Explor­ing queer desire in HBO’s Succession

A show about a pow­er­ful Amer­i­can media empire run by patri­arch Logan Roy (Bri­an Cox) and his adult chil­dren, Suc­ces­sion is couched in luxe big­ness and indul­gent, melo­dra­mat­ic dia­logue. Such traits ampli­fy an under­cur­rent of desire in a series already charged with a homo­eroti­cism that flies in mul­ti­ple, errat­ic direc­tions, like a boun­cy ball thrown from one of the sky­scrap­ers fea­tured in the open­ing credits.

“Would you kiss me? If I asked you to? If I told you to?” are some of the first lines Tom Wamb­s­gans (Matthew Mac­fadyen) deliv­ers to his cousin-in-law Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), a rel­a­tive of the Roy chil­dren, new­ly relo­cat­ed to New York to milk what­ev­er dis­tant nepo­tism he can. While Greg appears star­tled by the explic­it­ness of this exchange, the pair devel­op an alliance/­pseu­do-friend­ship over the course of the sea­son. Tom and Greg are reg­u­lar­ly shown watch­ing one anoth­er. Tom’s touch­es linger; Greg’s eyes twinkle.

These sen­su­al expres­sions are echoed through dia­logue. Tom and Greg’s con­ver­sa­tions fre­quent­ly ref­er­ence their mutu­al desire, so much so that it seems the show’s writ­ers are attempt­ing to under­score it. ​“Are you try­ing to seduce me?” Greg jok­ing­ly asks at an expen­sive din­ner. A blush­ing Tom con­firms through laugh­ter that he is. When their office is put under lock­down and the two are sequestered in a safe room, Tom dis­parag­ing­ly refers to this as ​“hid­ing in the closet.”

This scene high­lights Tom and Greg’s poten­tial­ly roman­tic inter­est beyond the phys­i­cal­i­ty of their inter­ac­tions. When Greg asks Tom if he can spread his wings in a sep­a­rate depart­ment, he ten­ta­tive­ly requests a ​“busi­ness open rela­tion­ship,” recall­ing Tom’s wed­ding night con­ver­sa­tions about polyamory with his wife Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook). The exchange with Greg, how­ev­er, has more emo­tion­al urgency. Tom begins to cry before throw­ing water bot­tles at Greg. ​“We’re friends!” Greg pleads; ​“Fuck you!” Tom screams in response.

Loaded lan­guage and a sim­mer­ing yearn­ing are not exclu­sive to Tom and Greg. In sea­son one, Kendall Roy (Jere­my Strong) meets his old friend Stewy Hos­sei­ni (Ari­an Moayed) in a café to pitch him an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ​“come in” to his fam­i­ly busi­ness and bail them out of debt. The two ban­ter before Stewy makes an ambigu­ous ges­ture with his fist, sug­gest­ing they head to the bath­room just like ​“back in the day.” Stewy’s ref­er­ence to a past arrange­ment is a con­cept that a num­ber of fan­fic­tion writ­ers have inter­pret­ed sexually.

The habit­u­al dou­ble enten­dre of Stewy’s dia­logue with Kendall re-emerges lat­er in the sea­son. The two fren­e­mies find them­selves at an under­ground sex club, where Stewy asks Kendall if they can ​“talk some­where pri­vate.” Whether this antic­i­pat­ed pri­va­cy refers to sex or drugs doesn’t mat­ter – when it comes to these two, licked donut holes, lines of cocaine, and laven­der sprigs sniffed dur­ing busi­ness meet­ings evoke the body so strong­ly that they become car­nal­ly coded.

Like Tom and Greg, Kendall and Stewy’s pair­ing is often framed in terms of a thwart­ed emo­tion­al inti­ma­cy. ​“We had the whole world in our hands and you walked,” Stewy says to Kendall, with the accusato­ry, affec­tive tenor of a bro­ken heart. Squeezed togeth­er in a series of near­ly voyeuris­tic close ups, the pair inti­mate­ly search one another’s faces as if prob­ing for words unsaid.

