Brian Cox as Logan Roy in the third season of Legacies. Photo: HBO
Warning: contains spoilers
Legacy has always been meant to revolve around Logan Roy's legacy. What he never intended to consider was his stamina. We now remember that a foreshadowing stroke in a helicopter sent him to the hospital in the first episode. Jesse Armstrong told us that the whole plan for the show was to cause his death in the first season — not the death of the waiter we barely met in the amazing 10th episode, but the fall of the father.
What a different show would it be then. We're getting a belated sense of it now, in the remaining seven episodes: how soon will a backstab replace mourning? Which of his children has a killer hunger, and do any of them have the survival skills to take first place?
These questions have always been bait, not real meat. This banquet needed Logan to be there, still firmly heading the table. It's a cunning reversal of the show's ambition that a threatened power vacuum continues to be filled by the very person who was supposed to make room. If Logan, who played indomitably, furiously and with an absolute refusal to tolerate even one moment of Brian Cox's stupid behavior, wasn't ready to put him down as early as Armstrong once intended, you can certainly blame his children's incompetence.
“I love you, but you are not serious people,” he says to them during their last meeting — the mildest judgmental judgment he has ever given to these wayward boys since birth. Every season he got back on his feet to protect Waystar Royco's interests because everyone else was looking after their own. Holding the entire fort was only as much as he could do.
The first glimpse of Cox we've ever seen — his back at the end of the boardroom credits, in his trademark knitted cardigan — summed up his burden. You can already feel the burden on him that no one does to lighten or share. It feels like it's stuck in a hot seat like a saucer, refusing to budge.
When we see the same back without outdoor swimwear in S1E7, what is revealed is quite a backstory. It's riddled with what looks like baby scars. We know that his upbringing in Dundee was harsh, but not in detail how harsh. His widowed mother sent him and two siblings to be raised by Uncle Noah in Quebec, who beat him severely and frequently, the alleged cause of his injuries. At some point, Rose's sister died, for which Logan continued to blame himself. His surviving brother Ewen (James Cromwell) held almost diametrically opposed values and despised everything that Logan stood for.
His rise to become the head of a monstrous, dwindling media empire, the average act of Logan's life, is where the show gets away with it because we all know the story of Rupert Murdoch. From a personal standpoint, the end result is irritating contempt. It was always very bitter, abusive directed at his children, who did not try to understand the impunity of his undertakings and even ridicule his tearful stories. He does unforgivable things to them, but in principle he cannot forgive them for not being him.
An important irony of the series is that he has given all the younger Roys the world on a silver platter, and manages to hold it against them while hating himself for making it so easy for them. Their lack of courage and initiative always makes him burn — and, on the contrary, keeps him alive. We learn that he, in turn, bullied Roman at least once during his childhood, but this is a rare oversight. Verbal abuse is Logan's sizzling forte, becoming Roman's primary mode of communication as an adult. At times, he looks like Logan's court jester Mini-Me.
Brian Cox and Sarah Snook on Succession. Photo: HBO
Logan's relationship with Kendall, who he understands inside and out as a hopeless case, is that of a tormentor to a victim. Meanwhile, Shiv is being treated as treacherously as he treats every woman close to him — pulled into an all-consuming devotion, then pushed away, and instead he pulls Tom closer.
We don't know much about Logan's first wife, except that his rejection of her leads to his view of Connor, Sr., as a delusional pinhead that hardly counts. The third wife, Marcia, is long gone (we believe), and Logan's latest act is to brutally kick Jerry, his sympathetic general counsel, to the curb. Even Kerry, the former assistant who eventually became his girlfriend of sorts, got a taste of his medicine as she cowardly turned down her promised role as news anchor.
Logan dreams of an inner circle as devoted and loving as Kent, Gloucester and Fool. (Instead, he gets the likes of Karl, Frank, and Caroline.) Brian Cox naturally acknowledged Logan's scholarship, but considers another Shakespearean king even more important to his understanding—Henry IV. Like this ruler, he doesn't see a worthy child or successor, least of all Kendall. They're scumbags, degenerates, with their dick pictures and petty rivalries.
Logan Roy as he appears in the opening credits » Heritage». Photo: HBO
No wonder this crown is consistently hard to remove. «It's like Jaws if everyone at Jaws worked for Jaws,» Greg remarked as Logan roamed the newsroom in the previous episode. All this time he was the Great White Shark — a virtually indestructible creature with minimal mercy and primal goals. But also a vanishing species and an increasingly lonely specimen. When his kids aren't around because they're plotting to taunt him, he needs all the court sycophants to drop the case and try to fry it: «I'm having fun!» he insists terribly.
In his interviews, Cox mentioned that a couple of memories are still ahead: Logan may have secrets that have not yet fallen out of the grave, a child is coming (?!) or a few last drops of poison. spit it out. But his attempt to make amends with the clan in the karaoke scene last week clearly failed, and there's no turning back now. The last real friendship he seems to treasure is with his bodyguard, Colin. — You are my best friend.
While the empire was tottering, the emperor locked himself up and just held on because no one else was good enough.
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