10 Hidden Messages In 'Succession' Episode 1
Breaking down the pilot that started it all
Let’s talk about 10 hidden messages in Succession’s first episode.
I love this show and just recently got into it for its masterful production quality and layering of meaning over the course of the entire first season.
If you want to watch the video version of this article, you can do so right here:
Without further ado, let’s get into the hidden messages of episode 1 one by one.
1. World Map Of Currencies
In Kendall’s meeting with Lawrence, a world map hangs on the wall behind them overlooking the proceedings.
If you look closely, each country is “colored in” by their particular currency, with the 1 dollar bill representing the USA, for example.
We get it, the Roy’s are an obscenely rich family with a lot of money, but this is a visual representation of how they view the world.
In a later episode of Season 1, Logan asks Roman how many people are in Indonesia, showing the fact that there’s a large market there he’s interested in.
Logan Roy looks at people as money and countries as currency waiting to be mined. In a TV commercial for Waystar Royco, Logan says that they’re present in over 50 countries. Controlling the news globally is the way Logan mines the world for money and the world map of currencies in the background is a clever visual nod to this belief.
2. Hands
This might sound weird, but Succession’s first episode is obsessed with close ups on hands, whether it’s Logan’s hands, Kendall’s hands, or a still life hand sitting on Kendall’s desk.
Throughout the episode they showcase so many emotions.
In the series’ intro, there’s a short close up of Logan doing a “no deal” type of gesture. When Logan calls Kendall to see about the deal, he sits there fingers folded over his hands — in a position of power. Kendall twirls his chair with his hands midway through the episode, almost representing the behavior of a child. Later he clenches his fist while speaking to his Father in anger, and there’s a close up of his hands as he signs his Father’s Trust documents.
What iced this as potential motif, for me, was the hand still life seen in a couple different scenes in this first episode.
What is with this pilot’s obsession with hands?
Two possibilities. Obviously we use our hands to grasp and control things. Kendall, for so much of the runtime, isn’t in control of the acquisition central to this episode’s plot. Whenever we see Logan’s hands, they’re powerful, in control.
When Logan first calls Kendall, we only see his hands and hear a few muffled words. That technique is building Logan as an incredibly powerful character in our minds already since we aren’t getting a clear look at his face yet.
One last thing. When Lawrence gets in the elevator after his meeting with Kendall, he immediately puts on hand sanitizer, showing us what he thinks of the Roy’s.
3. The “Goo”
Connor gives Logan sourdough bread starter as a gift for his birthday. Logan calls it a “goo” to make “old bread,” effectively turning a thoughtful gift into humiliation for Connor.
Is there more to “the goo?” I think so.
Later, Logan says “I’m just concerned you might be soft as yet,” to Kendall.
Soft like the goo. And what happens when you expose this mixture to heat in an oven? It hardens, rises, and becomes bread — hard enough to need a knife for slicing through it.
I think there’s a connection here between Kendall and the goo. Will Kendall, through trial by fire, become tougher as the show goes on?
Also, Connor says this is the “old way” they made bread. There’s so many mentions of new vs. old that I will go over later on in the video, so just keep a tab about this in your mind.
4. Neanderthals
After their meeting, Lawrence tells Kendall that him and his Father are neanderthals and dinosaurs too stupid to see the monkeys swinging above them, referencing the fact that Waystar Royco is stuck in the past focusing on TV and old media when the internet and new media is clearly disrupting them.
Again with this theme of being old and outdated.
Another thing, though, is this dichotomy between, as Logan puts it, a “big dick swinging contest” and being “professional” as Kendall puts it.
Neanderthals strike me as the kinds of beings who’d engage in chest thumping dick swinging behavior, and Logan himself, hunched over in his old age, almost resembles a neanderthal.
5. The Watch
Tom gifts Logan a very expensive watch for his birthday. He says that every time it ticks you’re reminded of how rich you are.
In reality, this gift has a more sinister meaning that’s pretty obvious.
Logan is clearly getting to the end of his life, having a brain hemorrhage at the end of the episode showcasing how close he really is to the end.
The watch represents father time and the fact that Logan knows his time is almost up. What started as a nice gesture from Tom is really just another reminder to Logan that his time is almost here.
