Brian Cox is Already Spreading Logan Roy Conspiracy Theories

THIS POST CONTAINS spoilers for this week’s episode of Succession, “Rehearsal.”

On last night’s blockbuster episode of Succession, Logan Roy dies doing what he loved most — missing a major life event for one of his terrible children to go take care of business. In the wake of the episode, actor Brian Cox has done a handful of interviews about this shocking twist, including one with the official Succession podcast where he promptly started fomenting conspiracy theories, suggesting that what if, maybe, actually, Logan wasn’t dead. 

Cox noted the “interesting” way Logan’s death played out on the show — largely off screen, with only some shots of his body (but not really his face), on the floor as people tried to revive him. The actor then chuckled as he admitted that he had a “secret sort of fantasy” about the mogul’s ostensible demise. 

“We don’t actually see Logan die,” he said. “We know about it, we hear about it; but we don’t actually see it. We don’t even know if that body at the end of the episode is Logan’s body. So there’s a sort of mystery — is Logan dead? Or is he just gone to somewhere else? Or is he testing his family to see how they’re going to react when he’s dead. That’s the other attitude.”

Cox then quipped, “I’m much more imaginative than people give me credit for.” And, he added, if Logan did somehow pull off this trick, he’d definitely be setting up a new life for himself somewhere in the north of Scotland. 

Ok, but for real, Logan is definitely dead — a fate Cox said he knew was coming, though he admitted he was surprised it happened so early in the show’s fourth and final season. “We were locked into the fact that each episode is one day, which we haven’t done in the series before,” Cox said. “So, he dies on day three. I was fine about it.” He then added with a laugh, “As long as I was getting paid!” 

During the interview, Cox heaped praise on the series, especially its writing and the vision of creator Jesse Armstrong. But despite all that, he stressed that he never actually watched the series. 

“I love the doing,” he said of getting to act and make the series. “The doing is the main thing. The watching is a sidebar, the watching is for the public, it’s not for me.” To hammer home his point, he noted that during the recent season premiere event, he “went and consumed several tequilas while the new episode was being played, and I was much happier doing that than watching my acting.” 

Cox also spoke about a few of Logan’s big final scenes, including a poignant dinner with his bodyguard Colin (which he called his favorite of the entire series) and a rally-the-troops speech at the Fox News-esque ATN in episode two. In the latter, Logan tries to spur his employees by calling them “pirates,” and Cox noted a nice bit of synchronicity: Both the actor, and the character Logan, were born in Dundee, Scotland, which is also where the infamous pirate Captain Kidd was born. Cox then cracked that series creator Jesse Armstrong “doesn’t even know that — I know that, but he doesn’t!”

Cox then added, “I think that’s Logan curse — he’d love to be a pirate, he feels he’s a pirate. But circumstance makes him definitely not a pirate. But he’s got a pirate spirit. And that’s why, probably, his life has come to an end. Because he hasn’t done what he should’ve done, which was to be a real pirate in the tradition of Captain Kidd. … He’s a tragic character, it’s a great tragic role. It’s one of the great roles, and you can’t get around it. It’s why everyone locks onto Logan in the way they do.” 

Then, towards the end of the interview, Cox touched on the beating, broken heart of the show — Logan’s equally tragic relationship with, and deep love for, his “loser” kids. 

“He does love them — that’s his Achille’s heel,” Cox stressed. “He’d be a lot better off if he didn’t love his children. He’d be a happier man. But he loves his children and it’s a conflict. He cannot deal with it — the pain of it. The fact that the loves his children and they don’t honor him. All they want is entitlement, avarice. That’s all they represent.”

Cox didn’t spare Logan any grief, though, calling the character “crude, rough, a sadly destroyed romantic, cynic, who’s become more and more right-wing. He didn’t start off like that. He started off probably in a different way, and he’s become like that because of circumstance. And he’s trying to get his children to take on the responsibility and own it. But they don’t see it. They only see it in terms of their own avarice, and there’s nothing he can do about that.”

Sarah Snook — who plays one of those “loser” kids, Shiv — also spoke with Rolling Stone about last night’s episode and recalled her reaction when she learned about Logan’s demise: “Like, Whoa! That’s a huge swing. That’s amazing from Jesse. In some ways, it was a long time coming. The premise of the first episode was, he was about to keel over. And there have been times in the third season as well, in the episode with Adrien Brody and Jeremy out at the island. There’s always been an ailing quality to him, despite his robust vigor. So the first question I had was, ‘So who takes over?’”