Succession’s Genius Parallel Media Universe: From ‘StarGo’ to ‘Doderick Macht Frei’

The final season of HBO’s Succession is upon us, and no, this is not a recap of Sunday night’s “Living+” episode. Rather, it’s a celebration of the show’s writing, in particular the genius names given to one media empire’s plans and properties, names that are equal parts absurd and entirely realistic for the ridiculous times in which we find ourselves.

Succession follows a family-run media empire that looks most like the Murdoch empire, which includes a sprawling portfolio of media outlets but is most closely associated with Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp. The HBO show isn’t a precise knock-off of the family, because its details include several other fictionalized plot lines borrowed from past and current synergistastic media conglomerates.

Disclaimer: from this point forward, I assume the reader is familiar with the show to get straight to the good part. If you haven’t watched Succession, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. You are missing out.

Sunday night’s pivotal moment came when tech billionaire Lukas Mattson attempted to disrupt Kendall Roy’s shareholder presentation by tweeting “Doderick Macht Frei.” I immediately knew it was a reference to “Arbeit macht frei,” a German phrase meaning “Work sets you free” and is known for appearing at the entrance of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

I was unaware of or had forgotten that Doderick was the cartoon character that fronted the Waystar-Royco theme parks, like Disney’s Mickey Mouse. “What a great fictionalized name for a theme park mascot,” I thought, which got me thinking of all the other genius names of other divisions within the family company.

First of all, Waystar-Royco? The name of the company gives you a perfect summation of the history and scale of this now enormous family enterprise (Royco named after its founder Logan Roy, of course) and Waystar, which just perfectly connotes the panopticon satellite networks that global institutions (like governments and media) need to operate. An early episode from a past season featured an exploded rocket launch that seems to have eerily foretold other explodey rockets overseen by a billionaire.

Back to this past episode, titled “Living+”, which describes a fictionalized gated community concept that gives consumers safety, entertainment and a promise to live longer, and maybe eventually forever, due to the company’s relationship with the top tech and pharmaceutical industry leaders.

Now the most prominent and controversial division of Waystar-Royco is the arch-conservative cable news outlet ATN, modeled off of Fox News. Even the name, ATN, is just perfect. It stands for “American Television Network,” and its on-air branding is naturally patriotic.

But the network’s branding — its letters — “ATN” evokes an “anti” connotation for its targeted demo; one can only imagine its viewers living in gated communities because they fear the crime rates they constantly hear about on ATN. In other words, they are the perfect target demographic and psychographic for Living+. Dystopian? Or Dystoptastic?!

The writers of Succession are outrageously talented, and great credit to the showrunner Jesse Armstrong for the work he has done here. My favorite part of the show are these details and fictionalized names.

The opening graphics features an app called “StarGo” because, yeah, StarGo is a totally dumb but simple name that a company would use, almost as simplified and idiot-proof as “MAX.” Remember when Waystar-Royco purchased the young tech content company Vaulter which looked and felt a lot like Gawker, though only more polished? Mattson’s company? GoJo. Perfect. Oh, and lest we mock StarGo as a name created by Waystar and GoJo, it’s actually way better than WarnerBros-Discovery! There are countless other examples, but I’ve made my point.

Last season, newly installed ATN chief Tom Wambsgans was forced into a last-second change in announcing the network’s slogan from “We’re listening” to the hilariously awkward “We hear for you,”‘ because Waystar’s set-top boxes were listening to their consumers and collecting data based on what customers say, not unlike some social media giants.

Succession is a genius show, not just because of the drama, which is sometimes over the top. Instead, it often feels like an impossibly accurate portrayal of what you’d see if you looked through a viewfinder into a parallel media landscape.