This Succession Cliffhanger Could Change Everything

In the beginning, there was Logan Roy, the founder of Waystar Royco. Succession kicked off with Logan’s stroke, creating a race for the CEO position he’d held onto for decades. But in the background, a second story, that of a cruise line scandal, was slowly building until it exploded all over the Roy family, culminating in Episode 3’s raid on the Waystar offices. But what does the FBI’s raid mean for Succession? Perhaps viewers will finally find out what Logan knew about the cruises and when he knew it.

Warning: Spoilers for Succession Season 3, Episode 3 follow. Since Kendall Roy’s announcement that he had papers proving his father was intimately involved in Waystar’s cruise line scandal, the Roy family patriarch veered wildly from insisting he knew nothing to practically fleeing the country. One minute he was calling it all a witch hunt; the next, he was enticing his third wife back into his life to make him look like a solid family man.

The seesaw continued in Episode 3 as Logan insisted to Shiv’s face that he was innocent, that there wasn’t a scrap of paper in the entire building that would make her ashamed of him. (Shiv knew more about the cruise scandal than most since her husband, Tom, was in charge of Waystar’s travel and luxury brands.) But in the same episode, he met with White House aide Michelle-Anne, practically ambushing her in an effort to get the president to help him out of the scandal — going so far as to threaten to run coverage of the president that will take him down the next election cycle, unless the DOJ leaves the Roys alone.

Listen, if there’s one way to spook the FBI into action, it’s by threatening the president so thoroughly, his aide walks out feeling as if you have something to hide. It turned out, the deputy attorney general was so rattled, he decided to launch a raid on Waystar. Is it any wonder that the episode’s final minutes began with Gerri’s dramatic declaration that the FBI was downstairs? Or that Logan’s first response was to tell them to “f*ck off”?

With the wolf at the door, the cameras turned on Logan, and the knowledge that any show of resistance would be seen as an admission of guilt, Logan did the only thing he could: He let them in.

So, what will the FBI find? Most likely, they’ll find what fans already know. Lester McClintock, known to the family as Uncle Moe, was guilty of sexually coercing cruise line employees for his benefit. There are dozens of women who complained about his behavior, and who lost their jobs as a result. At least one employee may have taken her life due to depression and shame for the things she was forced to do.

But will there be a paper trail proving Logan Roy knew all of this, and had for years? And if Logan Roy goes down, the chances that he takes down the rest of the family with him are almost assured.

Succession Season 3 continues with new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and streams directly following on HBO Max.