The fourth season of Billions wrapped up on Sunday night. Chuck has taken care of Jock Jeffcoat and his former protege, Bryan Connerty, and cleared the stage for another battle with Axe in Season 5. So we rounded up The Ringer’s biggest Billionsaires to take stock of the past 12 episodes, and predict where the show is going next.
1. What’s your tweet-length review of the season?
Kate Knibbs: As it turns out, the Billions Boys are better enemies than allies.
Ben Lindbergh: I’ll endorse anything that ends with a montage of a mastermind describing in detail how he ensnared someone, while that someone sits and marvels at how he was outfoxed.
Michael Baumann: Chuck has shot the moon so many times I don’t know what’s left for Season 5 except for him to literally shoot the moon. Axe found love, then proved he didn’t deserve it, and we finally reckoned with Connerty’s weird slide from idealistic liberal to fascist errand boy.
Miles Surrey: When I think I know where Billions is headed, but the show goes in a completely different yet equally satisfying direction:
Chris Almeida: With this show, I’ll never need to use my safe word.
2. What was your favorite moment from Season 4?
Lindbergh: Chuck winning an election by publicly professing his affinity for S&M.
Baumann: Honestly, it’s a tie between everything Dollar Bill did. From Chickentown, to the boxing match with Mafee, to his weird flirtation with Bonnie. Even the gross metaphor from a couple of weeks ago that finally got Ben Kim to yell at him was an unbelievable moment. We got just the right amount of Dollar Bill, and he was absolutely thermonuclear every moment he was on screen.
Surrey: Chuck betraying Wendy’s trust with his public BDSM confession in the fourth episode. Billions didn’t just play the moment as a leather-strapped punch line: It’s the death knell for the slowly eroding Rhoades marriage. They’ve been treating the moment with the gravitas it deserves. And, seriously, Wendy should never let Chuck off the hook (er, sex dungeon harness?) for this treachery!
Almeida: Chuck confessing publicly to enjoying BDSM, and then going up in the polls. Somebody needs to adjust FiveThirtyEight’s model for this.
3. What was your favorite food scene of Season 4?
Surrey: Literally anything that wasn’t Chuck’s horrifying childhood pancake story. Chuck Sr. perpetually ruining the sanctity of his marriage and flapjacks? We’ve gone too far.
Baumann: Alex Guarnaschelli cameo in the finale! Pancakes are overrated but Alex is the best.
Almeida: The double date at Una Pizza Napoletana! Cutting between Jack Foley’s creation and the baking of the pizza was peak Billions. Also, I, like Chuck, would still eat that pizza if the only way I could eat it “was naked in the middle of Times Square.” It’s a good pie worthy of a plug.
Lindbergh: Possibly unpopular opinion: The food scenes are my least favorite part of Billions. Enough awkwardly acted and choreographed cameos by people I rarely recognize! Am I supposed to be impressed by this parade of real-life chefs?
4. What was the most absurd display of wealth in Season 4?
Surrey: Axe treating his suite at Arthur Ashe Stadium for the U.S. Open like a meaningless bargaining chip. Save that apathy for the French Open.
Lindbergh: Rebecca having a helicopter waiting outside the bar in the finale. Best helicopter-related flex by a fictional billionaire since the Roys took two choppers to play softball in the Succession pilot.
Baumann: The dismantling of Saler’s and Kling Appliances in the finale isn’t just some abstract MacGuffin to move the plot along, it’s the blueprint for why so many institutional American businesses are going under, from newspapers to retail chains to manufacturing concerns. It’s why there aren’t enough local reporters to expose political corruption, and it’s why MLB teams aren’t signing any free agents. If it doesn’t bring down American society as we know it, it will only be because climate change either swamps or torches all our arable farmland first.
Knibbs: When it took Axe and Wendy several beats to realize that they had the ability to do light housework if necessary.
5. Talk about Chuck’s new torture machine.
Knibbs: No!
Almeida: NO!!!!
Baumann: My shoulder’s been bugging me for a while now, but I bet I could move some of those straps and pulleys around and get it popped right back into place.
Lindbergh: In Episode 5, Wendy said Chuck sounds like a stuck pig when he squeals. In his new contraption, he also kind of looks like one.
Surrey: Don’t give Chris Evans (super not reputably!) any ideas.
6. Will Axe and Wendy finally get together?
Surrey: No. Lesser shows would’ve had these two boning by now, but Billions has always been a series that finds the endless lust for absolute power and dominance more enthralling than sex. I hope we never get them hooking up—or at the very least, I hope that [clears throat] climax doesn’t arrive until the very end of the series.
Baumann: Yes. If Wendy and Chuck are done—which, much as I love those two together, neither of them seems happy anymore—then it’s a near-certainty that two attractive people with a close friendship will eventually fuck when one or both is emotionally vulnerable. It’s rom-com law.
Almeida: I doubt it. If there was ever a perfect moment to give us the makeout we’ve all been waiting for, it was during the Season 4 finale. What’s more erotic than cleaning?
Knibbs: Yes, they absolutely will, and it’ll make the Axe-Chuck rivalry even more intense.
Lindbergh: I hope not—I’d rather they remain ruthless work spouses. Plus, this is Showtime. The writers have to save some story for Season 9.
7. What are your predictions for Season 5?
Baumann: Chuck has now run so many Ice Juice–style high-wire gambits I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t another one next season. Wendy and Axe hook up. Maybe Taylor and Lauren will eventually develop some chemistry, but maybe not.
Knibbs: Taylor will have some sort of change of heart about destroying Axe and end up switching sides and helping him work against Chuck. Wendy will continue to rock exposed zippers on sheath dresses with finesse. Hopefully Wags will get some better therapy than that cuddle lady from earlier this season, so his story line will stop being such a bummer.
Almeida: Chuck Sr.’s love child is probably going to see some unpleasant stuff.
Surrey: Chuck and Wendy remember they’re ostensibly raising two children; Axe briefly considers the moral cost of climate change before nabbing a killer short position; Connerty becomes the middleweight champion of his prison’s underground boxing ring; Mafee goes on a date with Becky Lynch; Chuck Sr. raises a second infant child outside the confines of marriage; Wags spends his entire annual bonus on Korean spa retreats; Taylor binges The OA.
Lindbergh: Chuck and Axe aren’t going to get along. I am not uncertain.
