Billions Retrospective: AFter the Final Bell
The Final Season Redeemed the Show and Reassured Its Place in History
I withheld much of my retrospective on the final season of Billions mainly because I needed to see how the final season would play out. As I’ve mentioned in many of my articles over the years, in my career I have frequently misjudged many TV series as overrated until the final episodes which I often consider have made me reexamine my original opinion. Indeed, I spent much of this past year more or less eating crow about everything I’d spent three years saying about Succession because of the final season.
As the final year of Billions unfolded, I knew that I was going to have to watch it carefully to see if the flaws I had planned to write about in this series might end up being resolved by the writers. And as the show entered its final episodes, it looked very much like that they were heading down that path, not just in terms of the overarching story but in how many of the major characters had evolved.
Indeed in the last piece I wrote for this series, after laying out what I saw were the critical flaws of Chuck and Wendy Rhodes during the length of the show, I said that it would be more rewarding if they acknowledged them then if anyone actually went to prison. And the writers indeed spent almost all of Season Seven doing exactly that.
Paul Giamatti had been extraordinary throughout the entire run of the series but it could be frustrating watching him burn bridge after bridge to attain his goals. Now as Season Seven progressed, we saw a different, almost more mellow Chuck. He spent much of the first half of the season mending fences with people cared about, including his brother-in-law Ira, who he’d persuaded to come work with him at the Southern District and working things through with Charles Senior, who he has always had a stormy relationship with. When Axe reached out to him asking for a favor halfway through the season, he admitted to Ira that he had wanted to say no but after his years of fighting with Bobby he’d come to realize who he was. The two had a civil conversation at the end of the episode which would have been inconceivable for the two men who spent the first five years engaged in a battle of mutually assured destruction. They acknowledged how much they’d lost in the struggle and it was — something I haven’t seen on Peak TV in a very long time, if at all.
Then as the battle against Mike Prince became harder to win, Chuck realized that he needed allies. He turned to Wendy, with whom he’d been mending fences with over the last season, partly for their children’s sake, partly because of their mutual fear of Mike Prince. Wendy was impressed with Chuck’s growth but she said after everything he’d done, there was just no way she could ask the people she’d gathered to trust him.
So Chuck gave a full accounting of every sin he’d done in the course of the series to destroy his opponents — and some we no doubt hadn’t heard. When Wags learned of the alliance Chuck proposed, he walked into Chuck’s office and delivered a strongly worded threat. Chuck dismantled it by agreeing with him that he wasn’t trustworthy — and then showed him a file with everything he had done that could get him disbarred and thrown in jailed. He then admitted that he could give it to Wendy but because she cared for the father of her children, she’d never be willing to use it. So he asked her honestly if Wags could be trusted with it if he kept his end of the bargain. Wendy assured him he could and he handed it over.
Wendy also showed immense growth throughout the season, starting in the most unexpected place. She learned that many of the people at Prince Capital had been seeing another therapist. She marched into her office and was instantly disarmed when this doctor actually called her on some of the BS that I’ve raised in my last article. (High praise to the showrunners for casting the always brilliant Holland Taylor in this role.) Wendy was so disarmed that she began to realize the kind of person she’d become over the years and that she needed a therapist to figure out her next step against Prince.
As the season progressed she spent as much time with her new therapist dealing with all of the psychological problems she was going to face going forward, along with her own issues about her next path. As it seemed more and more likely that nothing could stop Prince, she began to consider an exit strategy and her own future away from the business she helped build. In affect she had decided that her best option going forward was to get out of the pattern she’d spent much of her life doing and try to find her own growth. That led to her spending much of the season engaged in winning over allies, some of whom she’d isolated over the years — including Taylor who’d been trying their hardest to figure out a path forward.
As the season progressed, it seemed like Mike Prince (Corey Stoll) was playing chess at a level none of them could match on their own. It was obvious the only way through this pickle was acting together, but even then, it seemed like they were being outmaneuvered by betrayals from within and without. That said I’d watched the show long enough to know the tricks the writers had been playing with the audience over the years — and I knew that there was going to be a card or two revealed by the end.
