#pls be kind when requesting!! you are not doing any favors by inputting the same request multiple times on purpose

[nothingunrealistic]

Hello I am the “what is billions about” anon pls share ur thoughts as well I am listening

hello!! i have many thoughts and milo covered quite a few of them in their answer (which i’m sure you checked out already but maybe someone Else reading this hasn’t yet, who’s to say) so i’m basically gonna supplement that post / give a slightly more structured Season By Season breakdown of What Is Billions, Anyway. spoilers, naturally.

first, an Overall Statement, on which i’m going to quote one of the billions showrunners, brian koppelman (here he’s also speaking for the other billions showrunner / his creative partner, david levien), on what he hopes people take away from the show:

I think that people love to watch hyper-intelligent, hyper-verbal people who are charismatic and charming, and who really love what they do, and who love being in this contest and this game.

For us, what we’re interested in, is why America is willing to substitute verbal acuity, charm, power and wealth for true qualities of character, like kindness and empathy? We hope that by watching the show and getting off on it when these characters do really bad things, it makes us all wonder why we’re rooting for them sometimes.

these characters are forever gunning to speak in the most obscure references and quickest witticisms of anyone in the room, to give the most inspirational off-the-cuff monologues, to indulge in the best meals and the most expensive luxuries — and constantly saying and doing horrible things to one another and to total strangers, because they can. so that’s a major Theme to keep in mind. (we talk about brian and david quite a bit. authorly intentions are interesting.)

season one sets up The World Of Billions and the tangled relationships between the three initial leads. bobby “axe” axelrod is a rich & successful hedge fund ceo who’s widely loved in nyc for famously surviving 9/11 and engaging in philanthropy. chuck rhoades is a ruthless us attorney in manhattan who prosecutes financial crime but has, until now, avoided going after axe and his hedge fund, axe capital, despite axe’s reputation for Shady Dealings. wendy rhoades is chuck’s wife, and axe capital’s on-call performance coach / therapist and axe’s bff. (allegedly. i’m rarely convinced that their friendship is as Real And Weird And Deep as we’re meant to believe, but we are meant to believe it.) chuck can’t deal with his wife being best friends with some other guy, let alone some guy who’s doing finance crimes, so once he resolves to Take Axe Down, he spends most of the season figuring out how, with the help of two assistant us attorneys, kate sacker and bryan connerty. axe doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, and can’t deal with any man getting more of wendy’s attention than he does, so he spends most of the season fighting back. (let’s also note that axe has a wife, lara, who is at best uneasy about wendy’s sway over him.) 

chuck uses his power to do a lot of questionable things, up to and including stealing wendy’s notes on her axe capital patients, ostensibly in the service of justice. axe uses his wealth to do a lot of questionable things, up to and including letting one of his employees die to protect axe from prosecution when he could have extended the employee’s life, so he can keep making money. (also, we — and many, many people in nyc — find out that axe made his fortune off of 9/11 and tried to keep it buried for 14 years. he’s not so well loved after that.) the season ends with wendy deciding she’s sick of both of them, quitting her job at axe capital, and kicking chuck out of the house, followed by axe & chuck meeting face to face to yell about how much they hate each other and how they’ve both lost wendy by being so exquisitely terrible.

so this is the world that taylor mason (the most important character, as you know) walks into. rich men make their wealth of off suffering and death; powerful men abuse their public trust for personal ends; and the lives and wellbeing of everyone else turn on the whims of the rich and powerful and whatever years-long personal grudges they feel like satisfying today. (and sometimes, rich and powerful people will walk up to each other and say things like “What’s the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you?” and “You’re sure to become President of the Libertarian Club of Danbury Federal Prison.”)

