‘Billions’ Season 5: Is Mike Prince a good man? The rivalry is real but Bobby Axelrod might be wrong about him
‘Billions’ blew in with a breath of fresh air in Season 5, especially when it introduced a dapper new rival for Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis). The first episode, ‘The New Decas’, saw the introduction of a bald, brazen business titan Michael Prince (Corey Stoll).
"A man with no humility is a man with no pride at all," Mike told Axe when he meets him. The strife was real right from that first meeting and their paths crossed umpteen times as they tried to outflank each another — be it the tussle to lay hands on those paintings from modern artist Nico Tanner (Frank Grillo) or the fight for the Yonkers deal. Both stumped and trumped each other at different junctions of the story, but lately, especially after Mike turned down Chuck Rhoades's (Paul Giamatti) deal, the big question buzzing through minds is: Is Mike Prince a good man or just as selfish and narcissistic as Axe?
A comment on a Reddit thread first sparked that thought: "Hey guys, I'm confused, I've been thinking about season 5 lately, I can't tell if Mike Prince is a good guy or a bad guy or a manipulative guy? Most of the scenes he is in, he talks about doing good for the world. I'm just not sure."
Soon it stirred up hot debate on Reddit with many viewers wondering if Axe's instincts about Prince could be wrong. "Most likely Axe is right when he told Taylor that they were being manipulated by Prince, but I guess there's a chance that Axe is so deep in the twisted world he lives in that he can't accept that someone could be as/more successful than him without being inherently evil and his paranoia leads to him to lapsed judgement in an attempt to bring him down. But most likely its the former. As another post pointed out, the Yonkers comment tells you a lot about Prince beyond the facade."
That comment definitely leads us to think that — maybe for the first time — Axe's instincts may be awry.
But not all think that way. One fan was straightforward: "They’re all bad," he said. Another posted, "100% Machiavellian bad guy... remember what he said to Axe about Yonkers?" One even went on to say: "I don’t think he is. It looks he’s trying hard to not be as ruthless as he was when he was younger, but Axe’s actions are getting to him. He’s not nearly as manipulative or vindictive as Axe or Wendy."
Pondering good, evil and the shades of grey in between, one said, "The thing about 'Billions' is that no matter how 'good' someone is they are flawed with it. I like Mike Prince, he's a breath of fresh air from all that stale obnoxiousness of the other characters. I don't think he's manipulative but I think he's a windup merchant, he enjoys using his 'goodness' to contrast and therefore torment Axe, He enjoys the mind games he plays with Axe because he knows how Axe will react. I enjoyed watching the windup too if I'm honest, Axe needs taking down hard. Fed up of his 'always gonna win' attitude."
Jotting down the two points that show both his virtues and shortcomings, one fan said: "Seems to be morally conflicted just as Axe but in a different way. He is a more privileged and more 'woke' version of Bobby." Enlisting two scenes from Season 5, he added, "I think there are two important scenes that describe two conflicting nature's within Prince." The first one was: "His refusal to join Chuck (which it wouldn't surprise me that no longer stands and could be a twist at the end of the season) because at least according to him, that's playing dirty or something like that; this would imply that the guy has some standards and restricted moral code not unlike Axe's."
Looking back to another such scene, he added, "And then, like others have said, his comment about Yonkers, which shows that, under that 'woke' persona, Prince is rather discriminative of people of less socioeconomic standing than him, and thus quite a hypocrite about his supposed empathy for the 'opportunity zones'." The viewer then concluded: "So I think he is not that much eviler than the main cast, but he is definitely not as good as he wants to appear."
The show is on an indefinite break amid the coronavirus pandemic and it's hard to predict exactly when it will be back but it suffices to say that it will probably be in the next year. Within the next few months the showrunners might have a concrete plan in hand and we will update you as soon as there is an official confirmation. For now, catch all the episodes of the previous five seasons of ‘Billions’ on the Showtime App.