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Shiv Roy is Not Your Hero

Shiv Roy walking into the boardroom for the Succession finale

This week, we say goodbye to our dear, dear world of an HBO show. Succession closed its gates on Sunday’s colossal film-length farewell to the Roys. It finally answered the question asked from the start – Who would rise to the top of Waystar? It also started an internet brawl about the fate of Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook).

In the past four years and four critically adored seasons of Succession, Shiv Roy has shown herself as one of our best and most complicated women on modern-day TV. The youngest child and only daughter of Logan Roy, she grappled with his punishing legacy in the final season. This was never more true than the comprehensive trio of eulogies at Logan’s funeral. Shiv delivers the final and most sobering lines about her destructive ‘world of a father’ who kept everyone outside. ‘When he let you in, when the sun shone, it was warm.’

And the sun never did fully shine on her again. Viewers were left agog when Shiv’s decision to vote Yes for the GoJo deal was the catalyst for the final ending – the ending that saw Kendall pushed out of the top spot, Roman free, and Shiv holding the hand of her husband and new Waystar CEO, Tom. It set the discourse sphere ablaze.

The Debate

Shiv holding Tom's hand in the Succession finale. Both look unhappy.

Criticism flew in that Shiv was given the worst, and most misogynistic of the fates. Kendall and Roman are lost, ready to make or destroy their own lives. Shiv remains tethered to the Roy curse, now as the wife instead of the daughter. It’s a fate that she resisted since the very beginning of the story, something she despised in Caroline, their mother. There is a damning message about how we determine the paths of ‘warrior women’. Shiv does not deserve this fate: playing mother and married to someone in her father’s position.

The backlash to the backlash followed. Fans keenly pointed out that Succession has never been about what’s fair. Shiv herself has stepped on other women throughout the show, notably in season 2, when she coerces a sexual assault victim to keep her silence. Shiv is a Roy first underneath liberal morality.

On the internet, blink, and the conversation moves on before the last topic gets digested. One blink, and you may have missed the new assessment – that Shiv Roy is the hero of the story. By ousting Kendall, she saved him from himself. She knew that becoming Logan would destroy her brother. It’s well-meaning but far too charitable a take for Shiv, let alone anyone with the Roy name.

Shiv Roy’s Role

Siobhan Roy is not your hero or martyr. She is also not the villain, though she may be one of the likeable ones of the show’s roster of villains, and she doesn’t comfortably fit in the victim role. In her eulogy, she says that her father couldn’t ‘fit a whole woman in his head’. The internet couldn’t either. The truth is that Shiv Roy is just as apolitical, just as power-hungry as her brothers. She’s also just as conniving but just as foolish. Yes, she is affected by misogyny. Across multiple seasons, the show points out that the only thing separating her from her brother is that she is a woman, but only so far as it’s an intricate play about power and who can wield it.

It’s a mistake to think that Shiv could be the victor when nobody is, not even Tom. Her double-dealing husband only holds power as an interim CEO before Waystar gets skinned to the bone. At the show’s end, the real power is with Lukas Matsson. Even he is in hot water with falsified data and 7 litres of blood in the mail. To say Shiv deserves a good ending implies that any of these characters can live in peace. So who holds the power? Only the lucky ones, and even then, not for long.

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