Since its debut in 2018, HBO’s Succession has garnered overwhelming praise. The show follows the billionaire Roy family, whose patriarch, Logan (Brian Cox) runs the media conglomerate Waystar Royco. Over its first three seasons, the dark comedy slowly became a tight-knit drama about family, morality and politics. From its veteran actors to its critical acclaim, Succession doesn’t necessarily seem like the type of show that would garner a young, queer audience.
It might be controversial, but I truly believe Succession is one of the greatest modern pieces of queer media. While not explicitly queer, the subtext in HBO’s hit show wafts off the screen. From the relationship between media executive Tom and rising power player Greg (Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun), to Roman’s (Kieran Culkin) whole deal, the writers clearly know how to write underlying queerness. When Season 3 was airing in 2021, the official Succession Twitter account even stepped up and began engaging with fans, poking fun at the shippers losing their minds over the now iconic homoerotic Sporus/Nero conversation.
The show has cultivated an unlikely fan base due the initial viral fancams—spliced and edited clips from the show set to music such as Taylor Swift and ABBA—of Tom and Greg. One of the first that rose to popularity, originally posted in October 2019, has since racked up over 79,000 views on YouTube and inspired hundreds of others. Fancams have become a popular way for fandoms to display their love for a show or media property, and also as a mode of making it their own. Plenty of Succession fancams recontextualize scenes from the show, displaying characters yearning for their friends and colleagues of the same gender.
“The ‘Cruel Summer’ edit literally made me think Tom and Greg were a couple. Imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch the actual show! Never underestimate the power of a queer person armed with CapCut as free marketing for your show,” 24-year-old fan and university administrator Ed says.
Claudia, another fan of Succession, also started watching the show because of a fan edit.
“The homoerotic tension plays a huge role in growing its Gen Z audience simply because Succession provides so much Twitter edit material. Nowadays, edits are extremely crucial because that’s how people hear about shows,” she says. When you search “TomGreg” on Twitter, you are sure to be bombarded by an endless amount of tweets and fanart, equipped with heart-eye emojis and all. Fan accounts soon became popular within the fandom too, with accounts like @tomwambsgansooc devoted to specific scenes or moments in the show.
Succession isn’t the first show to gain a large queer following despite its straight material. Shows from the 2010s like Teen Wolf and Sherlock added hints of queerness to appease their viewers, baiting them with hollow promises of representation. While perhaps still enticing viewers with hope, the queer subtext in Succession is essential to understanding these prominent characters. It might seem odd that a show about corporate billionaire businessmen garnered such a queer Gen Z fandom, but fans argue that the themes of searching for love or comfort are universal.
Every character in Succession is isolated, scared of vulnerability and intimacy, and hints of queerness allow them to connect with each other in a way that seems impossible. “Would you kiss me? If I asked you to? If I told you to?” are some of the first words that Tom speaks to Greg, teasing, but also desperate. Their dynamic works so well because they’re both searching for power, albeit differently. It remains uncertain if Greg is playing Tom, seeing how desperate the man is for romantic connection, and using it to end up on top of the show’s central power play.
“I think Succession’s queer ships are popular because at the end of the day, [it’s a show] about people that want to be loved so badly, [but] can’t because the business gets in the way. […] conflict is what makes ships exciting,” says Claudia.
Hannah Fleish, a 23-year-old Toronto-based cinema studies student agrees.
“Let gay people be horrible and in love! I always enjoyed the idea that some of their inner torture emerged as repressing their sexuality,” she says.
Along with them are Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and his childhood friend Stewy (Arian Moayed), whose first interaction in the show sees Stewy asking Kendall if he wants to head to the bathroom like they did “back in the day” while shaking his fist in a suggestive manner. This turns out to be a euphemism for doing drugs, but why exactly did it have to be said this way? For many fans it feels like it’s show creator Jesse Armstrong’s way of displaying how these characters only feel comfortable displaying queerness through humour.
“I think it started out as being a part of the joke [of] all the characters’ ‘deviant’ behaviours, but when [the writers] realized how seriously the audience took it, it became more intentional,” says Massachusetts-based pop culture writer Nia Tucker.
Fans have re-contextualized the show, analyzing small moments between characters and making them their own. Besides fancams and fan edits on sites like Twitter and Tumblr, fanfiction and fanart have also become popular within the fandom. Out of the 2,816 works about Succession on archiveofourown.org, 1,336 of them fall under the M/M section. And most of those fics are centred on Tom and Greg.
“It’s got all the tropes: age gap, height difference, infidelity, slight power imbalance, opposite personalities, touch-starved …” says Claudia. “A lot of what is talked about in Succession isn’t shown because scenes get cut [down]. [Fanfiction helps] people fill in those blanks for us.”
Right behind these two in the fanfiction rankings are Kendall and Stewy, the latter who was a key player in Season 1, but took a back seat in Seasons 2 and 3. That doesn’t stop him from being one of the show’s most popular characters, with Moayed even feeding into and acknowledging the ship.
“I think fanfiction often gives writers the opportunity to develop characters who don’t get as much depth on the show as we’d like. I’ve read some really good character studies of Stewy that changed my whole perspective on his character,” says Ed. “The potential of Kendall and Stewy is one of escape—Stewy could be seen to represent both Kendall’s past freedom from his father, and his future ability to get away from him.”
Kendall’s father, Logan (Cox), is the antagonist of the show, berating not just his eldest son, but his other son Roman with homophobic slurs throughout the later seasons. Stewy remains one of the only characters to stand up for Kendall, making their relationship even more impactful.
While fans can try to predict what this last season will bring in terms of queer subtext, we also know not to be blinded by hope. At the end of the day, even though Armstrong and the team behind Succession have given us lots to play around with, it’s unlikely they’ll commit and actually make these characters canonically queer.
Season 4 is set to be the series’ last. Will this new legion of queer fans still engage with the fandom once the show ends? Ed is not quite sure. “There’s something about coming together with hundreds of other fans and just talking through what we’re watching week by week … I think, for better or for worse, that’s where all the best fan engagement happens.”
Claudia on the other hand, is more hopeful.
“I’ve met so many cool people through Succession and there is still so much left to discuss, edit, gif, draw and appreciate,” she says. “I also realize that realistically everything I want to come true will not be able to happen in that time. However, I’m invested in the story of Succession and that means I’ll appreciate a considered and decisive ending.”
If the trailer is anything to go by, I’m sure there will be more than enough subtext to spark fanfiction, fancams and Twitter discourse to last us a lifetime.
Why you can trust Xtra
