Yeah, Shiv, you should probably know.
It's me.
It's you?
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
It feels very perverse to end it
'cause it's been incredibly meaningful.
You know, I love this cast,
I love working with the crew, my fellow writers.
I've had some of my happiest times in my career
being in the writer's room and working with them.
I'm quite a sort of softie, really.
I like the family vibe we have around the show
and the relationships we have.
But one of the few things I'm able to be
really tough about, I think,
is protecting, like, the show and its integrity.
And the more and more we discussed it in the room,
the more and more clear it became to me
that this sequence of Logan's death,
the competition over whether to sell or not
intersecting with an election...
PETER SAMPINO: Mencken will be the next president
of the United States.
...and his funeral ended with the show ending.
And once that became clear, I didn't really have any doubts.
I had lots of emotional sadnesses,
but it felt like, "Okay, this is how the show goes."
-SHIV: Hey! -Hey.
Finishing production in Barbados,
on the one hand, it was magical,
on the other hand, it was so incredibly sad.
The only way I could do it
was to be somewhat robotic, actually.
I was very, "Okay, let's do it. Let's do the-- (MUMBLES)"
Because I kept getting hijacked by,
you know, all that kind of tsunami of,
"That's the last time we'll do that,
that's the last time we'll do that."
And I think the actors felt that as well.
There was an odd, kind of emotional tension.
We anoint you.
You get the bauble.
MARK: The counterpoint to that was the lovely,
scene we called meal fit for a king.
That sense of recaptured innocence.
Kids just being kids, no matter what their income.
Everything seemed possible, and yet...
ROMAN: Wear your crown, sir.
-Oh, no. No, no, no, no. -No, no, no, no, no, no.
-Then let me put it on. -No, no, no, no, no!
My understanding of the show
has always been that it's a tragedy.
And therefore, every moment of hope like that is so cruel.
Because you're just waiting for that shoe to drop
and waiting for their essential natures to be exposed
and to break your heart again.
How would you feel about, uh, soft pitching me?
Yeah. I can sing for my supper. (CHUCKLES)
The idea of Tom being the eventual successor,
that had been something that I thought
was the right ending for quite a while now.
TOM WAMBSGANS: Follow the boss.
You know, I, uh, digest strategy and implement.
Even though he's not exactly
the most powerful monarch you'll ever meet.
His power, you know, comes from Matsson.
Tom will honestly suck the biggest dick in the room.
That's just my assessment.
Love is in the air.
Those figures who drift upwards
and make themselves amenable to powerful people, uh...
are around.
Shiv?
MARK: As with Tom's betrayal at the end of season three,
everything was always working towards this idea
of Sarah's character of Shiv
ultimately sabotaging herself, um, and sabotaging the deal.
I can do this.
I don't think you'd be good at it.
What? I don't--
I don't even believe you. I don't believe you!
Jesse kind of,
I hate this expression, stuck the landing
with this climactic showdown, if you like,
between the three siblings.
I love you, but I cannot fucking stomach you.
MARK: The final ripping off of the bandage to expose
that terrible, terrible truth put so simply by Roman.
We are bullshit.
It was just such a heart-rending moment.
We're nothing.
And yet, so inevitable.
And that's, again,
good tragedy should feel inevitable, shouldn't it?
It's the essential truth of those characters
and the consequence of their nature and their upbringing.
Everything led to that one moment.
Um, and so, on that level,
it was perfect. It was perfectly painful.
JESSE: I thought about all their stories.
You know, they don't end. They will carry on.
But it's sort of where this show
loses interest in them because they've lost what they wanted.
Which was to succeed, which, you know,
this prize that their father held out.
In a reductive, brutal way,
Roman ends up exactly where he started.
He is that guy still.
And he maybe could've easily been
a playboy jerk with some slightly nasty instincts
and some quite funny jokes.
He could've stayed in a bar, being that guy.
And this has been a bit of a detour in his life, I would say.
Shiv is still in play,
I'd say, in a rather terrifying, frozen,
emotionally barren place.
But she has got this kind of non-victory, non-defeat.
I mean, there's gonna be some movement there.
There's still a lot of that game to play out,
but that's where we leave it.
And it feels like it's gonna be hard to progress for them,
emotionally, given the things they've said to each other.
For Kendall, this will never stop being
the central event of his life, central days of his life,
central couple of years of his life.
Maybe he could go on and start a company
or do a thing.
But the chances of him achieving
the sort of corporate status that his dad achieved
are very low.
And I think that will mark his whole life.
I don't feel like I'll be able to write anything
as good as this, um, again, because I think--
I just feel like it's an arena that I'm so interested in.
And the group of people who've made it have been so talented.
It sounds a bit banal, really, I just feel gratitude.
I really feel massive gratitude to-- particularly to Jesse
for the greatest, loveliest collaboration I've ever had.
It feels really scary and foolish to end,
but with that sense that it must end,
so that's what, I guess, I cling onto.