season two introduces us to taylor and demonstrates that it’s not so easy for axe & chuck to become disentangled from wendy, or one another. early on, axe, chuck, & wendy are all under legal scrutiny due to the circumstances of chuck stealing wendy’s notes and wendy leaving axe capital. when axe is introduced to taylor by mafee, their mentor, and recognizes their brilliance, he enlists them to help attack another hedge fund ceo who wendy’s chosen to work for (and who is generally awful); chuck, who’s in danger of being fired, holds onto his job by successfully prosecuting (with the assistance of connerty and sacker) a prominent banker who’s also a friend of axe. axe decides to invest in a poor town in upstate new york, as a favor to a family friend, and puts taylor on figuring out if it’s a good deal; chuck is pushed to run for governor by his father, chuck senior, and senior sabotages a deal that would have brought a lot of money to the upstate town, which means a lot of money potentially lost for axe capital. (taylor, perhaps surprisingly, calls for stripping the town for all it’s worth to make up the loss.)

taylor gains favor with axe, gets used to a life of increasing wealth and power, finds themself on connerty’s radar, and starts to see the personal costs of doing business at axe capital. chuck & axe set their sights on one another again, which isn’t helped by axe finally managing to hire back wendy, a deal that strains chuck and wendy’s ongoing attempt to repair their marriage and hastens the crumbling of axe and lara’s marriage. (other than axe, the only person happy to see wendy back at axe capital is taylor — the two properly meet for the first time and click immediately.) chuck convinces senior to invest in a company, ice juice, that chuck’s best friend, ira schirmer, has also invested in, knowing that axe will try to ruin the company to hurt chuck and profit from its ruin — he does, and chuck gets it all on camera. wendy is again stuck in the middle, without knowing what chuck is planning, and decides to take a chunk of the profits axe is making. axe gets arrested, and wendy & chuck go home together, but only after axe sets taylor up to lead axe capital in his absence, lies about coming home to lara, and hugs wendy goodbye while chuck watches.

season three elevates taylor to more and more power, while setting axe against them — and, shockingly, on the same side as chuck — for the first time. axe is frustrated about the ice juice case and about having to give up his right to trade in order for axe capital, under taylor’s leadership and (allegedly) without axe’s input, to do business at all. (he’s also frustrated about lara deciding to divorce him, but it’s on the back burner, really.) chuck isn’t doing much better — senior and ira now hate him for using them as bait for axe; the new attorney general, jock jeffcoat, is forcing him (and sacker, who’s now his right hand attorney) to take on cases he hates in order to keep his job; and connerty, who’s supposed to be leading the ice juice case against axe, keeps finding evidence that points to chuck’s involvement. while taylor is in charge of axe cap, and with wendy advising them, they get accustomed to doing things their own way & dealing with crises, decide to hire quantitative analysts (aka quants! hello winston!) to help develop an algorithm that will change how axe capital does business, fend off / work around axe’s repeated attempts to make their decisions for them, and grow disillusioned with the culture of axe capital. (an example: taylor, and everyone at axe capital, watch a man die in an explosion on live television, and almost everyone around them starts cheering because they’ll make money off of it.)

chuck & axe are both fighting to make sure the other guy goes down over ice juice — until the news of wendy’s involvement gets out, and they have to work together to keep her safe and out of jail. (their plan to do this involves putting mafee in the line of fire, which taylor picks up on and confronts wendy about.) once the case is resolved, and chuck, axe, & wendy all get off scot-free, chuck reconciles with senior & ira and fires connerty for daring to come after him, and axe returns to axe capital and knocks taylor off their perch, back to being a regular employee. axe prepares to raise new money for axe capital, while undoing much of taylor’s work and belittling them and their requests for input and autonomy. chuck gives up his run for governor and tries to get jeffcoat out of office. but both of them are blindsided by betrayal — axe by taylor starting their own hedge fund, taylor mason capital, with the money raised for axe capital, and chuck by connerty and sacker siding with jeffcoat to get chuck fired. with chuck no longer the us attorney, he and wendy agree he’s got nothing against axe, and the three of them meet to start planning their retribution.

season four focuses on everyone’s desire for revenge against someone else, particularly axe & wendy’s separate but related desires for revenge against taylor. axe is trying to crush taylor & their company any way he can (sometimes with the assistance of his new girlfriend, rebecca cantu), and firing / threatening anyone at axe capital who gets in touch with them, because he can’t bear to let them succeed. chuck is running for state attorney general, because he needs a position of power to go after connerty, who’s now the us attorney, and jeffcoat. axe & chuck make a deal: if axe helps chuck get elected, chuck will make sure taylor is arrested. (“arrested for what?” axe doesn’t care what. just crimes.) wendy is helping both axe & chuck with their respective goals and feeling vindictive herself because she believes taylor took advantage of her empathy for them to put them in a position to start their own fund. taylor does well fending off axe’s attacks at first, with the help of mafee, their coo sara hammon, and other new employees. then their father, douglas mason, comes to visit, and three things become clear: 1) their relationship is difficult because he has almost no respect for them 2) they’re desperate for his approval 3) he’s come to see them because he wants their financial support for a personal project.

