Categories Billions Print Media Recap Review

Damian Lewis Won’t Be Back for Billions Season Six

Escaping the Grasp of Chuck Rhoades

by Bethy Squires | Vulture | October 3, 2021

Spoilers for Sunday’s season 5 finale of Billions.

Bobby Axelrod has finally escaped the grasp of Chuck Rhoades, but at what cost? All his dang money, is what cost! Shortly after the Billions season 5 finale, Deadline reported that Damian Lewis will not be coming back for season 6. Mike Prince (Cory Stoll) owns all his companies, and Axe finally know what it feels like to lose. Series EP Brian Koppelman praised Lewis on Twitter after the finale, saying that working with the actor was an “incredible joy.” On behalf of himself and David Levine, Koppelman thanked Lewis “for the work, of course, and the fellowship, and for all you sacrificed to come do this with us.”

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Damian Lewis Exits Billions After 5 Seasons – Deadline

Bobby Axelrod On the Run in Switzerland

by Dominic Patten | Deadline | October 3, 2021

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details of the Billions Season 5 finale that debuted on streaming early this morning and on Showtime tonight

Damian Lewis has exited Showtime’s Billions.

With his very rich Bobby Axelrod on the run in Switzerland from the legal claws of Paul Giamatti’s Empire State Attorney General, Emmy winner Lewis ended his five season run on the Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and Andrew Ross Sorkin-created, high finance drama with a smile tonight. After years of staying just one step ahead of the law and a big loss, Axelrod also saw nearly all his considerable fortune gone as he settled down to a handcuffs-free life in Europe.

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Damian Lewis Exits Billions After 5 Seasons – Hollywood Reporter

Say Good-Bye to Bobby Axelrod

by Kimberly Nordyke | The Hollywood Reporter | October 3, 2021

Damian Lewis is exiting Billions after five seasons.

Lewis played Bobby Axelrod, aka Axe, on the Showtime series, which aired its season five finale Sunday night.

Showtime also said that season six will premiere Jan. 23 and released a trailer (watch it below). The news comes about a year to the day after the network announced the sixth-season renewal.

Paul Giamatti, Corey Stoll and Maggie Siff will return for season six, while Daniel Breaker (Girls5eva), who stars as Scooter, the chief of staff to Michael Prince (Stoll), has been upped to series regular.

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Billions Season 5 Episode 12 No Direction Home: New York Times Review

The Axe Falls

by Sean T. Collins | New York Times | October 3, 2021

Season 5, Episode 12, Season Finale: ‘No Direction Home’

The walls close in on Bobby as Chuck sharpens his knives. Then an unlikely ally intervenes.

“So this is what it is to lose,” says Bobby Axelrod. “OK.”

He’s talking to Mike Prince, the man who helped engineer his downfall — a decisive one this time. How do we know it’s decisive? Because, I think, of that concluding “OK.” (Also, Damian Lewis, who plays Axe, just made public he is leaving the show.) Until this point, Axe has always scratched and clawed like a cornered animal to fight his way out of defeat, whether at the hands of his legal nemesis Chuck Rhoades or his business rivals, like Prince. This time, though? He admits he has been beaten, and makes his peace with it.

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Billions Season 5 Episode 12 No Direction Home: Vulture Review

How Does It Feel?

by Sarene Leeds | Vulture | October 3, 2021

That’s the last time Chuck Rhoades ever makes a Big Night-caliber breakfast for Mike Prince.

Here’s what I’ve learned from covering two seasons of Billions: Although it will always be a challenge to predict the outcome, the eventual conclusion is hardly ever a surprise.

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Billions Season 5 Episode 12 No Direction Home: Entertainment Weekly Review

Not Everything Is As it Seems

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | October 3, 2021

It was only a matter of time before Billions pulled the rug out from under us and revealed the true arc of this season. It happens every year (you could criticize the show for being repetitive, in fact, as there’s generally not much structural change from one season to the next) and yet, because of the cast and the writing, it’s incredibly entertaining. It’s always a blast to watch the whole tower of cards come crashing down, creating chaos leading into the next season.

At the beginning of tonight’s finale, Chuck walks into Axe Capital and asks if “he’s in his office.” “Where else would he be?” replies Dollar Bill, “it’s his office, isn’t it?” “For now,” says Chuck. The implication, based on the season’s events, is that Axe has retreated to his office, forcing Chuck to arrest him on his own turf and that Axe has accepted the impending arrest.

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Billions Season 5 Episode 11 Victory Smoke: New York Times Review

Up In Smoke

by Sean T. Collins | New York Times | September 26, 2021

Season 5, Episode 11: ‘Victory Smoke’

Axe closes in on the big investment bucks he needs for his new bank. But don’t light those victory cigars just yet.

Watching “Billions” may be a breeze, but watching “Billions” to recap it is not. Constant pausing and rewinding is required to catch the countless twists and turns of every scheme; I would estimate that an hourlong episode takes me an hour and a half — at a minimum — to finish.

