At least that’s certainly how Mencken (Justin Kirk) sees the situation. The thing about genuine fascists, which the show has consistently made clear to Mencken, is that they put a lot of stock in the idea of traditional masculinity. A man is supposed to be unbelievably stoic, and Roman’s attempt at a eulogy is anything but.
Now, Mencken seems to be only interested in Kendall and Shiv, two characters who almost always stick together during their own eulogy. Not only that, they basically spend half of their speeches praising Logan as a closed, powerful man. Even from a free Shiv, this is a much more pleasant message for Mencken than for Roman’s crisis.
Even for others in the company, like Karl and Frank, Roman crying killed any influence Roman might have had on them. Gerri reprimands them for laughing at the recording of Roman’s melee, but the bridge with Gerri has long since burned. Entering the “Succession” finale, what allies do Roman have left? The only person on his team was Kendall, who planned to get rid of him and take the sole leadership of the company.
In the final scene where Roman leaps into the crowd of angry protesters, some fans may have been worried that someone might try to kill him. Considering how leaks to the press indicate that he turned the election around, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine exactly how this would happen on a different, slightly less grounded show. But in terms of the odds of his successor, it’s irrelevant that he survived that encounter. His chance to be CEO is now dead, and Roman himself knows it.
