She picked him over her mother in a way that clearly stings both parties over twenty years later.

Even that cannot excuse the weight she feels as the woman in his life. He had lovers and wives and partners and associates, but it is Shiv who was the constant. His girl. It makes everyone a little threatened of her, and in death, it leaves her giving a speech that fails to say exactly what the fault was with him and his company. A worldview that led to countless rapes being covered up in his name. The reality of which led her to give up her morals for a chance to win a game she was never playing. But on that podium, all she can do is talk about his grandiosity. Kendall and Ewan referred to him as a candle, but she saw the whole sun. It’s cold without him in her life.

But she has Tom. Dependable, warm, tired Tom. The father of her child, a body in her bed, the man in her wedding pictures. He’s the answer to her problems when life gets too hard. He’s no Logan, but that isn’t an option anymore.

He made me breathe funny.

But everyone comes together for Roman Roy, the man who is literally falling apart at the seams. It’s not that he has lost the most here, but that his own death spiral is less contained than anyone else’s. Kendall and Shiv are each in control in their own ways, but Roman is so unable to process consequences that aren’t…Logan. From firing Gerri to electing Mencken, he is throwing everything against the wall to make this work. It just won’t.

Nothing feels stable.

Because when Roman leaves the wake, he’s left wandering a city in revolt. The world with Logan was disgusting and nasty, but it was orderly. But his children, and especially Roman, aren’t good enough at controlling the narrative. Having the Presidents ear probably isn’t worth setting the world on fire. Particularly a president who doesn’t feel indebted to you at all.

Roman has humiliated himself for nothing. Nobody respects him in the slightest. He’s screaming at strangers and getting punched in the face on the day they buried his father. Nobody walked away from that funeral a winner except for Mattson, and whoever he is taking with him to the end. As of now, that’s unclear. But what is understood is that the siblings, knowing or not, are basically over. Logan was the only thing preventing them from annihilation. Not anymore.

Thus, he must fight with men who see him for the monster he is. His father for the terror he was. His family for the parasites that they are. They march the streets and so does he. In his best funeral suit, crying his heart out. Everyone is ready to tear shit down. The image we end on is…destruction.

He has wrought the most terrible things.

There’s so much more in this episode that is worth examining. Connor’s apparently dangerous eulogy, or the very fact that he is the only one who doesn’t get to say anything publicly. The choice Rava makes to disappear with the kids, followed by Jess’ announcement that she is leaving Kendall’s service. The mothers parallel in Caroline and Gerri. The ramping up of incest jokes from Roman as he becomes increasingly stressed and what that implies. The Tom and Shiv of it all. The various visual nods to royalty, from the ceremony that reads like a coronation, to the mausoleum with space for generations to come.

But what I want to end on is that this is the first episode that feels like it exists outside of Logan Roy. He isn’t sneaking in through archival footage or haunting them as a corpse. This was the truce before the final battle to win what he left behind. The man is buried and gone, and everyone just has to process it in public. A funeral episode that acts like a wake.

There is no “what Logan would have wanted” anymore, because these were his last wishes. No scraps of paper to lord over everyone. That final meeting is the end of the show, and the end of the life of Logan Roy. His grandchildren have rejected him or will never know him. Marcia has sold his home, while Caroline brought his second husband to his funeral. The only person collapsing in his memory is the worst son.

Logan Roy may have not wanted to go into the ground, but he probably would have preferred it to going up in smoke.