Kill List (Succession)
The company learns GoJo wants Waystar's entire executive team to attend their annual corporate retreat in Norway to assess their "cultural fit", which the old guard takes as a sign that Matsson is indeed interested in going through with the acquisition; however, the siblings see it as an affront given the recent death of their father.
Tom and Greg attempt to gain favor with the GoJo team, while the other Waystar executives - particularly Hugo - take antagonistic approaches to their counterparts.
Shiv, meanwhile, meets privately with Matsson, who reveals that he was romantically involved with Ebba, his head of PR, but that after the relationship soured, he repeatedly sent her half a liter of his own frozen blood.
Quah also inferred that Persson's controversial political views and matching background as a Swedish tech billionaire were other points of reference for the Matsson character.
Executive producer Scott Ferguson recounted that a Scandinavian setting was part of Succession creator Jesse Armstrong's vision for the series' tech-company storyline; Norway was chosen for its "remarkable architecture" and exceptional landscape", as well as practicalities it afforded to the filming schedule, such as the proximity of an airport to key production locations.
[6][7][8][9][10] "Kill List" received critical acclaim, with reviewers praising the episode's script, location choices, direction, and performances (particularly Kieran Culkin's).
The website's critical consensus states, "Alexander Skarsgård's sly performance looms large in "Kill List," a scenically gorgeous installment that dives headfirst into the ugliness of putting a price on legacy.
Hughes praised Skarsgård's portrayal of Matsson as "a person that no member of the Roy family has any capacity to hurt", feeling the episode spotlighted the actor's "gift for comedy".
[12] Vulture's Scott Tobias gave the episode 5 out of 5 stars, calling it "entertainingly nasty" and comparing it to the second season's "Tern Haven" for the way it "gets plenty of comic mileage out of the clash between corporate cultures."
"[7] Ben Travers of IndieWire gave the episode an A−, noting the effectiveness of Parekh's "smart framing" and Skarsgård's "physical performance" in his scenes opposite Culkin and Jeremy Strong.
[10] Noel Murray of The New York Times wrote that Culkin "delivers one of his best performances of the series", and called attention to the episode's "spectacular location".
[13] Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone praised the episode's cringe comedy, describing its depiction of the characters' desperation as "palpable" and "unbearable", and called Culkin's monologue "spectacularly performed".
