Opinion | On ‘Succession,’ Marriage Reveals Its Sting

Scorpions are dreaded and reviled for good reason. A remarkably aggressive predator, the scorpion has a bad habit of killing and feeding on its young. And when it comes to love, scorpion mating is one of “the nastiest affairs in nature”:

“Males and females engage in lengthy and violent waltzes, moving to and fro, to and fro, front legs gripping front legs, mouthparts locked together and tails whipping forward, as the male repeatedly stings the female and the female thrashes about, seemingly furious at being dragged around,” a Times article once put it. Afterward, the female often kills and devours her partner.

A dead scorpion, one might conclude, is not the best gift to offer your special someone. But in Sunday night’s episode of “Succession,” a glass-encased scorpion wrapped in a crimson box — “a little party prezzie for being such a hot piece of ass” — is precisely what Tom bequeaths Shiv, shortly after they’ve brought their marriage back from the brink of an eviscerating divorce.

“Who’s the scorpion?” she asks.

“You,” he replies. “I love you, but you kill me, and I kill you.”

Marriage is where “Succession” hits viewers the closest. We may never enter a corporate boardroom or fly in a private jet, but most of us enter private mergers of our own. In marriage, we experience the interwoven layers of truth and lies that can hold a union together or wedge a couple apart, however devastating either way.

And marriage is the theme of this week’s episode — one of the best in the four-season series. (Be forewarned, some spoilers ahead.) It shows the marriage of Shiv and Tom plunge from workplace sexting to brooding in separate beds in the same cavernous apartment. The former marriage of Kendall and Rava tumbles from co-parenting détente to shouting match. The unlikely marriage of Connor and Willa endures under the mutual recognition of his submission and her domination. And the impending marriage of creaky Waystar Royco and futuristic Nordic GoJo hangs in the balance. In a show in which people rarely say what they really believe, and don’t believe what they say they believe, this episode hinges on the lies that keep people bound together, and the truths that drive them apart.