chuck wins his election, with axe’s help and with a very personal public speech. once in office, he agrees to help senior with a real estate deal; his legally questionable “help” catches the attention of connerty, sacker, and jeffcoat, who go to equally questionable lengths to prove that chuck is doing crimes. (an example: breaking into senior’s apartment to steal evidence from his biometrically locked safe.) wendy, who’s angry about her inclusion in chuck’s very personal speech, reaches out to taylor to talk. she learns that taylor is funding douglas’s personal project and, using her knowledge of their strained relationship from therapy sessions with taylor, works with axe to force taylor to kill the project. douglas walks out; taylor is devastated and wants some revenge of their own. (so does sara, who reports wendy for medical malpractice.) taylor attacks a company owned by rebecca, and axe supports her, until rebecca & taylor cut both their losses by cutting a deal. this makes axe so mad that he destroys the company instead, alienating rebecca and bankrupting taylor mason capital. chuck & senior’s real estate deal turns out to be a trap for connerty and jeffcoat (but not sacker, because she’s too smart for that), and it succeeds. however, chuck was supposed to be helping wendy keep her medical license; when she finds out that he didn’t do a thing, she walks out on him and into axe’s apartment. chuck, who was already sick of axe, “arrests” taylor and tells them that, though axe wants him to blackmail taylor into returning to axe capital, chuck wants them to go back as his operative to take axe down. taylor agrees to all sides of this deal, and returns to axe capital with their employees in tow, intending to just wait it out until axe and chuck destroy one another.

season five forces the leads to deal with the messes they made in season four, and smashes up & reforms the relationships of that season. axe, who’s feeling adrift after reaching a net worth of $10 billion and not feeling happy about it, is going in all directions at once. he decides that fellow deca-billionaire mike prince, who keeps swiping things he wants, is his new arch-nemesis; he applies for a bank charter for axe capital so he’ll never have to work again; he hires a artist, nico tanner, to paint for him on commission. the only thing he doesn’t do is run axe capital, even with the return of taylor, who he said he wanted around to help him make better plays, and their confession to him that they came back in collaboration with chuck. axe & chuck are ostensibly still allies, but chuck, with sacker behind him, is trying every angle he can think of to send axe to jail and prevent him from getting a bank charter. taylor, who’s struggling to achieve anything under the weight of appeasing both axe & chuck and the interference of other axe capital people in taylor mason capital’s work, teams up with wendy to win over investors and reinvents their fund as taylor mason carbon, focused on environmentally friendly investing. wendy and chuck get divorced, but are still entangled by shared assets and familial commitments; wendy and tanner take to one another romantically, axe finds out, and as we recall from season one, axe can’t deal with any man getting more of wendy’s attention than he does; and all of taylor’s employees are suspicious of wendy and her intentions.

season five hasn’t yet been filmed or aired in full thanks to covid, but where we’ve left off, axe has lost out on his bank charter, discovered that taylor and wendy teamed up with prince, and deliberately driven a wedge between axe & tanner, all in one night. it seems likely that wendy’s soon going to be as alienated from axe as she already is from chuck, and probable or at least possible that there’s more to taylor’s partnership with wendy than we’re led to believe. but we really have no idea what’s going to happen or even when we’re going to see it happen, and in a way that’s the best description of billions anyone could give.

#this is long. i apologize but also i should mention that even this leaves out a Lot of characters and plot details #and i am happy to answer more specific questions too because billions is simply So Much All The Time #inbox #anonymous #billions #taylor mason #bobby axelrod #chuck rhoades #wendy rhoades #lara axelrod #bryan connerty #kate sacker #jock jeffcoat #chuck rhoades senior