Knives Out The war for Waystar comes to a showstopping end.

SUCCESSION'S FOURTH and final season is a shining example of the best qualities of long-form storytelling and of narrative TV in particular.

When we live with characters for many years, there's a sense that we know them well. This is no movie-length fling. It's a drawn-out relationship that creates messy, complex investment in characters and invites obsessive close reading. They are pinned down and picked apart; every line and glance and odd way of sitting in chairs is noted and charted and considered. We see them. (We, uh, hear for them.) They belong to us. That closeness is a kind of intimacy, but it's also a way to be lulled into false confidence. How could we be taken by surprise when we've examined these people's every move? And yet, as the Roy family has illustrated, there's no better time to zig than the precise moment when everything is lined up for a big zag.

Succession has consistently performed that pattern in character combinations that rapidly shift and coalesce around new allegiances and stakes. The baseline premise has remained the same: One of the Roy children will eventually assume power over their father Logan Roy's massive media corporation. But who? And how? And what will they have to sacrifice in order to seize the throne?