70% off

Good Luck Avoiding ‘Succession’ Spoilers (Look Out Below)

Sarah Snook as Shiv and Kieran Culkin as Roman hug Jeremy Strong’s Kendall in an episode of the fourth season of ‘Succession.’ Photo: HBO/Everett Collection By Joseph Pisani April 15, 2023 9:00 am ET This article contains spoilers for “Succession.”  Danielle Calero forgot to watch the latest episode of “Succession” Sunday. She spent most of Monday trying to avoid spoilers.   She didn’t go on Twitter. She messaged co-workers on Slack warning them not to say a peep. But then on a train ride home, just 10 minutes away from her TV, she accidentally tapped on her TikTok app. The first video that popped up gave everything away.  “I let my guard down,” said Ms. Calero, a 43-year-old risk analyst in Nyack, N.Y. “I just wasn’t thinking.” Spoiler alert: Spoil

A person who loves writing, loves novels, and loves life.Seeking objective truth, hoping for world peace, and wishing for a world without wars.
Good Luck Avoiding ‘Succession’ Spoilers (Look Out Below)

Sarah Snook as Shiv and Kieran Culkin as Roman hug Jeremy Strong’s Kendall in an episode of the fourth season of ‘Succession.’

Photo: HBO/Everett Collection

This article contains spoilers for “Succession.” 

Danielle Calero forgot to watch the latest episode of “Succession” Sunday. She spent most of Monday trying to avoid spoilers.  

She didn’t go on Twitter. She messaged co-workers on Slack warning them not to say a peep. But then on a train ride home, just 10 minutes away from her TV, she accidentally tapped on her TikTok app. The first video that popped up gave everything away. 

“I let my guard down,” said Ms. Calero, a 43-year-old risk analyst in Nyack, N.Y. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

Spoiler alert: Spoilers are everywhere—including this article. Even the most careful planning can be foiled. 

That was clear April 9, when Logan Roy, the fictional media mogul on HBO’s “Succession,” drops dead during the third episode of season four. It was the latest twist in the hit drama, about the Roy family and who will one day run Waystar Royco, a fictional media conglomerate. Now, some fans who missed the big reveal Sunday say they won’t be making the same mistake twice.

Beverly Bruce blocked several words on Twitter so she wouldn’t see “Succession” tweets. The word “succession” was blocked, as well as the names of Logan Roy’s children—Shiv, Kendall and Roman. She didn’t bother with blocking the names of two other relatives, Greg and Tom, whose names are too common. “Who have you ever known in real life named Shiv?” she said. 

The episode was spoiled for the 34-year-old anyway, by people who misspelled the show’s name. “Suck session spoilers,” one tweet she saw said, along with three laughing emojis. “Got me thinking about how i will react when my insane dad also dies.”

Beverly Bruce blocked the names Roman, Kendall and Shiv on Twitter to try to avoid ‘Succession’ spoilers.

Photo: Macall B. Polay/HBO/Everett Collection

Ms. Bruce, who works for a financial-services company in Raleigh, N.C., said she thinks the misspelling was done on purpose to get past filters. She has a new plan to avoid spoilers: Watch the show exactly when it airs. 

Richard Greene, a Weber State University philosophy professor and author of the book “Spoiler Alert!,” said spoilers have been harder to dodge in recent years as online decorum has shifted. 

“People are less apprehensive about posting them,” he said about spoilers. “People were more responsible prepandemic.”

Gene Jouppi

A new job in occupational safety has him waking up at 4 a.m. He planned to watch the episode Tuesday, since he went to bed early Sunday. On Monday night, he replaced his usual Twitter scrolling in bed with something else: Falling asleep to “Below Deck,” the yachting reality show on Bravo. He’s happy he did. 

“If I knew that Logan Roy was going to die, that episode would not have been as enjoyable,” the 43-year-old said. “The entire time I was like, ‘No way they kill him right now.’ ” 

For Katlynn Millions, a radio host and voice actor in Calgary, Canada, knowing what happens beforehand is a turnoff. 

She has refused to watch the last season of “Breaking Bad” after someone at a dinner party told her Walter White died, or pretended to die, she’s not exactly sure. 

Ms. Millions was disappointed when an article she saw online let it slip that actors from past Spider-Man movies made an appearance in 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” She still watched it three times in movie theaters, but brought different people each time who didn’t know about the plot twist. “I wanted to watch their faces,” said the 29-year-old. 

On “Succession,” things started to look bad for Logan Roy 16 minutes into Sunday’s episode. Twelve minutes later, the Los Angeles Times published an obituary as if the character were a real person. 

“Logan Roy, conservative media mogul who shaped contemporary politics, dies at 84,” the headline said.  

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you do to avoid spoilers? Join the conversation below.

The obituary was prewritten, said Hillary Manning, a Los Angeles Times spokeswoman. The newspaper’s TV reporters and editors anticipated the character would die since it is the show’s final season, Ms. Manning said. They found out while watching it with everyone else, she added.

“We understand that people who saw our story before they watched the episode may be upset,” she said. “We felt that the character Logan Roy was so richly conceived that he deserved a proper send-off, and that it was important to be part of the conversation in real time.”

Liz Feltner, a 23-year-old paralegal in Boston, was able to avoid spoilers and watched the episode a day later. The death wasn’t all that surprising, she said. The show’s title gives it away. 

“It’s called ‘Succession,’ ” she said. “So he had to be succeeded.” 

Write to Joseph Pisani at [email protected]



What's Your Reaction?

like

dislike

love

funny

angry

sad

wow

Media Union

Contact us >