Nice work if you can get it, but it makes covering even famously dense shows like “The Wire” or “Game of Thrones” feel like recapping “Blue’s Clues.”

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Billions Season 5 Episode 11 Victory Smoke: Entertainment Weekly Review

Axe’s Back Is Against the Wall

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | September 26, 2021

One of Billions‘ greatest strengths is how beautifully it sets up all its pieces before knocking them down. This season has been building towards the moment where Axe seems truly trapped, and this episode really delivers on that moment.

By the end of the episode, Axe will be looking at potential jail time, but for now, he’s desperately looking to get money into his bank before the whole thing is DOA. But that desperation is what will ultimately be his downfall. So, first things first, Axe needs Chuck Sr. to go to the Delaware Attorney General and report that the bank is all up to code and ready to move past its probationary period. Of course, Chuck Sr. wants something in return, so he gets a profit share for the upcoming cannabis deal. Then he goes to the AG and recommends lifting the probationary terms. The AG is confused because his understanding was that this plan was meant to trap Axe in something illegal, but he’s more than happy to sign off and get these chaotic people out of his life.

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Billions Season 5 Episode 11 Victory Smoke: Vulture Review

Chains of Love

by Sarene Leeds | Vulture | September 26, 2021

Two episodes ago, I wrote about how Axe opened himself up to massive vulnerability by allowing emotion to guide all of his decisions. This is exactly how Chuck, Taylor, and Mike Prince claim their “victory smoke” in tonight’s episode.

But what makes the final moments of “Victory Smoke” a true cliffhanger isn’t the revelation that Axe has been utterly played by Chuck & Co. and is 24 hours away from arrest. It is how he hesitates to execute his escape plan, which, I can only assume, is to flee the country (something he’s had in place since season one). He doesn’t even need to say why — one lock of the eyes with Wendy over Zoom (yep, Axe is still “in quarantine,” with Damian Lewis again only appearing in this episode either solo or via video chat) tells us everything we needed to know: He’s willing to risk imprisonment for luuurrrvvve.

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Billions Season 5 Episode 10 Liberty: New York Times Review

You Can’t Make an Omelet…

by Sean T. Collins | New York Times | September 19, 2021

Season 5, Episode 10: ‘Liberty’

Eggs will be broken. The question amid all this conniving, though, is whose?

Chuck Rhoades is cooking eggs.

That’s it. That’s the scene.

For three uninterrupted minutes — without dialogue, without music, without so much as a single cut — the attorney general for the great state of New York cracks, scrambles, fries, flips and serves an omelet to his daughter, Eva (Alexa Swinton), and their guest, the billionaire Mike Prince. In “Billions” time, those three minutes might as well be an eternity. Suddenly, we’re miles away from the mile-a-minute patter and breakneck plot twists that make “Billions” one of the fastest-moving shows on television. For these three minutes, it is slow cinema, a cousin to the endless floor-sweeping and glacial soup-sipping of its sister Showtime series, “Twin Peaks: The Return.”

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Billions Season 5 Episode 10 Liberty: Entertainment Weekly Review

Business Takes a Back Seat as Axe and Wendy Get Personal

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | September 19, 2021

As the folk troubadour once said, the times they are certainly changing. The Axe Cap office looks different, as Billions makes the jump into COVID times. After an indeterminate amount of time spent working from home, all the Ax Cap employees are now back in the office wearing masks and social distancing. There are more changes on the horizon, too, as Axe completely overhauls Axe Cap’s structure so he can get his bank off the ground. That means some of the employees won’t make it through the transition, and some will have new titles.

It’s a crucial time for the bank, as Axe has had trouble getting money in because of COVID. So he’s got Wags looking for different ways to bring big money in as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, Taylor is worried about Ax’s potential influence over Taylor Mason Carbon after the restructure. They want to keep things completely separate, but they’re obviously concerned that this new order of business could complicate things.

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Billions Season 5 Episode 10 Liberty: Vulture Review

Eggs at Dawn

by Sarene Leeds | Vulture | September 19, 2021

We’ve come to the point in the season where I think I know what the long game is, but given my history covering Billions, I could still be way off. It’s for this reason that I’m glad things aren’t entirely clear on the scheming end in “Liberty.” As if, gasp, the writers — showrunners Brian Koppelman and David Levien teamed up with Emily Hornsby for this particular episode — wanted us to remain somewhat in the dark.

The Billions universe now exists in a post-COVID world, and through no fault of its own, the show is stumbling a bit. Because it’s had to adapt its pre-pandemic scripts, we’re dealing with a few square-peg-in-round-hole situations. Namely, the timeline has become a little murky: We can assume that some months have passed between “Implosion” and “Liberty” because (a) COVID has hit, (b) the Axe Cap offices closed down, and (c) Senior has recovered from his kidney transplant. However, the distribution of vaccines and a full-on return to the office (featuring masks and strategically placed hand sanitizer) would suggest a full year has gone by between last week’s episode and this one — but if that’s the case, then, what? Did the plotlines somehow enter stasis during Billions’ unspecified lockdown period?

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