‘Succession’: Is Kendall Roy Dead?

Succession Season 3 Episode 8 “Chiantishire” ends on a brutal cliffhanger. Number one depressed boy Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) appears to drown himself in an Italian pool. For weeks, Kendall has been struggling to make good on the promise of his Season 2 finale coup and his depression seems to have hit rock bottom. We watch as Kendall’s bored kids excuse themselves from the pool and then a clearly drunk Kendall drops an empty beer bottle into the blue. He then lets his own face slip underwater. The camera lingers on him from below, showing a last exhalation of breath before cutting to the HBO show’s credits.

So is Kendall Roy dead? Did the hit HBO show Succession actually pull a Game of Thrones-esque kill? There’s no way Kendall can survive that, right? And Succession wouldn’t tease such a major death like that and not deliver? That would be silly, no? But wouldn’t it be sillier to kill off the show’s leading man?

Here’s all the reasons why Kendall Roy is obviously dead and all the reasons why Kendall is clearly not dead on HBO’s Succession…

IS KENDALL ROY DEAD ON SUCCESSION? ALL THE CLUES THAT POINT TO YES

Ever since Succession Season 3 Episode 8 ended last night, my Twitter timeline has been full of fans mourning the loss of Kendall Roy. And with good reason. For weeks the show has been teasing that a) a big death might be coming and b) that Kendall is suffering from suicidal ideation. The former foreshadowing seems to mostly be focused on the Roy family patriarch Logan (Brian Cox), with Alexander Skarsgard’s Matsson point blank asking Roman (Kieran Culkin) when Logan will die and with Kendall pointedly telling his father he’ll be “broken” when he dies. However Logan’s death might be too obvious a twist. And Kendall’s sad longing stare at the Vessel last week along with his utter degradation lately points to self-harm.

Killing Kendall off wouldn’t just fulfill a lot of the show’s recent foreshadowing, but it would line up with what Succession star J. Smith-Cameron recently teased on Watch What Happens Live:

Kendall’s death by suicide is “upsetting” and it will radically change the future trajectory of the show.

The other reason why it seems that Kendall is donzo is that the camera pointedly lingers on the breath leaving his body. His kids are inside the house, meaning he is totally alone. All it would take is a short amount of time like this to put Kendall’s life at risk. And it’s a horribly poetic rhyme to how Kendall killed the kid in Season 1 by drowning.

HBO also released a teaser for Succession Season 3 Episode 9 in which Kendall doesn’t appear at all. There’s a comment that the family is dealing with something and that Logan’s power is waning. All this seems to suggest that Kendall is dead, or is he? Has HBO released anything else to suggest that Kendall might survive? (Spoiler: they totally have.)

IS KENDALL ROY STILL ALIVE IN THE SUCCESSION SEASON 3 FINALE? EVERYTHING WE KNOW

Not to be the bearer of good (?) news, but I think HBO has already revealed that Kendall Roy will be alive and well in the Succession Season 3 finale.

On October 17, HBO unveiled a trailer teasing “the weeks ahead” on Succession. At approximately 1:40 in, Connor (Alan Ruck) very angrily confronts Kendall (sporting the close-cropped haircut he debuted this week) by saying, “Your spoon wasn’t shiny enough!” Then immediately after that, there is a wide shot of Caroline’s (Harriet Walter) wedding. As much as Caroline hates her kids, we find it hard to believe that she would go on with a sunsoaked Tuscan wedding in the immediate aftermath of her first born son’s death. Furthermore, if you zoom in, it looks like Kendall is sitting with his siblings.

Putting these two shots together, it seems that Kendall probably will survive, but the family will be reeling from his attempt on his own life. Connor’s comments seem to suggest that the eldest Roy child will be furious with Kendall. (Perhaps Sophie or Iverson save their dad just in time?)

Now it’s totally possible that these scenes in the earlier trailer were shot and then scrapped. Shows and films often insert misleading shots into trailers to save viewers from spoilers. However Succession isn’t an MCU film, nor is it fond of killing characters off like Game of Thrones. While it does seem somebody’s going to die, we’re guessing it’ll be another Roy and that it will happen during the finale.

Maybe Kendall is officially dead and these shots were cut from the final cut of the Succession Season 3 finale, but for now, we’re betting that Jeremy Strong will show up (alive) next week. But we’ll have to wait for Succession Season 3 Episode 9 to debut on December 12 to find out…

Where to stream Succession