The past two episodes of Succession posed a number of intriguing questions as we head to the finish line. Will the Waystar-GoJo deal go through? When will Kendall, inevitably, implode again? Bricks of blood? But there’s one question that seems most immediately concerning: Shiv, girl, what are you doing?
Shiv Roy is clearly going through it. She’s secretly pregnant, her father just died, her dumb brothers are slowly pushing her out of power, and she’s in the middle of a divorce. Even so, her behavior has been fascinatingly unpredictable. She’s flirting heavily with Lukas Matsson—the closest thing this show has to an antagonist—while hooking up with her soon-to-be ex Tom, who she also keeps antagonizing. She’s scheduling time to cry. She’s drinking or maybe—hopefully!—just holding glasses of booze to keep up appearances.
Everyone on Succession has an endgame, but right now it’s hard to tell what Shiv wants beyond maintaining a modicum of power. Does she actually want this baby? Hard to say. Does she want to fuck Lukas Matsson? Possibly. Does she want to get back with Tom? Who knows?
Let’s start with the baby. Shiv’s pregnancy was revealed in episode four with a phone call from her doctor, who wants to schedule a 20-week checkup. But since then Shiv has not been acting very pregnant.
In Norway she has a beer in hand during one of the gatherings, and some dark liquor with her when she meets with Matsson in private. Matsson offers her a hit of coke, which she accepts. (We don’t actually see her put a spoon in her nostril, but she does sniffle and wipe her nose.) Later, she takes a tiny sip of champagne on the private plane while she’s gloating over the giant offer Matsson made for the company. During the Investor Day shindig in LA she holds onto a glass of champagne.
Look, she’s never seen chugging any of these beverages, but she’s definitely making a show of handling alcohol, which is noticeable especially given how she gave a toast with water at her mom’s wedding during the season 3 finale, an image that furthered pregnancy theories before it was confirmed.
Maybe her current booze-forward behavior is to throw people off the scent of the pregnancy. Or perhaps she’s not pregnant anymore. The Succession writers don’t like to be obvious. The news of Shiv’s baby situation was almost deliberately underplayed. It would be very like Jesse Armstrong and his staff to not tell the audience immediately if Shiv either had an abortion or a miscarriage.
Regardless of whatever is going on uterus-wise, Shive does seem very horny. Her interactions with Matsson are somewhat sexually charged without actually involving any sex. He invited her into his inner sanctum in Scandinavia, where he tells her about his habit of sending his frozen blood to exes. This week, he boards her jet shoeless and blows her a kiss after calling her his “girl” on the inside. Is it this unconsummated chemistry that draws her back into the arms of Tom? Or is it her deep well of sorrow over her dad’s death? Or is it both?
During the gang’s LA trip to Waystar Studios, Tom accidentally walks in on her weeping in a dark conference room, and realizes she has carved out time on her schedule to mourn. He comforts her; they end up kissing. This leads to some truly strange banter at the cocktail party where she encourages him to play “bitey,” a competition so vicious only a Roy could come up with it: Two people bite each other’s arms until the other relents. When Shiv loses, she quips, “Tom Wambsgans finally made me feel something.”
Sarah Snook is electric in these scenes, her eyes just a little bit wild as she allows Shiv to break her snarky, know-it-all demeanor for something a little more genuinely spontaneous. The way she performs these scenes just feels a tiny bit unhinged which makes them all the more exciting. This is Shiv let loose.
Tom and Shiv end up sleeping together but their postcoital conversation is filled with the kind of emotional warfare that’s typical for them. Tom teases her over her budding courtship of Matsson. She reminds him of his betrayal. But they are united on one front: They both love their money, and laugh at the idea of giving it all up and running away together.
By the end of the hour these two are certainly not back together as a couple, but they also have formed a tentative business allegiance through mutual badgering. She insists it’s only strategy; he says that he can’t help but find strategy sexy.
It’s certainly thrilling to have Tom and Shiv all horned up and on the same team, but it’s hard not to shake the feeling that Shiv is setting herself up for a fall in some way or another. Her plans to undermine her brothers have already taken a left turn given Roman and Kendall’s shocking success at the Investor’s Day presentation. And then there’s the psychological baggage of it all. Whether or not she’s pregnant, she’s now emotionally tethered to Tom once again, which means all of her erratic dealings with Matsson could come and bite her in the ass.
Succession is moving so quickly that it’s sometimes easy to forget that Logan died only a couple of days ago in the show’s timeline, which means Shiv is still in the midst of an extreme, complicated grief process. She’s been hiding her pain by what she thinks is smart maneuvering, and a big question for the show’s final episodes is whether she can actually girlboss her way out of sorrow.