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Industry season 4 has come to an end — and that morally thorny finale, “Both, And,” is going to be rattling around in our heads for quite some time. One of the best seasons of the show so far, season 4 of HBO's finance-world saga amped up the drama, the deception, the corporate-speak, the stress, and the moral ambiguity to the max. And, naturally, things ended with a very bleak bang.
This season has been something of a soft relaunch of the show. After all, the end of season 3 saw the downfall of Pierpoint & Co., the fictional bank that our cast of cutthroat finance mavericks called home. In season 4, we left behind the trading floor as American go-getter Harper Stern (Myha'la) and heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) found themselves on their own distinctive paths – Harper with a new fund and Yasmin with a new marriage to the wealthy, aristocratic Henry (Kit Harrington).
A lot of the action centred around the corruption at the heart of fintech startup Tender. Things finally blew up for the app in the second last episode, with founder Whitney (Max Minghella) in free fall and Harper primed for victory. Here's everything that happened.
We're still processing that finale.
What happened in the S4 finale?
As Tender crumbles, we open with Labour minister Jennifer (Amy James-Kelly) on an all-male talk show panel chatting about the government’s relationship with the app, which, it becomes clear, is officially toast. Harper is thrilled, Whitney is screwed.
Meanwhile, Yasmin is finding her own lifeboat as the ship goes down. She asks Henry for a divorce because of the fallout from Tender's fraudulent activity – despite the fact that she was the one who encouraged him to get involved in the first place.
When Whitney reveals to Henry that Tender has been kind of involved in some Russian spying, Henry refuses to run opting to be in chains in England where he has status than be a free “peasant” in Lithuania. “I’d rather die as me than run as you,” he says. So, he ends up in jail, while Whitney hits the road on the run.
Yasmin, a survivor, begins working with Sebastian Stefanowicz and his right-wing gang. Harper winds up being invited by her friend to a campaign dinner in Paris, where she is thoughtlessly seated next to some Nazi extremists. This is one of the rare moments where the show highlights how Harper, a woman of colour from a humble economic background, contrasts with the world she has been hell bent on dominating since season one. She tells Yasmin that her guests look at her as if the want to “skin” her. There's a brief look of regret from Yasmin but whoever audiences think they knew before this scene quickly dissipates.
It turns out, Yasmin is all too aware of the company she is keeping but her trauma has hardened her into a nihilist. She shows Harper the footage of Eric and the escort, the same footage that led to his earlier departure from the show. She does this to demonstrate that the tiny morsel of good in Harper is misplaced in the world they've found themselves in, that her north star and mentor is a monster, and also to underline that “the world is not exploitation or opportunity. It's both, and!”. That's the title of this gut-wrenching episode and probably the entire thesis of this show.
While some commentators feel Industry has morphed into a new behemoth series distanced from its office-bound start in season one on the trading room floor, it was never about Pierpoint employees getting their job done. This show is about power. There have been signs that Yasmin's (or “Lady Muck” as she became via marriage) greed would lead to her downfall this season as she was dressed as the reviled french queen Marie Antoinette at her husband's high society birthday party.
It seems that Yasmin isn't above capturing footage similar to Eric's tape starring these far-right leaders as a means of blackmail even if it means facilitating the same abuse at the hands of powerful men she has suffered with her entire life. Yikes. Fans also will see glaring parallels between Yasmin's story and Ghislaine Maxwell. Both are daughters of powerful media magnate fathers who fell to their deaths from boats named after them. And then they found themselves clinging to sadistic men, aiding sexual impropriety to maintain their socioeconomic status. Anyone who thinks this show might be becoming far-fetched only need look at the news coming from the Epstein files to show that the jump from finance to cavorting with bad state actors and dabbling in sextortion might be a well-trodden path.
Long time viewers will be devastated to see what essentially looks like a break up between Yasmin and Harper, who despite having many character flaws have always brought out the more human sides to each other. They even kissed in the previous episode. As Harper realises that her friend is completely jumping the shark she tries to guide her to the light. "If you have cared about me at all ever, you will take my fucking hand", she says. Yasmin pulls away and whispers “I'm sorry. The world is showing you what it is.” A few scenes later Henry is seen living the life he always has (drinking and fishing) just with a little tag on his ankle because when you're as rich as these people are, there's basically nothing you can't get away with.
Industry's white knuckle fourth season concludes with Harper giving an interview aboard a private jet, the perfect picture of success. This episode seems to be the first in a while where it is clear Harper has a beating heart as Myha'la recently told Glamour one of the key questions for her this season is “whether or not she's a psychopath”. Finally she demolishes her 10-foot high emotional wall by showing vulnerability to her situationship Kwabena and runs towards love and community instead of remaining cold. She even tried to save the young girls in Yasmin's honeytrap. Tender has been exposed making her short firm millions, and she is stepping into the light and becoming her own north star sans accused child molester Eric Tao.
