‘Succession’: Creator Jesse Armstrong Says He Nearly Split Season 4 Into Two Parts Before Deciding On A “Full-Fat” Final Season

With “Succession” over, HBO has an opening for its next premier drama. There are couple of candidates for the slot already, like “The Last Of Us” and “The White Lotus.” But if “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong had cut the show’s final season in two, as he considered doing at one point, HBO wouldn’t have a gap to fill at all.

READ MORE: ‘Succession’ Review: HBO’s Flagship Drama Returns For Brutal, Unforgettable Final Chapter

IndieWire (via Vulture) reports that Armstrong revealed in the upcoming book “Succession: Season Four: The Complete Scripts” that he thought about splitting his the final season of his series into two parts, like “The Sopranos” or “Breaking Bad.” “Once season three was complete and aired, in December 2021, I got my fellow executive-producer–writers together […] to look at the alternative future-season shapes I’d written up on the walls: one final season of 10 episodes, or two of six or eight episodes,” Armstrong wrote. “My sense was that we should do one last full-fat season rather than stretch it out” Armstrong said. 

Armstrong weighed the pros and cons of cleaving Season 4 into two, thinking about a lot of different factors. “I was wary of saying goodbye too fast to all the relationships and opportunities, of leaving creative money on the table, regretting all the subplots that would go unwritten, the jokes left untold,” he continued. Ultimately, the “Succession” creative team formed a “little committee on whether to whack the show” and decided to stick to their plan of one final season of ten episodes.

It was a difficult choice to make, but Armstrong and other parts of the “Succession” production knew it was the right decision. “No other way of going forward felt persuasive,” Armstrong said. And the show’s writer and executive producer Lucy Prebble added, “We could, if we wanted, keep going with a show that became increasingly rangy and fun — a climbing plant grown leggy but still throwing off beautiful blooms now and then. But the 10-episode season was the muscular way to go out.”

And what a way to go out, as the “Succession” finale set a viewership record at HBO. But the upcoming “Succession” book reveals that even the finale was almost very different. In the book, Jeremy Strong talks about an alternative ending for his character, Kendall Roy, but likes the one that Armstrong chose. “It’s a much stronger ending philosophically, and has more integrity to what Jesse’s overall very bleak vision is of mankind — which is that fundamentally, people don’t really change,” Strong said of his character’s ending. “They don’t do the spectacular, dramatic thing. Instead, there’s a kind of doom loop that we’re all stuck in, and Kendall is trapped in this sort of silent scream with Colin there as both a bodyguard and a jailer.”

But what if Armstrong had decided to shoot a suicide scene for Kendall Roy? “My God, it would’ve been hard to do,” continued Strong. “But I think you even feel on a cellular level the intention or the longing to cross that threshold. The way [Armstrong] leaves us with a kind of ambivalence stays true to his vision.”

“Succesion: Season 4: The Complete Scripts” hits bookstores next week on September 26.