Succession Director Admits He’s “Kicking” Himself Over Season 4 Mistake

In the final season of Game of Thrones, one scene erroneously featured a contemporary coffee cup, which became one of the most talked-about scenes of the entire conclusion of series. The final season of Succession aired on HBO earlier this year, and while there wasn’t a filming error that caught the attention of social media, director Mark Mylod recently remarked that he thinks the final season has a “mistake” that he regrets having overlooked. Rather than a production error, though, he detailed how he felt that there was a missed narrative opportunity. The filmmaker also avoided revealing what this mistake was.

“I will do the kicking myself thing. And I’ll take no pleasure in the stuff that maybe has worked well,” Mylod revealed to Variety‘s Awards Circuit podcast. “It’s the mistakes you’ve made, or the things you could have done better in the moment that you’ve missed. There’s something I missed in one of the episodes in Season 4, it’s not necessarily a mistake, but it’s an opportunity to have taken a moment further. And it kills me. It eats me up and it genuinely is too raw now to kind of admit it.”

Whatever this missed opportunity was, it’s not like the cup in Game of Thrones, which was quickly covered up with visual effects by HBO as to erase the artifact. Even though Mylod regrets the sequence, it didn’t impact the overall quality of the final season of the series, as it has earned 27 Emmy Award nominations, including the record-breaking nominations of Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, and Kieran Culkin for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. This marks the first time three actors from the same series were all nominated for the same accolade.

Even with all the praise the final season earned, Mylod joked that both he and series creator Jesse Armstrong always anticipate a backlash to their series.

“Jesse and I, with each kind of new season just have a conversation of, ‘OK, is this the year we get found out?’ Is this the year unconscious complacency creeps in and we just slip our standard?” the filmmaker shared. “Just the fear of that and the insecurity of that, I suppose that’s also been a spur to both of us. And I think speaking for the whole team, when you’ve got writing that good you really want to do it justice.”

Stay tuned for updates on the possible future of Succession.

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