Succession is officially over, and I haven’t been this bereft on account of a TV finale since Lizzie McGuire went off the air when I was in middle school. (They’re equally important texts, don’t @ me.) Over the show’s four-year run, we’ve had fun analyzing everything from Shiv’s hair to every single line from every single episode, so maybe it’s apropos that the finale offered up yet another sartorial moment ripe for interpretation: Lukas Mattson’s golden-brown turtleneck.
Nothing happens by accident on Succession, so the choice to put Mattson in what GQ writer Sam Parker recently called “a big, bright, itchy turtleneck that doesn’t quite make sense” has to be a deliberate one, but what is it saying? Mattson (who, to be fair, is played by hot Swedish giant Alexander Skarsgård, who would look good in anything) is normally in athleisure, but he celebrates his company’s big moment by…dressing like Don Draper on vacation in L.A.? Or, no, not even Don…Pete. That’s the harshest thing I’ve ever said about anyone.
Mattson’s turtleneck is most definitely ugly, but in kind of a status-y way that sort of has me wondering if I should incorporate more mustard-brown into my wardrobe. (No. Also, Mattson is a known creep who non-consensually mails his blood to women, so why am I romanticizing his style choices? All I can say is that the Pinterest-moodboard revolution has fried my brain. ) As business hotshot Jack Donaghy once said on 30 Rock about an outré outfit, “It’s called power clashing, and I do it because I can.” Is that what Mattson is up to here? Is he celebrating the fact that he’s finally tapped into the power source he’s dreamed of for years by wearing a turtleneck so wretched-looking that there can be no question about who really calls the shots here?
Maybe the explanation for the turtleneck is cultural. When I google “Scandinavian turtleneck,” though, I get a lot of results asking me “Did you mean Nordic turtleneck?” (I also get some ads for suspiciously cute turtlenecks from brands I’ve never heard of, but that’s neither here nor there.) There’s also the possibility that Mattson is just an extremely weird guy (see: nonconsensual blood-mailing) who thinks the day of a big merger is the perfect opportunity to dress like one of Heidi’s friends on an important trip to the DMV. One thing’s for sure: There will never be another show quite like Succession, and there will never be a villain quite like Lukas Mattson. (Personally, I’m choosing to enshrine his legacy in my mind in sweats, not the turtleneck.)
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