“Does being so uniquely right when everyone was so totally wrong feel like vindication or does it ultimately make you feel very alone?” a journalist asks in the afterglow of her dizzying new wealth. “Both, and.” she replies. I guess she will always have a piece of Yasmin with her, even if it's just as a guide of how to not lose herself in her ruthless pursuit of success.
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What does that final scene mean?
Even though Industry season 4 may have seen Harper ending on a high, the show is confirmed to be returning for a fifth season – and you can bet that Harper will be up to her usual deceptive tricks before long. In fact, that final scene even hinted at it. Sitting on a private jet plane, Harper seems to have it all – but when a flight attendant asks Harper if she'd like another gin and tonic, saying, “Are you done?” it seems to be a loaded question. Harper, it seems, is definitely not done.
“It was like the Mad Men [season 5] ending where the woman walks up to Don [Jon Hamm] in the bar – and he’s tried not be a philanderer that season – and she says, ‘Are you alone?’ And he looks up, and it’s like, of course, there’s more," said creator Konrad Kay on the Toolkit podcast. “Of course, the loop is going to start again. It was that kind of ending.”
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What else happened in Industry season 4?
This season has left us with a lot to think about. While Harper and Yasmin's journeys and the whole Tender of it all has certainly been gripping stuff, we need to have a moment for some of the side plots.
Amelia Dimoldenberg (yes, the Chicken Shop girl) made a very surprising cameo as a reporter. Her character's name? Vivian Poulet-Magasin, naturellement. Which, of course, literally means Vivian Chicken Shop in French. Industry may be more serious than ever, but they certainly have a sense of humour.
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“A true honour to show off my serious journalistic skills in the new 10/10 series of @industryhbo,” she wrote on Instagram.
Rishi (Sagar Radia) had an extremely dramatic arc this season. Season 3 saw Rishi dealing with climbing gambling debts, which escalated to the point that his wife, Diana, was shot in their home by brutal debt-collecting loan shark Vinay.
In season 4, things only got worse for Rishi. For one thing, he is a suspect in her murder. For another, even more people start turning up dead – after a night of drug use, Jim (Charlie Heaton), ends up dying of an overdose. Rishi attempts to flee the scene by escaping from the balcony. When the police enter the room, he chooses to jump – only to survive the fall with two broken ankles. He ends up being arrested, broken ankles and all.
As Radia told Variety, Rishi's shocking arc is all about guilt, survival and self-destruction. “It’s surviving financially, it’s surviving emotionally, it’s surviving psychologically,” he said. “There’s so many different things going through his head. He swings between numb detachment into bursts of self-destructive behaviour, whether that’s drinking or moral disengagement. Ultimately, I think he’s just punishing himself more than anything else.”
We were also introduced to Kiernan Shipka's Haley, a calculating executive assistant, whose complicated relationship with Whitney and his app opened up some fascinating conversations around consent and workplace power dynamics. It eventually turned out that Haley was in fact originally hired from an escort service. And her role with Tender included committing extortion by setting up compromising situations involving both herself and other escorts with powerful men. After forging an alliance with Yasmin, Shipka seems to be ready to take charge of things in some very unexpected, very satisfying ways. Although Haley is being used, she finds ways to wrestle some power for herself. “She’s not in a position of power, technically, but she finds it. She gets it. And that, I think, is kind of astonishing on her part,” Shipka told Deadline.
Eric Tao (Ken Leung) made a dramatic mid-season exit after being filmed having sex with an underage escort and was blackmailed by Whitney. In a shocking twist, Eric hands over his portion of the fund to his prodigy Harper and walks off, vanishing into the ether as Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now” plays mournfully.
Fans were shocked when Leung confirmed that his character was leaving Industry for good. “As far as I know, it’s our last scene. So there was that in it. And even though we’re friends and remain friends, and hopefully we’ll be friends forever, to have what we created the past six years come to an endpoint, it’s very poignant. It’s not just sad. There’s a celebration in it. It’s everything. It’s beautiful,” Leung said to TV Insider of his final scene.
Things also got complicated for Sweetpea (Miriam Petche), the finance influencer, who, once merely the butt of Pierpoint's jokes, found herself embroiled a nude photo scandal after her OnlyFans side hustle was uncovered. The leak, naturally, has some pretty serious ramifications on Sweetpea's career in finance. Harper, in a moment of sisterly generosity, offers her a job at SternTao, her new fund. Despite being the laughing stock of the industry, Sweetpea proved time and time again that she was strong, smart and just as success-driven as her male counterparts. She refused to let herself be defined by stereotypes – and became the unlikely emotional centre of the season.
What will happen next in Industry?
Clearly, Harper isn't done yet. And the good news is, season 5 is officially happening. The bad news is, it will be the show's final outing.
“For some time now we have been thinking about how best to end the show on an unparalleled high. Unlike some of our characters, we know when to leave a party,” said creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay in a statement. “We’d like to thank our evangelical fan base, especially those who have watched from day one."
And we will be right there with them until the end.