On-screen long­ing between Succession’s female char­ac­ter is more com­plex, which is hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the show’s themes of misog­y­ny and patri­archy. In the sec­ond sea­son, Rhea Jar­rell (Hol­ly Hunter) briefly joins the cast as Logan’s advi­sor. While Rhea is first per­ceived by the Roy chil­dren as their father’s seduc­tress, her most potent dynam­ic is with Shiv. Shiv accepts Rhea’s offer of pro­fes­sion­al help, which back­fires. She calls Kendall and spits into the phone that Rhea ​“fucked” her; while Shiv means that Rhea fucked her over, this seem­ing­ly innocu­ous delin­eation is large­ly expressive.

Shiv becomes obsessed with Rhea and describes the oth­er woman using vit­ri­olic, sex­u­al­ly charged lan­guage. Their inter­est in one anoth­er is coat­ed by much denser patri­ar­chal dynam­ics. Does Shiv want to be like Rhea or does she desire her? Prob­a­bly both, but for the women who par­tic­i­pate in the world­view Suc­ces­sion rep­re­sents, com­pe­ti­tion and indif­fer­ence are con­ceived as the only rela­tion­al outcomes.

Key to the show’s approach to sex­u­al­i­ty is its hol­low­ing out of the het­ero­nor­ma­tive ideals that cap­i­tal­ism implic­it­ly pro­motes. Like Mad Men’s pre­vi­ous explo­ration of mas­cu­line machi­na­tions of pow­er, Suc­ces­sion appears to be play­ing an ambi­tious nar­ra­tive long game. Still, the actu­al­i­sa­tion of any of these afore­men­tioned queer dynam­ics is unlike­ly, but this may be part of the point – after all, Suc­ces­sion is ulti­mate­ly about repres­sion among the super rich and pow­er­ful. Because of the sys­tem in which they’ve staked out their lives, these ​“cou­ples” are des­tined to end­less­ly betray one anoth­er in favour of dra­con­ian indi­vid­u­al­ism. Cap­i­tal smoth­ers authen­tic con­nec­tion, which makes Succession’s desir­ing duos act not only cru­el­ly but also dangerously.

One of Succession’s most dev­as­tat­ing scenes occurs dur­ing its first sea­son finale. Kendall – who seems a near cipher for the vam­pir­ic forces of big mon­ey – observes the dance floor at Shiv and Tom’s wed­ding. Whit­ney Houston’s ​“I Wan­na Dance with Some­body” (itself a gay anthem) starts to play. The shot widens to cap­ture most of the adult Roy chil­dren danc­ing in slow motion. They’re togeth­er but alone, mov­ing in dif­fer­ent rhythms or look­ing in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. ​“I wan­na feel the heat with some­body,” Whit­ney sings. What would it mean for some of these char­ac­ters to actu­al­ly con­nect? In a show where every­body is vul­ner­a­ble in iso­la­tion and actu­al trust between any­one is unimag­in­able, it’s in Succession’s unstat­ed queer rela­tion­ships that this pos­si­bil­i­ty for con­nec­tion opens up, only to be quick­ly swept under the rug.

Of course, for Suc­ces­sion to explic­it­ly rep­re­sent these rela­tion­ships as gay or queer wouldn’t excuse the ter­ri­ble actions these char­ac­ters take. The hor­rif­ic abus­es of pow­er depict­ed in the show are frankly nau­se­at­ing. Sim­i­lar­ly, while I des­per­ate­ly wish that Kendall and Stewy would share a sub­ver­sive on-screen smooch, my own queer spec­ta­tor­ship doesn’t absolve me of the moments in which enjoy­ing Suc­ces­sion makes me com­plic­it in its icky pol­i­tics. The inter­sec­tion of these spec­ta­to­r­i­al iden­ti­ties – equal parts desire and antipa­thy – might be best described by one of Tom’s most telling lines to Greg: ​“I don’t always like who I am.”