Around a month ago, we questioned where the hell Ewan Roy was in the fourth and final season of Succession. Conspicuous in his absence after his brother Logan’s shock death – although the two were barely on speaking terms – we wondered if he was being held back for the funeral episode, where he would take to the pulpit and drop a few truth bombs about his sibling and their troubled childhood.
Well, bingo. In episode nine, Church and State, that’s exactly what happened. Hats off to the masterful Succession writers, and James Cromwell, as Ewan, who delivered on all fronts, giving what Greg called “a good, hard take” on his brother. What was so striking about his eulogy – despite the Roy kids desperately trying to stop him from taking the stage – was that out of anyone assembled in that grand cathedral, he was perhaps the only one who truly understood the real Logan Roy. He had the benefit of sharing his childhood with him, and the terrible traumas that shaped who he became.
Stories that had never been uttered before by Logan, even when told matter-of-factly by Ewan, stunned the congregation. Learning that Logan blamed himself for their little sister, Rose, catching polio and dying (Logan’s own Citizen Kane Rosebud moment) and that his abusive uncle and aunt also held him responsible, begins to make up the fractured character that was Logan Roy. Ewan also explained their terrifying war-time journey from Dundee to Canada as a four year old and a five and a half year old on a boat, where they were forbidden from speaking, moving or coughing as they were told they would die by the hands of the enemy. So for three nights and two days, he says of the terrified young brothers, they could only “speak with our eyes”.
From one set of horror-struck brothers to another: a cutaway shot of Roman and Kendall at this point in Ewan’s speech, learning this history of their father shows the impact this staggering news has on them. It’s the reason Roman, previously the funeral hype man, completely crumbles when he tries to take the pulpit afterward: Ewan’s eulogy has completely reframed a man that his children never knew either. They just had snatches of a man they knew as “dad.”
Ewan’s speech goes on to describe the havoc Logan went on to wreak in the world, which Kendall later tries to counter-balance in his own eulogy (“he made life happen” is… one way of putting it) but Ewan’s speech is perhaps the most fair and accurate summary of Logan’s life. Alongside the conflicted emotions Logan instilled in everyone around him, his wives, children, mistresses, colleagues, adversaries and brother, Ewan eventually reaches his middle ground with what it meant to live, and struggle with being in Logan’s orbit: “I loved him, I suppose, and I suppose some of you did too, in whatever way he would let us and we could manage.”
Ewan Roy’s speech in full:
“What sort of people would stop their brother speaking for the sake of a share price?
“It is not for me to judge my brother. History will tell that story. I can just give you a couple of instances about him. You probably all know we came across the first time during the war for our safety. But the engines of our ship let go and the rest of the convoy sailed on without us, leaving us adrift. They told us children that if we spoke, or coughed, or moved an inch that the U-boats would catch the vibrations through the hull and we would die in the drink right there in the hold. Three nights and two days we stayed quiet. A four year old and a five and a half year old speaking with our eyes. So, there’s a little sob story.
“And once we were over, our uncle, who, so to speak, was a character, well, they had a little money and they sent Logan away to a better school and he hated it. He just hated it. He wasn’t well, he was sick, and he mewed and he cried and in the end he got out and he came home, under his own steam. But when he got back, our little sister, she was a baby, she was there by then, she…uh…He always believed that he brought home the polio with him, which took her. I don’t even know if that’s true. But our aunt and uncle certainly did nothing to disabuse him of that notion. They let it lie with him.
“I loved him, I suppose, and I suppose some of you did too, in whatever way he would let us and we could manage. But I can’t help but say he has wrought some of the most terrible things. He was a man who has here and there drawn in the edges of the world. Now and then darkened the skies a little. Closed men’s hearts. Fed that dark flame in men, the hard mean hard-relenting flame that keeps their heart warm while another grows cold. Their grain stashed while another goes hungry.
“And even has the temerity to tell that hard but funny joke about the man in the cold. You can get a little high, a little mighty when you’re warm. Oh yes, he gave away a few million of his billions but he was not a generous man. He was mean, and he made but a mean estimation of the world and he fed a certain kind of meagreness in men. Perhaps he had to because he had a meagreness about him and maybe I do about me too, I don’t know. I try. I try. I don’t know when but sometime he decided not to try anymore and it was a terrible shame. Godspeed my brother. And God bless.”
Succession concludes with the final episode next week on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV.
