Axe siphons the money of every employee into something called the Admirals Fund — an invite-only selection of the firm’s choicest investments, available only to the old Axe Cap inner circle. Once Prince is ruined, Axe has Chuck and Amanda (who proves to be a loyal lieutenant in Chuck’s army) announce that the collusion investigation is bogus, and that all the companies involved are in the clear. Since those investments were secretly kept intact within the Admirals Fund, Axe has made all of his once and future employees filthy rich.
Even Scooter’s bacon gets saved. Following Prince’s defeat, the man Wags calls the best second-in-command he’s ever seen quits the ex-candidate’s employ to go it on his own, leaving Mike completely alone. He now finds himself with $100 million — the exact same amount left to Prince — thanks to his nephew Philip. The two men patch things up before Scooter leaves to pursue his dream: to become an orchestral conductor at last.
All our heroes get that kind of emotional send off. In pair after pair, they make their peace and call it a job well done: Axe and Taylor, Axe and Wendy, Wendy and Taylor, Scooter and Wags, Wags and Axe — and of course Chuck and Axe, who shake hands and agree that while they may once again cross swords in the future, they’ll do their best to keep it clean in the interim.
The episode — the series — ends with Chuck and Wendy eating dinner with their kids. That dinner is served by Bryan Connerty, once Chuck’s Padawan apprentice, cooking at his hibachi restaurant one last time following his reinstatement to the bar as a favor from Chuck and Kate, who’s working for the Southern District of New York once again. Spouses no more but better friends than perhaps they’ve ever been, they eat and talk and laugh until the final cut to black.
“Billions,” a show that constantly references professional wrestling, has some of that spectacle’s storytelling techniques down cold. Watching this finale, I couldn’t help but feel that the show went all in on wrestling-style narrative. For two seasons, it built a monster heel in the form of Mike Prince, analogous to the seemingly undefeatable W.W.E. champion, Roman Reigns. To take him down, two bitter enemies had to become allies — like the legendary “Mega Powers” story line, in which the rivals Hulk Hogan and “Macho Man” Randy Savage united as one.