Shiv’s pregnancy is actually integral to her Succession story
The Succession fandom is small but vocal and fiercely dedicated to the show. On platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, fans of the show analyze trailers frame by frame and discuss their hopes and dreams for the characters. Despite being a show about ruthless capitalists, some of whom supported a fascist presidential candidate, the way that all the characters have been so wounded by their abusive father makes it easy for the audience to empathize with them. In fandom spaces, which are typically majority female, fans of Siobhan Roy, played by Sarah Snook, are especially protective of her. And sometimes, that brand of fandom is expressed in counterintuitive ways, like a general frustration that the character was revealed to be pregnant early in the season.
Opinions run the gamut from the entirely rational fear that pregnancy will sideline the character to the less rational opinion that pregnancy plotlines are inherently misogynistic. I have seen fans call it “shoehorned in” and “lazy,” and generally have characterized it as unnecessary. Further complicating matters is that people who work on the show have said that the pregnancy storyline wasn’t conceived until late in the process of writing this season because of Snook’s own real-life pregnancy. Some have gone as far to say that having a pregnancy plotline for a female character at all is sexist, and that writing one for Shiv makes Jesse Armstrong and the other writers of Succession sexist themselves. But Shiv has always experienced misogyny on the show — in many ways, her experience in the narrative has been about trying to burst through the glass ceiling unsuccessfully.
On some level it’s understandable that some fans have their hackles up about Shiv’s pregnancy, given how
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