After mourning the death of his wife, Helen McCrory, Damian Lewis returns to Billions in “part time” mode

One lesson that series viewers have learned a long time ago is that when it comes to firing beloved characters, as long as their death is not seen on screen-and exceptionally if it does-there is always a chance that they will return to the ring. This will soon be the case with Damian Lewis, who, after leaving the cast of Billions, the series produced by Showtime and available here, for now, on Netflix, will return for the seventh season of the fiction that is currently being recorded in New York. The British actor, who played the unscrupulous Bobby Axelrod from the beginning of the program, had decided not to continue leading the story after the death of his wife, actress Helen McCrory.

Lewis himself explained at that time his decision to move away from the fiction created by Brian Koppelman, David Levien and Andrew Ross Sorkin, in a chat with The New York Times, with statements that at the time seemed more expression of desire than concrete commitment to return. “Although the possibility remains open for him to return, for now, Axe He has been banished”, said the actor from his home in London. There, in his city, Lewis remotely recorded his scenes for the second part of the fifth season, although for the last episode he joined the team in New York. The pandemic and the death of his wife contributed to that arrangement although, as he explained in that interview, these events did not influence his departure from his fiction.

“It’s hard to find new things, creatively. We already know who he is,” explained the actor in the New York Times report in which, without giving too many details, he mentioned his need to stay in London with his teenage children after the “tragedy” that occurred in his family, in reference to McCrory’s death, which occurred on April 16, 2021 due to cancer. In the announcement of his departure from Billions, a program that he had starred in since 2016, Lewis had also clarified that his intention had always been to fulfill his original five-season contract. “It seemed like more than enough time to develop the character,” the actor said at the time. Something that his creators confirmed by explaining that they had been planning the departure of the character from the series for several years.

In fiction, Lewis’s farewell was resolved with his character fleeing the persecution of the US law to Switzerland with his millions on his back. Now, despite the fact that his return was confirmed by the actor himself and by some photos from the recording set in New York -which were leaked to the media-, it is unknown what new interpretive challenges tempted him to decide that he had more things to tell in the skin of the shark of finance Ax. And indeed, none of the plot details for the new season have yet to be released. What is known is that of the twelve episodes that the seventh season will have, Lewis will appear in six alongside the rest of the cast, which includes Paul Giamatti, Corey Stoll and Maggie Siff.among others.

Of course, the return of the talented Lewis is not the only good news for fans of Billions. At the beginning of the month, the executives of the Showtime signal, the channel of origin of the fiction, announced that on the way to the merger with the Paramount+ platform, the series will earn at least a couple of spinoff in the manner of the ever-expanding universe that is Yellowstone. Thus, they already began to work on a Billions set in South Florida and focused on cryptocurrency businesses and another based in the financial world of London. Also, for later project a series titled Millionswhich deals with young entrepreneurs and another that in principle would be called Trillionswhich would have a more “soap opera” cut and would explore the environment of the ultra-rich. The arrival of these new proposals still does not have a release date and in the case of Argentine viewers, it still remains to be resolved on which platform they will be able to continue enjoying the original story, since Netflix has available five of the six seasons already released and there is no sign of The sixth is yet to arrive on the platform, launched in early 2022 in the United States.