Billions recap: Old friends and new enemies stand in the way of Mike Prince's next big move

I've had one question in particular on my mind through the first two episodes of this season: where the hell are Mafee (Dan Soder) and Dollar Bill (Kelly AuCoin)? At the end of last season they walked out on Mike Prince Capital, refusing to work for the man that ousted Axe as their boss. Considering they're two of the finest characters in an outstanding ensemble of supporting roles, I couldn't wait to see them again, and "STD" delivers.

The episode begins at 3:30 in the morning, as Ben Kim (Daniel K. Isaac) has called Bonnie (Sarah Stiles) and Tuk (Dhruv Maheshwari) into the office to deal with something major. He wants to keep it off the radar for now, but there's no keeping secrets from Prince (Corey Stoll). He gets alerts on his phone whenever employees swipe in during the night, because he says they're either quitting and stealing hard drives or they're trying to deal with a catastrophe. In this case, it's the latter.

Kim was out having drinks with his old pal Mafee, when Mafee — ever unable to keep his plays to himself — drops some hints about how High Plains Management, which he runs with Dollar Bill, is about to lock up some real estate deals for the Olympics. Mafee says it's a "total STD," meaning a "sure thing, dude." That means Prince's bid to be the leader on bringing the Olympics to New York is in jeopardy; someone else is trying to do the same thing and they've partnered with Dollar Bill and Mafee at High Plains.

So, Prince puts some land up for sale to smoke out the potential buyer. At the same time, Chuck Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn) happens to notice some weird land bids going on as well, with shell companies bidding on public lands. Don't be fooled — Chuck Sr. is not noble by alerting Chuck (Paul Giamatti) to the immorality of it, rather, he's upset because he wanted to use those shady tactics to buy the land. All of this is to say that both Chuck and Prince determine that exiled and shamed former Secretary of the Treasury Todd Krakow (Danny Strong) is leading an SPAC that will buy the land and build an Olympic stadium, which is the one thing needed to secure that the 2028 Olympics actually come to New York.

Chuck wants to get one up on Prince, so he decides to make a deal with the devil and support Krakow. He'll allow his land buying to go forward on the condition that Chuck runs the infrastructure, making sure the stadium and the housing can actually be used by the city's most vulnerable citizens after the games. In essence, Chuck gets to further cement himself as a man of the people and also strip Prince of his beloved pitch for the Olympics.

Of course, Prince doesn't give up the fight that easy. He teams up with the Mayor by outlining how a partnership with him on this Olympics bid will help her become one of the most popular politicians in the country. He promises to do things "the right way," and to build a stadium outside of Manhattan, the controversial location where Krakow plans to build. Prince also promises to make sure that the housing will be state-of-the-art athlete's quarters that will then be converted to the best affordable housing the city has ever seen.

So the Mayor wraps up Krakow's land deals in all sorts of bureaucratic regulations, and then Prince swoops in and makes a deal with him. Krakow, with no money to close on the land as investors bail after seeing the regulations, has to take Prince's money, give him the land deeds, and partner with him for the Olympics. Chuck, of course, is livid. Not only has Prince found a way to keep his Olympic dream alive, he's also bringing along Krakow and Bud Lazzara (Wayne Duvall), two people Chuck despises.

Thus, Billions has set up its war for the season. Chuck will continue to assert that there are no good billionaires and go after Prince. He crashes what's meant to be Prince's celebratory announcement, blocking traffic and delivering a rousing speech about how billionaires are controlling the city and trying to demolish property that belongs to the working class in an attempt to build extravagant and unnecessary stadiums and housing for the Olympics.

This is setting up a lot of intriguing threads and character relationships for the season. There's the interesting way that Ben Kim, Wendy (Maggie Siff), and Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) all want to protect Mafee and Dollar Bill from Prince's attack while also remaining loyal to the man they work for. They manage to save High Plains Management from damage, but does this change how they see Prince and his supposed "moralistic" approach to doing business? And of course, we get a ton of delightful scenes as Scooter and Wags learn to work together, first begrudgingly, then with a sort of beautiful synergy, their bond hilariously forged over a teary interaction with Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle." Then there's Chuck, who believes that Prince's "nice billionaire" angle is simply a fraud — but isn't Chuck himself just a rich, powerful man using the working class for his own gain? Can he not see his own hypocrisy, that he and Prince are operating in similar ways?

I really like how Billions is drawing these parallels between Chuck and Prince. It feels like a fruitful area to explore; where Chuck vs. Axe was always more of a straightforward Good vs. Evil battle, this clash feels more complex, as it explores who these men really are compared to who they think they are. At some point, these men will have to reckon with their true intentions and how they present themselves both to the world and the people closest to them, and they might not like what they see.

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• Billions recap: Chuck is back in New York to wage war on the city's most wealthy
• Billions premiere recap: Mike Prince takes charge of Axe Cap with a bombshell announcement
• Billions star Corey Stoll on turning Michael Prince into the new king