Church and State (Succession)

For his performance in the episode, Kieran Culkin won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning over both Cox and Strong, also nominated for Succession.

Kendall is enraged to learn from Rava that she will be taking the kids upstate to avoid the unrest rather than attend the funeral, and unsuccessfully attempts to stop her from leaving.

Shiv, meanwhile, advises Matsson to release the news of his dubious subscriber counts in India,[b] given it will receive relatively low coverage due to the election fallout and Logan's funeral.

At a reception after the funeral, Kendall offers to hire Colin as his own bodyguard, then attempts to negotiate with Mencken; however, the meeting is quickly derailed when Greg, Roman, and Connor swarm around him as well.

"Church and State" was written by Succession creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong and directed by Mark Mylod in his fifteenth episode for the series.

[1][2] The church's pastor, Dennis Yesalonia, consulted on costuming and ritual procedures, and makes a cameo in the episode as the cardinal presiding over Logan's funeral.

The website's critical consensus states, "If parting is such sweet sorrow, Succession makes it supremely satisfying as well in a penultimate chapter that lays out the series' emotional stakes with blistering clarity.

[11] Both Liz Shannon Miller of Consequence and Philippa Snow of The Independent considered Culkin's performance worthy of an Emmy Award for Lead Actor in a Drama, with the former describing Roman's breakdown as "a searing moment for the character, and a reminder that grief is a monster from which there is no escape.

"[12][13] On the other hand, Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic found Kendall's "soaring, Shakespearean soliloquy" to be an "improbable" moment for the character, writing, "it requires so much suspension of disbelief to consider him an orator of this kind of power.

Club gave the episode an A−, praising it as an installment "filled with funny, profoundly human moments", but criticized its "over-long" runtime, feeling its dual plotlines of the funeral and the setup for the series finale "operat[ed] at sometimes frustrating odds with each other."

"[15] Ben Travers of IndieWire was more positive, feeling the episode did a "remarkable job setting the table" for the finale, and praised the "piercing precision" of Mylod's direction.

[16] Similarly, Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone commended Armstrong and Mylod for taking "great advantage of the episode's super-sized running time, giving grace notes to nearly every significant character.