A mere hours after its season four premiere, Succession has attained a perfect rating on Rotten Tomatoes, in keeping with the HBO series’ top-scoring three-season run since debuting in 2018. The first episode of Succession’s fourth and final season aired today to universal acclaim, as reflected in the show’s 100% Tomatometer rating.
According to The Age, today’s premiere was one of four episodes from season four to be sent to reviewers in the lead-up to the show’s final outing — and by all accounts, Succession has never been better. The fourth season boasts a Rotten Tomatoes score higher than each of its predecessors, with the show’s debut season earning 89%, then maintaining 97% for the subsequent seasons two and three.
Earning a ‘Certified Fresh’ sticker, Succession’s critical consensus reads: “As compulsively watchable as ever, Succession‘s final season concludes the saga of the backbiting Roy family on a typically brilliant — and colorfully profane — high note.” The praise continues in reviews published by individual critics, with season four receiving five-star ratings from The Age, Independent and Vulture, among others.
“The best show on television may be coming to an end, but it has no intention of surrendering its title belt just yet,” The Age wrote. Meanwhile, The Independent said Succession’s fourth season “guarantees its place in TV history,” with Consequence praising creator Jesse Armstrong and the show writers for “going big with their plot choices as the season builds to a crescendo.”
The current season will mark Succession’s final installment, with the tenth episode and series finale set to air on HBO on May 29. Speaking of the trajectory of season four in an interview with Variety earlier this month, Armstrong revealed that he had hoped to be “argued out of” ending the Emmy-winning series, but conceded that the show’s final outing feels “natural.”
“I hope people, when they see this season, will feel that it has a natural shape to it,” Armstrong said. Meanwhile, Casey Bloys, who serves as the CEO of HBO, told Variety last month that he would not entertain the idea of a possible Succession spin-off. “It doesn’t seem to me that there’s something in Succession where you would go, ‘Let’s follow just this kid’ or whatever,” Bloys said. “It doesn’t seem like a natural thing to me.”
With no additional seasons of spin-offs in the works, fans have only a few remaining episodes to savor, but based on Succession’s universally lauded fourth season, that might be more than enough.