Throughout the series, Sorkin and Koppleman have spent episodes and indeed whole seasons playing shell games with the audience. This isn’t trickery in the traditional sense: given the minds and reach of so many of the targets involved, we know that in order to outmaneuver Chuck and Axe’s targets, there had to be layers upon layers. I knew that there were cons being played that we didn’t see. And I was pretty sure who was playing the long game.
It did not shock me that Sacker (Condola Rashad) was one of the ones who ended up in the final episode. Sacker has always been a political animal and has always done what she needed to do for her own self-interest. And she has a pattern of betrayal: she double crossed Chuck at the climax of Season Three for her own ambition and did the same to Connerty halfway through Season Four. I was shocked to learn that she’d been in on the scam longer than I thought but then Wendy has always been persuasive.
I’d expected Philip’s double cross; indeed, I wasn’t surprised to know he’d been the one to slip the knife in. His reaction to what happened when Prince betrayed him and an old colleague was real when we saw it in Wendy’s office, even knowing that it was a performance. Philip was counting that Scooter (Daniel Breaker) his uncle would decide that family trumped his decision to seem to betray Prince. I never thought his subsequent fealty to Prince to genuine the previous two episodes and I was proven correct.
Sorkin and Koppleman went out of their way to argue after the series finale aired against the idea that this was really a happy ending. They made some decent arguments. They said Axe was exactly where he started at the beginning of the series, in a sweatshirt shouting orders to ‘make some f — -ing money!” They argued Chuck is going right back to investigating white collar crimes, making the assumption he and Bobby will clash again. And they reminded us that while Prince’s hopes for the Presidency have been dashed for a very long time, he did not go to prison and he seems intent on rebuilding. His last scene on the show could have been considered that he learned nothing and will return pent on destroying everyone.
That’s true as far as it goes. But it’s hard not to watch the final episode — indeed the entire final season of Billions — and argue that none of these characters haven’t learned something from the entire series. Charles Senior himself told Chuck that what he had done was incredible: that he had ‘made peace with a man he’d tangled with for over a decade to take on a bigger threat and won.” That’s not the sign of a man who is just going to return to his office the next day and work on bringing Axe down again. Their final conversation had a hint of that, but it was more a friendly warning than a threat.
And to be clear Chuck showed absolutely no sign of going back to his old ways throughout the final episode. Quite the contrary, he spent as much time rebuilding so many of the bridges he’d torn down. He reached out to Sackler, said she deserved elected office and said he had every intention to help her get there. Connerty, who had been released from prison and wanted to get his license back, showed up in the office before everything went down and was presented with his license by both Chuck and Kate in a truly moving moment. (It’s pretty much implied that one or both of them paid the fee that Connerty couldn’t to get his license restored.) Connerty had done the work and will now be where he should have been all along; defending the downtrodden. Who knows? Maybe after this all ends, he and Kate will end up together after all.
Chuck was warm to Bobby in their final conversation, in a tone of reminiscence and fondness. And when Wendy walked out of her old job for the last time, Chuck invited her to dinner with her family. Is it possible the two of them can heal their marriage? Given everything we’ve seen the last season and the final shot of the episode, that actually seems possible.
Axe too seems to have grown and changed, despite his appearance at the end. Bear in mind one of final parts of this whole con was to make sure all of the people who worked for him over the years did not go completely broke. He made his friends not just whole, but rich. He gave his longtime attorney a permanent job at his new firm. Hell, there was even a backhanded generosity in his final swipe at Prince, if you look at it. And lest we forget, before Chuck left, he handed him the thumb drive with his multitude of sins that he took from Wags. Axe wouldn’t have done that even a season ago. There has been signs throughout the season that Axe has begun to mellow with age and the losses that he’s taken.
Of course, other members of his family have shown that they need to move on. Both Taylor and Wendy realized during the final episode just how poisoning the money had been to them in the last several years, when it came to their moral compasses. Both had been offered jobs with Axe when all of this ended, and both of them showed the wisdom to turn it down. Taylor will now work at doing the good they always knew they were capable of and Wendy will now devote her life to mental health. And even though they are both no longer working for Axe, the ending made it very clear that neither will be out of Axe’s lives. Both of these complicated characters have realized the corrupting power of wealth and know that for them to be better people, they have to get out of Axe’s aura in their jobs, if not their personal lives. Sorkin acknowledges that both of these characters definitely ‘won’.