And what better time to be reminded of that than on your own birthday?
6. Greg’s Dog Costume
We check in with Greg on his first day as a costume character in one of Logan’s amusement parks.
He’s a dog, which actually fits Greg’s character pretty well when you see the rest of Season 1. He does what he’s told, is “nice,” and generally just wants to please people.
But the idea that Greg is walking around in a costume, hiding his true self can actually be a metaphor for Kendall as the head honcho in Waystar Royco.
In many respects it feels like he’s an imposter and shouldn’t be the top dog. He needs to psyche himself up to go into his meeting with Lawrence, smoking a cigarette on his way in to calm his nerves.
He also just seems unsure of himself and his decisions, and Logan calls him out for it all in their heated meeting later on.
Kendall is an imposter for now, not because he can’t do the job, but because he feels he needs to channel the personality of his Father to be a good CEO. That’s what I think.
7. “Feel it!” Commercial
The “feel it!” commercial that Waystar Royco plays to their employees is hilarious. Watching Logan and Kendall address their employees professionally knowing damn well how depraved they really are is interesting.
But let’s stick to the “feel it!” slogan here.
“Feel it!” as in have fun at work and share a feeling of joy with the customers.
The message to “feel it!” coming from a family of degenerates who can’t feel anything and need their own lawyers to look over documents given to them by their own Father is hysterical.
I draw comparisons to this and the final shot of the episode, too.
The camera slowly pans out, overlooking all of New York and we slowly realize that this power hungry family of absolute degenerates controls everything we watch, and that that’s probably true in real life as well.
We’re being sold shit wrapped up in a “feel it!” slogan.
8. Elevators
Elevators and altitude play a big role in this first episode. I found it interesting that the elevator in Logan’s house is an old one. What, is he too poor to pay for a modern one?
This references the whole old vs. new motif yet again.
In the series’ intro, we see numerous shots of skyscrapers that almost look like gigantic characters in their own right.
Skyscrapers represent the power of the Logan family, and higher altitudes represent power as well, which is why Logan ascends a gigantic spiral staircase to get to his bedroom.
When Kendall first meets Lawrence he says “Come on dude, I came up all the way up here.”
Power. Later Lawrence stands up to leave the meeting looking down on an almost speechless Kendall. Power.
And elevators help transport people down or up to different levels, kind of like how every single character in this show schemes and tries to play their way into a higher position of power.
This is accentuated even more by the helicopters used at the end of the episode, lifting members of the family away to their game.
And like the final shot of the episode, the Roy’s live in ivory towers of power, separating themselves from the normal people down below watching their television programming.
9. The Baseball Game
The baseball game is a thinly veiled metaphor for the fact that control of Logan’s empire is a game that everyone is playing.
Later in the season, Roy tells Kendall that Marcia has a game, you have a game, everyone has a game.
One thing that’s interesting is the baseball diamond is painted onto a big grass field. Logan tells Kendall that you “make your own reality” earlier in the episode, and I think this painted-in baseball diamond is a visual representation of that somewhat.
I mean, why not just take over a real baseball diamond out in the New York countryside somewhere?
Also baseball diamonds as in diamonds and riches.
One more thing: what’s more American than baseball? What game is more inherently American than baseball? It’s an old game that’s getting disrupted lately by sports like Football and Basketball as well, drawing comparisons to the Waystar Royco business model.
In many respects, baseball was the perfect game for the writers to insert into this first episode, showing that all this power and influence in the hands of a very rich few is part of what it means to live in America.
10. Logan’s Trust
Logan brings documents to Kendall in an orange envelope to sign. They’re regarding his “trust” and Kendall blindly signs them without having a lawyer look over them.
Later Logan chastises Kendall for it saying he “never lawyered the trust,” to which Kendall replies “Yeah I trusted my father.”
This double meaning was fascinating for me as nobody in the Roy family trusts one another at all either.
Succession is a brilliant show that I’ve only recently got into. As of the writing of this article, I haven’t even watched all of Season 1 yet. I’m thinking of making another newsletter on the entire season breaking down the biggest messages and themes.
Let me know if that’s something you might be interested in in the comments. :)