Industry isn’t the Euphoria of finance or GenZ Succession. Eric and Harper aren’t Don Draper and Peggy Olson. This is how it goes – you get compared to the greats until you’re undeniably great on your own. Industry is undeniably great on its own.
The show is also pushing all of its chips to the center of the table following a season close that had an air of finality to it and which certainly recalibrated every major character’s position. Adapt or die? Harper (Myha’la), Yasmin (Marisa Abela), and Robert (Harry Lawtey), sure as hell aren’t dead going into Season 4.
Rishi (Sagar Radia)? Eric (Ken Leung)? We’ll see what happens when the smoke clears, but Pierpoint’s dinosaur kingdom got crushed by an asteroid, and those two learned a bit about consequences in the harshest terms (especially Rishi and his wife in what be one of the show’s most shocking moments).
Hubris is rewarded in the young, who are all about what they’re going to take. It’s punished in the old, who are all about what they think they’ve earned. In this case, an endless piggy bank, the trappings of wealth, and the ability to be the most powerful voice in the room and screw like a young guy.
But enough about the cautionary tales. Harper Stern has been, from the start of this thing, the easiest character to root for on Industry (and, to be honest, on television). A dropout at a banquet of nepo-hires and well-schooled finance cyborgs, Harper pulls us in with secrets while keeping everyone at a distance.
When we spoke with Myha’la before the season, she said she’d advise Harper to be, “more vulnerable and honest” about her feelings with her friends if given the chance. This was before acknowledging that she didn’t know whether or not Harper would listen. Vulnerability is, of course, an opening ripe for exploitation in the world of Industry.
Look at this season’s most explosive moment, when Harper uses Yasmin for information, bringing about the kind of emotional slugfest that can only happen when you really know what buttons to push with someone. Harper took advantage, Yasmin took offense. But that’s Harper, knifing anyone who gets in her way. We love it. Say what you want to who you want in the most devastatingly smart and consequential way? We quiver with envy over it.
The confrontation with Eric in Bern after she stepped out of the shadows to get just a small, sweet taste of revenge following last season’s stunning betrayal by her former mentor? Priceless. The luring and clubbing of Rishi in the finale, handling him like Otto handled that fish during their clandestine meeting? Another masterful, rootable moment for Harper.
“It’s very liberating because we don’t get to be that brash, that crass in real life,” Myha’la said when I asked about inhabiting those moments of supernatural confidence when she gets to snap the traps and say anything and everything. And now Harper has Otto’s money and blessing, operating in a way that might make some of her past bosses squeamish while following the credo, “Only criminals get caught.” Quite the switch from getting coffee and taking notes at the start of the season after she’d been knocked down several rungs. You might roll your eyes if any other character followed that arc, but with Harper, it feels right. Better yet, it feels exciting.
Yasmin’s story, on the other hand, is heartbreaking. Yasmin has proven unkillable no matter the hell she’s been put through – hounded by the press, tossed from her job, wrapped up with Kit Harington’s mediocre billionaire boy Sir Henry Muck, betrayed by nearly everyone, and almost left carrying the burden of her father’s atrocities. But while her marrying Sir Henry brings all kinds of assurances that the pain will ease (or so it seems until that last moment of the episode), is that the same as joy?
During that same pre-season junket, Abela commented on the early season to us in a way that feels more impactful at the end: “She likes the comfort and the safety, and that’s what Henry offers her in a positive sense. I guess the negative of that is exactly that too. It’s sort of the opposite side of the same coin. What they are limiting themselves to then is the opportunity to one day find someone that they really do love in a romantic sense.”
While appearances are that Robert scratched his way out of Yasmin’s life by reminding her of his comparatively meager stock with that lotto ticket, Yasmin clearly didn’t feel like she was good enough for him. She saw his pure heart, looked in the mirror, and was swift in re-sparking her relationship with Henry. Subtract the cynicism from the act, and it’s admirable for its long-term, clearheaded thinking. All in line with a character who has run through the gauntlet and determined precisely what she feels she wants and needs.
I do wonder if Harry Lawtey is a part of this show in season 4. He’s 27, he’s co-starring with Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux, and his name pops up in the splashiest of casting rumors (Bond).
His ending this season, tinged with the tragedy of a love longed for across three seasons and spit back into his face near instantaneously, seemed as though it might be devastating. But the work Lawtey and the writers have put into protecting his character’s heart made him stronger. Robert became a real boy this season, more resilient, smarter, more focused.
That smile at the end, combined with the memory of Yasmin telling him she loved him in that most intense of goodbye fucks, all preceding his confident stateside presentation… that would make for a fine exit. But whether Robert is central or not next season, he and Yasmin have a secret that Henry will never unlock. For a show where characters often try to stuff down or steer away from emotional choices, that parting was just so poetic, beautiful, and risky for all the Robert/Yasmin ‘shippers within the fandom.
To be sure, shaking up Industry to the extent that co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay have at this point, when critics seem to be seeing it en masse as a player in the great debate over what active shows are the best and brightest, is just a little dangerous. It may have also been by necessity to create something that could feel final or serve as a bridge to something new with season 4’s renewal coming at midseason. And maybe they’ll screw everything up and we’ll wish that the show had wrapped with this tremendous episode. Maybe, but good shows become great by taking massive risks and that’s what this feels like, whether by necessity or a desire to live up to the show’s ethos of nothing ventured nothing gained.
Personally, I’m bullish on the whole thing.
Three full seasons of ‘Industry’ are available to stream on Max.