Succession’s Season 3 Finale Alone Should Earn Kieran Culkin the Emmy

This year’s Emmy nominations have been announced, and Succession’s title was uttered quite a few times — especially in that Best Supporting Actor category. One of Succession’s nominees in the category is first-time nominee, Kieran Culkin, for his role as Roman Roy. Succession is chock-full of knockout performances. And, until this past season, Culkin didn’t necessarily seem like a standout among his peers. Yet when it came to the third season’s jaw-dropping finale, it was clear that Culkin’s performance had reached a new level. Culkin’s understated, but powerfully alive portrayal of Roman Roy should lock him in for the title of 2022 Emmy winner.

Roman is the Roy family class clown. His constant sarcastic quips and lighthearted jabs at those around him keep his true feelings buried. Among those buried feelings lies just how emotionally sensitive and vulnerable he really is. In many ways, viewers know that that vulnerability hides beneath Roman’s comedic surface, but we seldom actually see it. Ever the wisecracking presence with an unfazed exterior and latent traumas and insecurities that are hinted at but always kept under deliberate lock and key, Roman is never the focus in his family, and he is seldom the focus in the cast. Certainly, as the series has progressed, so has Roman’s role in both his family and the family business. His character’s arc has become as unique as it is nuanced.

And, Roman doesn’t just have a complex arc over the course of Succession’s first three seasons (which, to be clear, he certainly does). Beyond that, Roman has an extremely complex arc in the Season 3 finale alone. The ninth and final episode of Season 3, “All the Bells Say,” is far from lacking in major plot points and character arcs, and it wouldn’t be a correct statement to call Roman the main focus. Rather, in true Succession fashion, there are quite a few different gears spinning in this finale and plenty of storylines taking place at once. To focus on any one actor would give you a rich thread to follow. And, it’s fair to say that Culkin’s company in the Best Supporting Actor category, Mathew McFayden and Nicholas Braun, as well as his regular castmates nominated in other categories, Jeremy Strong, Brian Cox, Sarah Snook, and J. Smith Cameron, are all forces to be reckoned with. But despite his dauntingly good company in the Best Supporting Actor category (with both his castmates and otherwise), and perhaps even for it, Culkin deserves this Emmy.

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The real meat of this episode and this season is when Culkin and Strong’s characters come together. Season 3 brought Roman and Kendall’s ever-so-slightly bubbling brotherly relationship to a viscerally uncomfortable boil at Kendall’s birthday party in Season 3, Episode 7. And, despite their dispute, in a sign of a realistic sibling relationship, Kendall seems to bounce back from his seemingly damaging squabbles with both Roman and Shiv with ease and little ultimate damage done. In fact, as the finale gets going, Roman interrupts his classically cool demeanor with the subtle insistence that Kendall’s apparent near-death pool experience bothered him deeply. This begins to peel back the outer shell that Roman constantly dons to keep his acute vulnerability hidden.

The Season 3 finale contains one of the best and most important scenes in the series to date, and Culkin’s portrayal of Roman is the scene’s backbone. When Kendall finally reveals the secret that’s been weighing him down with guilt to Roman and Shiv, the scene that follows is a pivotal moment for the siblings’ relationships as well as for the series. The tiny details of the dynamic between Roman and Kendall prove that all Kendall needed was someone to take the weight off of his shoulders, and who better to do that than the guy who makes light of everything? This scene is a turning point for Roman’s relationship with his siblings, and Culkin plays it in just the right way. He’s just as gentle and calm as ever — but in a way that feels more purposeful. It shows the value and the deliberateness of the way Roman always interacts with others. As the scenes that follow progress, viewers watch Roman reluctantly give in to his siblings as he is clearly encouraged by their strengthened bond. Through Culkin’s slightly uncomfortable physicality on the car ride to confront their dad, it’s clear that Roman’s well-meaning wish to please everyone in his family is becoming uncovered, and it’s not working in his favor.

Culkin’s slow start with Roman isn’t just in the script; it’s to his own credit. In a series full of both emotion and emotional stuntedness, Roman is the most emotional of them all, but those around him would almost never know it. To see him break down, cry, and get completely misled as we see in the Season 3 finale’s final scene is more painful than seeing it from a character from whom viewers have come to expect it. Despite all the pain and struggle we’ve seen from Kendall and how curiously easy Strong makes it for viewers to empathize with him, Culkin steals the spotlight when it comes to the emotional core of this final scene.

As the episode builds to this scene’s crescendo, Culkin’s portrayal of Roman is as casual as ever — and then, he breaks down. When he boils his plea for his dad not to abandon him down to the “love” he feels for him, viewers watch the entire facade of the Roy surname tacked onto the end of Roman’s name start to crumble. Roman has never fallen prey to the soullessness of the family business in quite the way the others have. And, while he gives the illusion of being the one of the Roy siblings who has overcome their clear dysfunction, we now get to see that that isn’t true. Rather, both Roman and Culkin, alike, were better at hiding it.

Over the course of the finale, Roman shows concern for his mother as she approaches her wedding day; he shows concern and loyalty for his siblings; he shows concern, loyalty, and “love” for his dad. None of these family members has consistently shown the same to Roman, but he feels it for them nonetheless. As Roman watches his hard-won relationship with his father crumble before his eyes, viewers watch him beg for loyalty from Gerri – the one person who has stood by him in the past. The episode ends with Roman finally exposing that in spite of his hardened, nihilistic persona, all along he’s believed that “love” and good intentions could save him and prevail.

Watching this episode while focused on Roman is watching a character crumble under the harsh reality of loyalty in his life. Just as Roman is the underdog when it comes to stealing the scene among his attention-obsessed family, Culkin is a player you wouldn’t expect to take over a pivotal episode. And, yet, in this finale, he does just that. There are plenty of worthy opponents in his Best Supporting Actor category at this year’s Emmy’s, but Culkin has given Roman the emotional depth to ensure that he deserves it.