Succession Season 3 Episode 2 Recap: 'Mass in the Time of War'

Paranoia is in the air this week, and the mad King Roy – roi being the French word for king, lest we forget – has gone full Hamlet, asking his children to watch out for his advisers and his advisers to watch out for his children. As the episode draws on and he feels "the sky is falling down", he grows increasingly desperate, trying to draw Marcia back in and even telling his most bewildering offspring Connor he's "number one, kiddo."

Things are a little shaky over at Judas HQ too, with Greg freaking out about whether he's "tied his dick to a runaway train" as Kendall so nicely puts it. Greg is enjoying time away from his chief tormentor Tom – more's the pity for us, given what a good double act they make – though he isn't going to let his favourite human footstool get away so easily. Greg is caught in the crossfires and just wants to return to drinking rosé on the yacht with the giant slide, clearly. As he tells Kendall, somehow with a straight face: "I'm kind of too young to be in Congress so much".

But possibly the best and most Greg moment of this week's episode is the exchange he has with one of Waystar's legal representatives, in which he cagily tries to work out whether he is supposed to pick his lawyer or they pick him. "There is a lawyer here, so he's saying he's my lawyer, do you think he's probably my lawyer?" he wonders out loud. Nicholas Braun really does steal this week's episode, from announcing "five stars" to his Uber driver as he pulls up, to replying to his grandfather's calling Kendall's press conference "histrionic and meretricious" by saying, "tell me about it", his delivery does not miss.

The Roy offspring all slowly arrive for the war summit Kendall has convened, and the avengers eventually assemble in the glamorous location of his daughter's bedroom. This gives Roman the perfect opportunity to wind him up about not remembering his children's names. But really, where are those kids?

Kendall wants them all to team up and do a joint press conference, and he reminds his siblings that dad was more than happy to see him go to jail. His siblings are split between not wanting to admit they are considering betraying their dad (Shiv and Roman) and randomly interjecting "amen brother" (Connor).

The Roy children are divided in how much they are willing to admit they knew the shady cover-ups going on in the cruise division of the company, in essence whether they "knew what the guys in dad's study were laughing about". Kendall and Connor, the elder two, admit they were aware , but Shiv and Roman claim innocence. Even if they didn't know, the fact they could ignore something we are supposed to see as being a blatant part of the company culture speaks volumes. This season might be physically picking up only hours after where the last one ended, but there are moments tonally where you feel time has moved on years.

It's interesting to see how the show has adapted to the cultural conversation in the long gap between it being off air since the last season. Kendall's Ted Talk guy chat about information becoming more precious than water, declining empires and media companies eating the heart out of American democracy all feel tethered to the way the ground has shifted in the last few years.

This episode sees two familiar faces come back into the fold, the first is Stewy, who of course is responsible for the literal Trojan horse which was delivered to Rava's apartment, though we are sad we don't get to see him burst out from inside it. Kendall meets him on the street by his car (where most suspicious rendezvous occur in Succession) and we get to meet Sandy Furness's daughter... Sandi Furness. Kendall makes the big pitch for the same deal that they discussed in Greece but also promises to push out Logan to sweeten the deal for his nemesis Sandy. Surely things are going way too smoothly for Kendall for any of it to last.

The second is Marcia who offers a delicious moment when negotiating with Logan's team and making them squirm as she goes into the details of his philandering with Rhea Durrell. "Nothing needs to be said," Hugo says (pleads?). Marcia unveils her extensive financial demands, which interestingly just plays into what the Roy children and Logan's first wife Caroline make of her, but perhaps this is just being realistic about why someone would tie themselves to someone as toxic and unfaithful as Logan.

The Roy children reunion predictably ends in tears: Gerri having warned Roman that their plan is "snake linguini", Connor simply walking away, and Shiv refusing to explain why she's backing Logan. The Roys are reunited on the tarmac with some photo op hugs and gentle joshing, and Shiv's loyalty is rewarded by Logan naming her president with Gerri as a "full chemical and biological suit" to protect her from getting burned. And to think that Gerri was the one who likely just saved Logan from total destruction.

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• Tastiest zinger: Connor's "Oh sure thing honey, me too, all about dad. That's why we're all here" to Shiv before reclining on the bed. Chef's kiss.
  
• Messiah Kendall is definitely snowballing into mania and with only enablers surrounding him and his ego this is sure to end in tears.
• That said, the secretive enveloped strategically placed in front of Shiv for her to open and read simply 'fuck you' shows he might actually be a genius after all.
  
• Connor's lambasting someone over the storage of fine wines gave us yet more evidence that the Conheads amongst us deserve a spin-off reality show with him just going about his day.
• We are now using "I don't think that but the market does" as a get-out-of-jail-free-card chaser to any insult.
• Those doughnuts definitely were poisoned.

Succession is available on Sky and NOW on Mondays at 9pm and on-demand