You even saw the slightest bit of growth when it came to Wags who has spent the last seven years stomping down even the possibility of it. When Scooter walked out of the firm for the last time, Wags showed accommodation for an enemy for possibly the first time in his life. He did not rub in his victory and was kind when he explained why Scooter lost. He admits that Scooter was a better man than him, but that he was a better ‘second in command.” The two men who had been at each other throats the last two seasons parted nearly as accommodatingly as Chuck and Axe did.
Scooter has had the most difficult role of any character the last two seasons. There has never been a sign at any point that he is anything but a decent man, a loyal friend to Prince and a good family man. He has been willing to sublimate all of his ambitions for the greater good of a man he genuinely believed could be a great President. Scooter never showed any doubt throughout the series — and it’s clear that made him blind to Mike’s flaws.
In their final scene together, Scooter admits Prince’s flaws and takes them on as his own. “A slight deviation in ones compass in a long enough journey leads to one being completely lost,” he said sadly. In a way, he absolves Prince of his mistakes but by decided that they have to end their relationship he makes it clear he can’t do it any longer. The end of their partnership was truly moving. These two men were brothers in all but name and they truly were ride or die in the way that Axe and Wags were. Scooter’s last words to Prince are that he will find a way forward.
But we also see that Scooter still comes out of this intact. At the end of the episode Philip reveals that he did not wipe out Scooter’s fortune with Prince’s. “I have gone from a rich man to a pauper to a rich man in a single day,” Scooter said. “And it has put me in a reflective place.” Scooter makes it clear he has decided to find his own path and his final words with both Philip and Wags show that he too can grow.
That of course leaves Mike Prince. The great thing about the final act of Billions was not how every element of the con came together, but how all of them showed that they were manipulating Prince arrogance and certainty. Because he refused to take anyone’s advice that didn’t gel with his own at any point, he had brought about his own end. There was something extraordinary about Prince icy calm finally breaking when he threw a chair through Wendy’s office and demanded: “What problem do you have with me being f — -ing President?” Wendy told him exactly what it was. And even then, there was no sign he was willing to accept responsibility even as things spiraled in the next few minutes. He shouted and screamed at every one and blamed everyone but himself. Despite what Scooter said, I have major doubts Prince will be inclined to doubt any part of what he did as anything but betrayal from people he trusted. (We’ve seen how that works in real life.)
Was the final act of Billions sentimental? Sure, and perhaps that might have been out of touch with what we have loved of the show for the last seven years. But I’d actually argue that’s one of the things that actually makes the show worth it. No matter how great the series over the last twenty years, from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, from The Americans to Homeland, almost every great series come to an end with whatever realization characters made about themselves and a huge body count and misery. There was never going to be a body count on Billions (hell, this is the first series I watched in a long time where none of the regulars left because their characters died) so the question was always going to be: would they be happy at their final realization about themselves or miserable in the aftermath of them?
This does, of course, serve as a major contrast to the finale of Succession we got last May where the difference is at the end the main characters were rich and miserable and with Billions they’re rich and happy. I’m going to write a longer column later this year contrasting both shows and evaluating their respective legacies. That said, the audiences of each show probably wanted different things for the Roy family than they did for the people at the new Axe Global. (And if nothing else, that country has a much brighter political future than the one that the world in Succession likely has.)
Personally I was satisfied with Billions ending. Not only did it resolve most of my doubts I had going into the final season, I realized the writers did have a long term plan after Damian Lewis left the show in Season Five, that they did find a way to make it pay out and delivered a conclusion that fans can appreciate. With this ending, Billions can now effectively be considered one of the great series of all time and rank along with The Americans and Better Call Saul — and yes, Succession — at that same level. It never got the same recognition from the Emmys or any major awards show as the other three did (though there is next year, hope springs eternal) but it deserves to be considered in that pantheon.