Heading into the second season of HBO’s Succession, one thing has been clear: The season is all set to deal with the ramifications of the season one finale, which rocked Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) to his core, and fundamentally altered the dynamics of the family.
Exactly how that’s going to play out becomes clear in the official trailer for the second season, which sees ruthless patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) bringing Kendall’s sister Shiv (Sarah Snook, sporting a new power haircut) into the family business after she spent the first season working as independently as she could. “I always wanted one of you kids to take over,” Logan says. It’s always been assumed that the kid in question would be Kendall, but now that future doesn’t seem so certain.
Further chaos is in the cards given Logan’s increasingly poor health, difficulty in securing a partnership with another (media) family (featuring Cherry Jones and Holly Hunter), and the usual shenanigans between Shiv’s husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and his go-to scapegoat Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun).
Take a look at the official poster (and some speculation based on what’s visible) below:
Every family has its traditions. #SuccessionHBO returns August 11. pic.twitter.com/VYpG7yyBh9
— HBO (@HBO) July 11, 2019
The placement of the Roy family members hardly seems accidental given what we’ve seen in the trailer, i.e. Shiv and Tom up against Kendall and Roman (Kieran Culkin), as well as the seating of Connor (Alan Ruck), who, lest we forget, decided he was going to run for President, and Greg on the other side of the table as his direct boss, Tom.
It’s also worth noting that the painting hanging behind Logan is William Bouguereau’s Dante and Virgil, which features Dante and Virgil looking on as, in the eighth circle of Hell, Capocchio, a heretic, is caught in combat with Gianni Schicchi, who claimed a dead man’s identity in order to steal his inheritance. The familial nature of Schicchi’s crime seems quite on the nose given the themes inherent in Succession, though we’ll see how they play out.
The second season of Succession premieres on Aug. 11 on HBO.
