Axe used to have a romantic relationship with Wendy
There's a lot of hints, both obvious and not-so-obvious.
Here are the more obvious hints:
- Chuck gets wildly jealous and paranoid anytime Axe and Wendy spend alone time together.
- Wendy rejects every other character flirting with her (like Krakow or the headhunter), but likes when Axe does.
- Wendy is highly professional, yet doesn't hesitate to get naked in front of Axe, her boss, during the hot tub scene in S1
- Lara is (was) obsessed with getting Wendy to "go away". Her reasoning is that Wendy is a liability, but even when Axe says (lies) that he won't have sessions with her, she isn't satisfied. Plus, when Axe and Lara get closer to splitting, Lara blames Wendy, and tries to pay her $20 million to "go away" again, for unclear reasons that have nothing to do with Chuck.
- Wendy's husband can't recall the moment he fell in love with her. Bobby can remember the precise moment he knew he and Wendy would be partners forever, along with every single word of her defense of him.
The not so-obvious hints:
- On multiple occasions, Axe refers to Wendy's intelligence as matching his own. He never does this with Lara, or any other character on the show.
- Axe decides to see Wendy, not Lara or his children, before being arrested. When he does, he asks her forgiveness for every transgression he'd made all season. He never seems to care this much for Lara's forgiveness, instead, just exploding on her via voicemail when she ran. During this scene, his eyes dart back and forth between Wendy's eyes, like some with real affection would.
- Also during this scene the very end of S2, he asks Wendy "what if I told you every decision I've made since we worked down here has been the wrong one?" One of those decisions was marrying Lara. Axe doesn't miscalculate or misspeak.
- The second that Spyros lets slip to Connerty about Wendy's Ice Juice short, Bobby not only flips the fuck out on Spyros, he actually goes two steps further - first, partnering with Chuck to protect Wendy, and second, consulting with Bach about the potential of a plea deal (something that Bobby stated over and over that he would never do).
- Bobby cuts short a vacation with his kids to be there for Wendy's tribunal, saying it's not even a question that he'd need to be there for her. He also cuts a deal with a member of the board not to strip her of her license, donating a large amount of money to ensure it. When Wags calls Bobby "a gentleman", Bobby nods and responds "basically only for her".
Wags grew up as religious as Dake.
- His lines are full of religious references, albeit crude ones - being "as pure as the Virgin Mary before her first period" and the bit where he seemingly compares investing in Axe Capital to Islam are two that really stand out.To Bobby Axelrod, fees are religion and money is his god. This makes him the perfect shepherd for you in the material world. And at least when you pray to his god, you get another fucking Bentley out of it.
- He's acutely conscious of his own depravity (e.g., in the ATM conversation with Wendy in season 1), and seems to have a lot of self-loathing as a result.
- He's already thinking ahead to his own death ("Hell of a Ride").
- In "Sic Transit Imperium," he says: "If the world's going to be rebuilt, it sure as fuck shouldn't be in my image" - thus alluding to both Creation and the apocalypse.
- Bobby is "almost family; but unlike family he never turns away."
- Before eating ortolan with Axe in "The Third Ortolan," he talks about hiding such a sinful act from God.
- When Axe backs out of the deal with Frotty ("Redemption"), he says: "You know I love it when you move with the mystery of Yahweh, but WTF?"
Dollar Bill's alpha male routine camouflages a deep insecurity.
- He freaks out and starts behaving erratically when his lucky dollar disappears, as though he doesn't trust his own money-making skills. (This would make sense since so much of his success is about bribery as opposed to, say, Taylor's pure financial acumen.)
- He's visibly crushed when Axe takes Taylor to the Alpha Cup instead of him, and says, "Everything I measure myself by has been called into question."
- He has a corrosive hatred of Spyros, which is completely out of proportion to the actual threat Spyros poses to him. Bill is one of Axe's oldest colleagues and a man of immense clout within the company, who has made a huge fortune by flouting SEC regs; Spyros and his nonsense ought to be beneath notice. Instead, Bill treats everything Spyros does as a personal insult, and, in return, compulsively antagonizes him.
- He has not one family but two, as though he has something to prove.
Hall's CIA career damaged him so deeply that he was sectioned out.
- I mean, just look at the guy. That's not a man who's had an easy life.
- After the encounter with Andolov in 3.12 (where Andolov backhands him), his demeanor subtly changes: he's visibly shaken and afraid, as if being beaten by a Russian gangster had triggered an old trauma.
- He makes a speech in season 1 about the fact that human beings are just bone and sinew.
Wendy is Rachel Menken's daughter.
Just because it would be really cool for Billions and Mad Men to share the same universe.- If this is so, then an elderly Don Draper was one of Axe Cap's first big investors. Axe wanted Don to handle his advertising (even though he was long retired by this point), but Don told him that with what he was doing and given the high-end clientele, he didn't need to advertise. And he was right.
- Doesn't quite work out if we're going by the characters having the same DOB as the actors portraying them (which Billions does with Axe).
Billions and Succession co-exist in the same universe.
Because there are plenty of ultra-rich, scheming and morally bankrupt people in New York — more than enough to support two shows.- The characters' paths occasionally cross. Axe and Logan met because the latter is a client of Axe Cap; they have a grudging respect for each other, although Axe doesn't like the fact that Logan flat-out refuses to use Taylor's personal pronouns. Wags has run into Kendall and Roman at the odd high-end party and thinks that the pair of them are lightweights in every sense of the word.
