The hallmark of a narcissistic parent is how they evaluate their offspring and identify the golden child and scapegoat. One child serves as a vessel for the narcissist’s vanity, the other as a wastebasket for his self-hatred; each divided and conquered. The late business titan Logan Roy, always an innovator, put his own signature on this pathology: he anointed a golden child and then immediately made that same child a scapegoat. He did this to Kendall in the Legacy pilot by making him the CEO of Waystar Royco and then clipping his knees. He did this to Shiv by promising her a higher job and then freezing her. Roman was so afraid of his father that he would do it to himself, most Freudian, when he went on to personally win the business by accidentally texting Logan with a picture of a cock, a homemade saw cut that got his father out of trouble. (I’m only talking about Roy’s kids playing on the main stage here. Poor Connor would be flattered if his father remembered calling him a scapegoat.)

During Logan’s reign, being Roy’s brother and sister was a zero-sum game: for one child to rise, the other had to fall. Now he’s dead, but the rules still apply. By the end of the last episode of Continuity, titled “Life+”, Kendall’s belief in grandiose bullshit has turned a near-disastrous product launch into something of a renaissance meeting under a giant video projection of the dad himself who supports him. No. 1 boy business plans through clever editing or voice cloning technology. Kendall uses a similar cutting room ploy to clown Roman, who, after his brother’s triumph, is left alone in the car with his phone, from which the smaller and more angry Logan abuses his penis.

Since viewers of The Heir so often find themselves inside Roman’s pants, let’s dwell on Freud for a moment. In Dostoevsky and Parricide, Freud looks at the psychological development of a man whose “father was tough, cruel and cruel”. Freud writes that when a child is taught to associate love with abuse, “the ego develops a strong need for punishment, which partly offers itself as a victim to Fate, and partly finds satisfaction in the abuse from the higher ego (i.e., in the sense of guilt). “. The son of such a person will feel the usual oedipal desire to supplant his father by killing him (and, if applicable, taking over his media empire). But the son will also be overcome with shame and remorse because of these impulses. (“Someone wished the death of another person,” Freud wrote, “and now one is this other person, and he himself is dead.”) He will punish himself out of guilt and take pleasure in self-punishment. That’s why Roman can’t stop playing and rewinding a shitty clip of his father mocking his genitals. This is what he likes.

“Legacy” is a series about terrible people that have to, without justifyingWhy are they so terrible. In this description, you can sometimes see glimpses of the opposite life: what Connor, Kendall, Roman and Shiv could be if they grew up with good enough parents or if they were freed at an emerging age. from the sarcophagus of super-wealth. Lately, this parallel reality is easiest to imagine when Kendall and Roman are together. This couple has always been able, albeit irregularly, to demonstrate to each other a grace and tenderness unlike Roy. (The Roman who pushed Kendall to the floor at his 40th birthday party in Season 3 is the same Roman who casually picked Kendall up from a drug depot in New Mexico in Season 1.) Cascade destabilizing events since last season’s finale. – Kendall’s confession of his involvement in a car accident in which a young man drowned; the betrayal and death of their father; The rise of Kendall and Roman as co-CEOs of Waystar Royco led the brothers to an awkward, probably temporary but seemingly sincere hug. It can be strangely touching to watch these two act like normal brothers, doing the usual brotherly things: hugging; reveling in the horror of Carrey’s audition tape; half forgetting, half not bothering to go after Shiv right away when they find out their father is dying; Etc.

Logan certainly wouldn’t want his kids to get along. It’s a problem because Logan didn’t die, not really. Live+ announces this in its first frame, taken from a signature video he made shortly before his death – here is Logan Roy’s head, cryogenically preserved in pixels, a hologram of Zeus. Here he is, gazing at Roman in the car or beaming his rude approval to Kendall at the launch of Living+, Waystar Royco’s foray into retirement communities. (Shiv, whose whole job is now to stir up shit and ruffle her hair, calls them “granny prison camps.”) Kendall plays up promises of “privileged access to life-enhancing and life-enhancing therapy, which at the moment is to save tech billionaires.” “. It’s mostly made up, but Roman predicted that maybe all they had to do was milk the concept. “People would be very intrigued if there was another way out of this situation,” Roman reflects. “I mean, you know, load yourself with a chip and set someone’s ass on fire, float like a gas, live in a turtle. I don’t know. There must be ways. Death just seems very universal.” Death, Kendall and Roman agree, is “very unpaternal.” If you’re rich and powerful enough to inhabit a reality-warping field you’ve created yourself, or if you’re close to wealth and power thanks to the generosity of the Waystar Royco family of brands, then you might be right to say death. To back off.

So far, each season’s finale of The Heir has borrowed its title from John Berryman’s “Sleep Song 29,” which portrays depression as some sort of waking nightmare – a web of panicky guilt that could attack a person at any moment, a muted siren demanding, What have you done? It begins: “One day something fell on Henry’s heart / so hard if he had a hundred years / and more, and he cried, sleepless, for all this time / Heinrich could not mend.” The poem clearly echoes Kendall’s crime and guilt, which Logan used to keep him around and torment him: “How long was that kid alive before he started sucking water?” he once asked his son. As The Legacy draws to a close, Berryman’s poem takes on meaning beyond Kendall’s great sin; he conjures up the weight of an impossible paternal legacy, crushing and impassive, unchanging, still breathing. ♦