The Deeper Story Behind Roman Roy’s Walmart T

By Sam Parker

You can read the fact Roman Roy spent most of the Succession finale wearing a T-shirt made for little children, currently for sale in a two-pack at Walmart for $13.96, a few different ways.

First, when he washed up at his mother's house in Barbados, there was nothing else to wear. Perhaps he fled there straight from being trampled in New York's post-election riot (the one he more or less single-handedly caused, lest we forget) without having time to pack any of his snug Gucci button-downs, and the one he had on already was soaked with blood, and so he had to wear whatever Caroline had lying around. This is the theory for people who believe "it's not that deep."

But of course, on Succession, the clothes are that deep—deliberate and clever, and very much in on whatever invariably sad joke the script is telling: Kendall's pathetic spaceman jacket as he tried to launch his latest fight back for Waystar Royco. Tom's try-hard white trainers in the Nordic mountains. In the pilot, when Cousin Greg is forced to flail around in an amusement park mascot outfit, that wasn't just a piece of slapstick comedy—it was a statement of intent from a costume department with Things To Say, and the show has been richer for it. In this reading, the Walmart T-shirt is simply part of the "Great Infantilization of Roman Roy." After Logan died, Roman tried to imitate his father's heartless-bastard routine, firing Gerri (mistake number one) and prematurely calling the election for the demagogic Mencken (mistake number two). But at Logan's funeral, Roman broke down in tears and ended up running back to mother, where his big bro and sister had to show up and convince him to come back out and play. Roman has regressed to being the baby of the family again, and his T-shirt proves it. Case closed.

There's a third reading of Roman Roy in the finale, though, which is that he was the real winner all along. What looks at first like a man defeated is, on closer inspection, one who has reached the nirvana of acceptance. In the moments before the siblings’ warped-but-touching "meal for a King" scene when they’re debating for the zillionth time who should be anointed CEO, Kendall calls it, asking: "Do you even really want it, man?" Roman's silence speaks so loudly, even his brother can hear it. He can't say the word, but they all know the answer.

After the vote and the climatic implosion in the meeting room, when Shiv reveals she has changed her mind and Kendall screams "But I am the eldest boy!" at her (who sounds like a child now?), the brothers wrestle to the ground then sit apart panting. Roman then goes on what is probably the least articulate, but most honest and insightful, rant in Succession's history: "Stop it," he tells Kendall. "We are bullshit. You are bullshit. I am bullshit. We’re nothing. I know this."

Unlike Kendall, Roman has come to understand what their father told them the last time they were together: They are not serious people. The final shot of Roman shows him ordering a martini and savoring it alongside the taste of something else—freedom, perhaps, not just financial (does that even still occur to any of them?) but from the burden of pretending to be and want something he does not. In psychology, this state is sometimes called "individuation," when a person matures beyond their persona and the identities of others (often, family) that are holding them back and becomes a fully realized human with a clear sense of their place in the world. You can't really get there without processing your past. Roman's little boy T-shirt, then, was symbolic of him confronting his childhood and becoming at peace with it, undertaking the painful growth required to approach something like happiness.

Either that, or he just stole it from the pool boy.

This story originally ran on British GQ with the title "Reading slightly too much into Roman Roy's Walmart t-shirt"