HBO's 'Succession' shocker: A major character checks out

The following story contains major spoilers of the April 9 episode of "Succession."

The king is dead. Long live (well) who?

In the single biggest death in recent TV history — or at least since "South Park" finally killed off Kenny or "Game of Thrones" un-killed Jon Snow — Brian Cox's indelible and indelicate Logan Roy finally met his end on Sunday's episode of HBO's "Succession."

A shocker, perhaps, but only to those not really paying attention. If you introduce a gun, metaphorically speaking, in the first act, then be sure to use it by the last one (Chekhov), and "Succession" has indeed teased this demise since the first season, also vividly in this final season's opener. Recall Logan's bleak lamentations about the afterlife. Even the title suggests a shuffling of the mortal coil — Logan's, if anyone's.

Here was Sunday's setup: Logan and his flunkies, including chief flunky and ex-son-in-law Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), were en route to Europe for the fateful merger meeting with Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) when the boss was stricken with a heart attack. Various resuscitative measures were undertaken, alas to no avail, and — like some Viking prince borne off to his awaiting funeral pyre — Logan's enshrouded and stiffened corpse was at last removed from the jet at Teterboro Airport.

Sad, yes, but only to fans of brilliant craftsmanship and peerless character building. Scottish-born Cox — who has famously popped off at Method acting — turned Logan Roy into a TV character for the ages — a blustery, bullheaded gaslighter who shredded the delicate psyches of his children while turning Waystar Royco into a feckless Fortune 500 Frankenmonster. One of his abused offspring hopes to take it over someday; one wonders why.

Cox's Roy has been the red-hot center of this celebrated series (13 Emmys, including two outstanding drama wins). Without him, that center now shifts but to where (or whom) will consume the final seven episodes.

Cox, 76, has spoken often about Logan Roy, and in a recent Town & Country magazine profile said,  “He’s not Rupert Murdoch. He’s certainly not Donald Trump … . He is a self-made man, but there was something in his childhood that made him decide, [expletive] it. It doesn’t work. None of it works."

Of the Roy children, he said, “They are wedded to avarice."

Logan "knows that they haven’t got the stuff to do it but they’ll try anyway. And that, again, is what the show is all about: entitlement.”