With Taylor by his side and Chuck pestering him to come through with his promised aid in the anti-Prince efforts, Axe tries and fails to extricate Wendy through financial means. It isn’t until he takes Taylor’s advice to come up with a play no other Wall Street brain could see coming that he succeeds.
Axe figures out a play using a forgotten bargaining chip: the imprisoned son of one of Prince’s Taiwanese business partners. Jailed by Chuck over an NFT scam earlier in the season, Chuck “releases” him to Taiwanese authorities with this maneuver in mind. Axe sets up a prisoner swap, instead delivering the scammer to China in order to secure the release of Derek (Derek Wilson), the mountaineer Prince left to be captured there. More to the point, Derek is the former lover of Prince’s wife, Andy, and he will tell all if Prince rats out Wendy. That wouldn’t just hurt Andy, it would hurt Prince’s chances; as Axe puts it, no one will vote for “a man who couldn’t satisfy his own wife.”
So no, the monster heel isn’t down for the count. This is less a victory than a mutually assured destruction pact, in which Axe and Prince have neutralized the people they love most as potential lines of attack. But the behemoth has been staggered for the first time in a long time, and Axe is now back in the United States and free to plot with Chuck, Wendy, Wags and Ira.
Things get nearly as cutthroat inside Prince Cap as outside it this week. After confronting Axe with his knowledge of the conspiracy against him within MPC, Prince reveals the company’s new organizational chart to the traders. If the marginalization of Wendy and Wags, and the complete absence of Taylor, weren’t alarming enough, the creation of three new partner slots is announced — good for the group in theory, but bad in practice, as the competition will be brutal.
This is music to the ears of a killer like Victor, and he happily swipes a strong idea from the timid Tuk to burnish his own chances. By contrast, Rian, disgusted by how Prince duped her and Wendy, rejects the job when Philip all but hands it to her. Ironically, it’s a pep talk from Victor, who tells her she is afraid of her own killer nature, that persuades her to just walk right in and demand the partnership. Her self-confidence convinces Philip she’s right for it, after all.
Sean T. Collins
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