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How Twitter Turned Into A Succession Fan Club

Elena Nicolaou
August 3, 2018, 8:00 PM
Congratulations. If you're here, it's because you've found your way to the club. A very exclusive club, indeed — one that's hardly covered in the media. You listened to the whisper network comprised of real-life friends, Twitter friends, and ahead-of-the-curve grandmas, and turned on HBO at 10 p.m. one Sunday evening this summer. Yes, this is my way of saying that I found out about Succession through my grandma, who sends me weekly updates with her hot takes (After episode 8's bachelor party, she wrote: "What a group! Unbelievable!" Someone hire her).
I was late to Succession, but that's because Succession was late to Succession. The show only rose to its glory around episode 5, and has continued to get better since. But the media seemed to abandon Succession after the premiere, in which each of the unsavory Roy family members were unveiled. Succession is like a capitalism-infused Shakespeare play, with each of media mogul Logan Roy's (Brian Cox) children simultaneously grappling with their toxic family and clamoring for a slice of their family's legacy.
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Though publications generally stopped covering Succession after the June 3 premiere, people like me continued to watch at their own pace. After watching the Succession premiere weeks after it aired, I felt the acute physical need to speak to someone about Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), the bumbling odd one out of the Logan family. All you need to know about Cousin Greg is that he makes his first appearance on Succession by throwing up inside the head of his amusement park mascot costume, and spends the rest of the show fixed in a perpetual state of trembling embarrassment. Since there were hardly any recaps, I searched "Cousin Greg" on Twitter, and saw a tweet into the void from my colleague, Morgan Baila, a Succession early adopter.
Soon, Twitter became a place for Succession fans to shine their fandom flashlights in the dark, as if to attract other Succession devotees and make sure they weren't completely alone with their newfound obsession. A few days after my own Succession journey began in July, more than a month after the premiere date, tweets about Cousin Greg and his dark, dysfunctional family began appearing on my Twitter timeline in droves. I had found my people.
Behold the convergence of the Succession fans, as if gathered together by choreography.
By now, many publications have publicly changed their minds on Succession. On August 2, two full months after Succession premiered, Slate published an invective titled, "Watch Succession Now." Writer Willa Paskin confesses in the lede, "I didn't get HBO's genre-bending drama at first. Now I realize it's amazing." Also on August 2, The Cut's Debi Mazar and Gabriella Paeiella wrote an article with a similar sentiment: "You Should Really Be Watching Succession." A month after Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson gave a tepid review — acknowledging the show's technical quality, but not actively liking the show — another Vanity Fair article by Julie Miller declared Succession "the summer's best TV." And Decider heroically stepped in to fill the recap void on August 1.
In the age of streaming, slow awakenings like Succession's are bound to occur. While everyone came to Succession on different days and in different ways, we're all linked up now. One thing's for sure: We'll be live-tweeting Sunday's finale in unison.
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