That Musk quote sounds like exactly the kind of thing Kendall would have said before her father died. In fact, we’ve lost count of how many times he’d declared that his father was too old to continue running the business, that his age had left him too disconnected from the rest of the world. Back when Logan was Kendall’s main obstacle to becoming the CEO of Waystar, Kendall would probably have been the first to argue that today’s average lifespan is perfectly fine the way it is.
But as is often the case, the disappearance of her father’s generation has reminded Kendall of the uncomfortable truth that, well, her generation is the next. First your grandparents die, then your parents die, and then it’s you. This is the ideal order of events, a reality most people are painfully aware of from a young age, but Kendall is still baffled by the realization.
In this latest episode, it’s easy to see why: When it comes to everything else in the world, Kendall has the say. She comes up with a bunch of ridiculous and expensive suggestions for her Living+ presentation, and the team has no choice but to go along with them because they’ll lose their jobs if they don’t. She decides to artificially inflate the company’s numbers in her dogged efforts to sink the Gojo deal, and so far the strategy is working somewhat. Kendall can shape large swaths of the world around him to her will, but still she can’t change the fact that she’s going to die. Death doesn’t have a manager Kendall can talk to, and this drives him crazy.