Succession’s finale arrived on the good time. Which is to say, it occurred earlier than the present even got here near sporting out its welcome. While we mourn a present’s passing, it’s so significantly better to say goodbye than it’s to look at a beloved present develop stale. Season 4 was the fitting time to finish the present. Hindsight being 20/20, we now know this to be the case. But in 2021, Jesse Armstrong wasn’t completely certain. In the introduction to the present’s season-four scripts, revealed by Vulture earlier at this time, Armstrong remembers how he determined that 4 seasons was sufficient.
Armstrong says that after season three ended, he invited executive-producer-writers Lucy Prebble, Tony Roche, Jon Brown, and Will Tracy to his workplace in Brixton to “take a look at the choice future-season shapes I’d written up on the partitions.” Before them have been two paths: A single 10-episode season or two extra seasons of six or eight episodes. The latter, we assume, means it could’ve been a type of cut up closing seasons which have turn out to be so common within the final decade however are fairly annoying.
“My sense was that we must always do one final full-fat season reasonably than stretch it out,” Armstrong writes. “But I used to be cautious of claiming goodbye too quick to all of the relationships and alternatives, of leaving inventive cash on the desk, regretting all of the subplots that will go unwritten, the jokes left untold.”
The “little committee on whether or not to whack the present” took a vote. While some voted one and others voted two, Prebble delivered the deciding blow. Armstrong remembers her argument: “We may, if we wished, hold going with a present that grew to become more and more rangy and enjoyable—a climbing plant grown leggy however nonetheless throwing off stunning blooms at times. But the ten-episode season was the muscular solution to exit.”
Armstrong says he tried to maintain the “a number of future seasons” alive for a time, “nearly in order that the present itself didn’t understand it was ending.” However, he knew 4 seasons was it. “I by no means had a severe wobble,” Armstrong writes. “No different method of going ahead felt persuasive.”
