Kieran Culkin has a pretty bleak take on Roman’s Succession ending

Simon Kelly

“Have you ever seen Roman with a friend?”

With the dust settled on the Succession finale, it’s a good time to take stock on how things ended up for the multiple characters in the show.

While none of the Roys come out smelling like roses, series creator Jesse Armstrong had an interesting take on Roman as the youngest sibling sat at a bar by himself in his final scene.

“[Armstrong] has said that he thinks it’s more of like, ‘Roman has gone back to where he was at the beginning,'” Kieran Culkin explained in an interview with Variety.

“What’s really sad about that was all of this was for nothing. It’s been a waste of his time. Like, what’s the point? What did he learn? What did he gain?”

While Culkin thinks it’s a “cool interpretation,” he doesn’t entirely agree with it.

He explained, “People inevitably do grow when they go through experiences like this. I think he has evolved as a person. I don’t think he’s gained nothing from this. I think there’s something he must have taken away from it, whether or not that’s for better or for worse.”

Kieran Culkin’s interpretation of Roman Roy’s ending

Succession episode 10 - Roman — (Photo: HBO)

“I think he not only just genuinely loves his family, I think he needs them,” Culkin said. “Now that it’s done, and he’s out, and they’re all out: When is he going to see them again? Who does he have? He has f—ing nobody. That’s it. And [his] siblings are out there, somewhere. And it’s not like we’re gonna get together for a beer. He’s very much alone. Have you ever seen Roman with a friend?”

Culkin thinks that “Roman would be very much up for” meeting up with the siblings again to try and has things out. However, he added that he has no idea if the loving relationship that we saw in the early parts of the finale could ever be salvaged.

“I love that there are different interpretations of it, and different theories,” Culkin said of the final episode. “I love that, because all these things can exist at once — that’s why I think it’s great that it ended where it did. It feels very much like the end, but there could be more. Because there really could be!”

In a separate interview, director Mark Mylod revealed that an alternate version of Roman’s ending had the the character saying “What up, motherf**kers” when he enters the bar, which was a deliberate callback to his first line in the very first episode.

All we got however was silence and some ambigious facial expressions. I guess we’ll never have closure on Roman’s fate.