Succession had a great finale fit for a different version of the show

polygon.com:

From its very earliest moments, Succession threatened to be the story of how one excessively egotistic son — with far less talent, acumen, and venom than his father — might one day take over a media empire and grow into the role or be swallowed by it. It felt like a too-obvious metaphor for the Murdoch family, and obsessed with drawing real-world parallels wherever it could. That version of Succession, however, has seemed like a bait-and-switch ever since the first season’s finale, when it became clear that Logan would continue to wield power both in the world and in the family for at least a few more years — and that Kendall (Jeremy Strong) could never really be out from his father’s shadow.

What replaced it was a far superior ensemble show about a deeply fucked-up family trying to survive each other without ever stumbling from their positions far atop a world that doesn’t look much like ours at all. But with the death of patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) finally coming to pass, Succession’s fourth seasonwent back to where it all began: the exact same dynamics it started with.

In the end, Succession leaned into the innate tragedy of its siblings. Shiv (Sarah Snook) votes for the GoJo deal, shoring up her own relationship to power and leaving Kendall and Roman (Kieran Culkin) on the outs. It’s a move that feels calculating and winning and completely at odds with the sibling bonding we’ve seen before this season. But the show’s writers decided that the Roy siblings’ divides would always conquer them in the end. And this deal is the final revenge of their father: an event that would forever splinter their relationship. But Logan, and his successor, was not always all Succession was.

From the moment that Logan died,