Photo: Simon Ridgway
The other night, I was texting my friend about Industry, talking about what makes this season so exceptional. Watching the finale, I realized that the season was immaculate because it left nothing on the table — the phrase that keeps coming to mind is “balls to the wall.” The writing and direction are ambitious, chaotic, unafraid of making huge pronouncements, forcing us to watch people struggle with their worst impulses. There are no easy outs in this finale. Everyone makes a choice, succumbing to the inertia of their depravity or leaping into the motion of change.
Let’s start with Yasmin, who has been this season’s dark, swirling center. First, though, I’d like to give Marisa Abela her flowers. I’ve been a fan since the beginning, but this season especially, it’s been thrilling to watch her portray our honeyed heiress as jaded and world-weary while still retaining that well-heeled naivety she stunk of when we were first introduced to this character. The Yasmin who waits for Rob to finish buying things at the gas station is an older, more wise Yasmin. She takes a phone call from the CEO of Hanani Publishing and essentially tells the woman to back off, that her threat isn’t a bluff. As Yasmin waits, she keeps glancing over at the car next to hers, wherein a very normal, harried-looking woman tolerates her rowdy children. Between judgy glances at the normie-mom, she also spots Robert doing a scratch-off, which is a neat way of telegraphing that Robert does not have money on the order Yasmin requires, as he is just a regular degular guy, for whom winning the lottery is a fun idea. It’s so clear that all of this plebian nonsense is like water rising up to Yasmin’s neck. How much more can she take before she snaps, making a bad, self-centered decision to keep her in Manolos?
Mere seconds, it turns out. Yasmin calls Henry Muck, who she convinces Robert to drive to in search of initial seed funding for his shroom start-up. I can’t quite decide if Yasmin is being calculated and using Robert to get back into Muck’s moneyed good graces or if she’s actually trying to help Robert. I think she can’t quite decide either. Either way, Muck, who is depressed and running a How To Fail style speaker series for business leaders, is in. He offers some seed funding and invites Robert and Yasmin to stay for the weekend. It’s his uncle’s birthday; there will be supper and shooting. Yas begs off, making jokes at Henry’s expense throughout the conversation. Again, it’s a double-edged move I can’t quite see past. On one hand, she’s conspiratorially grinning at Robert. On the other, we know Henry loves a firm, dominating hand. What’s the play here, Yas?
The following morning, Yasmin walks downstairs to greet Henry’s Uncle, Lord Tabloid. They have a candid conversation that includes background on Charles (he assaulted women back in his college days) and the way Uncle Muck has been using his paper to essentially intimidate Yas into getting back together with Henry. Yasmin responds that she doesn’t think a “random girl” is going to save Henry. Lord Tabloid disagrees, saying that Yasmin discounts herself too much and isn’t just some girl. He also insinuates that if Yasmin were family, he would protect her, which is something Charles never did. In a very un-British move, Uncle Muck hugs Yasmin, and you can see how this scene breaks Yas down. Here is someone offering her fatherly advice and a paternal embrace without a hidden half chub. Adding to the scene’s surreality is the fact that I’m pretty sure Yas is wearing Uncle Muck’s extra clothes—their shirts are identical, and Yasmin said the day prior that she didn’t bring any extra clothes with her. Visually, we are already being cued into what is being implied by Henry’s Uncle: that Yasmin would behoove herself by becoming a Muck.
What follows is perhaps the most beautiful sequence I’ve ever seen in Industry. The music turns choral, almost religious. Yasmin sits on Muck Manor’s staircase, dwarfed by its grandeur, deciding what to do. She knocks on a door, and as an audience member, we breathe a sigh of relief; she’s gone to get Robert, not Henry. The two stumble onto the grounds, laughing and playing. The couple finally consummate their years-long sexual tension on a bench. It feels as if this is Yasmin’s equivalent of Robert coming back from his mushroom trip; for just a moment everything is clear. Yasmin allows herself to give into the simple, straight path, which is to tumble into Robert’s waiting arms. This may be the only loving sex scene we’ve ever seen in Industry, though all of it is tinged with a pallor of sadness. Isn’t it obvious that Yasmin will never choose Rob? Obvious to everyone but Rob, that is.
Well, he finds out soon enough. After having sex with Robert, Yasmin goes back to the house and talks with Henry. Echoing her conversation with his uncle, this is a candid, pragmatic conversation that includes Yasmin telling Henry about her garden tryst with Robert and Henry telling Yasmin about his mental breakdown post-shrooms. The honesty of the conversation results in them getting engaged, using the ring that Yasmin took off of her father’s bloated corpse. Robert learns of their engagement later at supper, surrounded by the wealthy, wearing his host’s old tuxedo. Yasmin looks devastating, gorgeous, and sad, the spitting image of Princess Diana in her black gown. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the costuming on this show is so evocative. Bravo to Laura Smith, costume designer! I’m thinking this was a nod to the Travolta Dress and the Revenge Dress.) The next day, Robert drives away without her, Yasmin giving him one last smile before turning on her heel and joining the Muck family.
Guess who else is in the British country? Harper was scarily whisked away by Otto’s men at the end of the last episode for ostensibly trying to execute the Pierpoint short using illegal money. But when Harper gets to the stream where Otto is fishing, her reception isn’t what I expected. Otto isn’t so much mad at her as he is annoyed by Petra for tattling on Harper. He sees a reflection of himself in Harper’s ruthlessness — he would have made the same call as she did in her shoes. He asks Harper then if she’d be his spiritual successor, holding out a trout he’s just freshly gutted, a gesture replete with Biblical significance. It’s certainly a deal with the devil, but I have to say I wasn’t that moved. Otto doesn’t know that Harper is, whether consciously or subconsciously, repelled by the idea of filling someone’s shoes. She’s attracted to dark and broody father figures like Otto, Eric, and Jesse, but ultimately, after securing their approval, she doesn’t want to be their next in line. She wants to knife them in the back.
And that’s what she does. Back in the city, Otto meets with Petra and Harper, expecting he’s there to broker peace between the two. Instead, Petra and Harper break up with Otto. They don’t want his influence or money anymore. Bye, Otto! Not only does Harper choose to collaborate and build something with Petra, she also hires Sweet Pea and Anraj to work at Leviathan Alpha, screwing a very desperate Rishi over in the process. Does Harper bare her teeth and enjoy watching Rishi beg for his supper? Absolutely. Is this also the most wholesome workplace she’s ever been a part of? Also, yes. This is what we call growth, I suppose. I must say, though, that as a viewer, I find Harper’s turn from baddie to capitalist with a conscience sort of disappointing. I know that morally I ought to root for a personal growth arc, but the thing that drew me to this series was watching a young Black woman eviscerate an industry of old white men with appetite and aplomb. Is Harper really herself if she isn’t screwing someone over? Do I want to watch Harper be a good boss in a good workplace? Not really. (But more on this later!)
And this leaves us with Eric. Eric has the pep back in his step after pushing Bill overboard and landing a deal where the Al-Miraj family (a sovereign wealth fund disguised as private assets) buys Pierpoint. Then, he is tasked with the not-very-nice prospect of calming down all the London traders after a night of deep instability. It is so nostalgic to see Eric up there, in the ampitheater at Pierpoint, a place where we saw him two seasons ago, talking to Harper, Yas, Rob and Gus when they were new grads. At first, Eric’s pep talk doesn’t go over very well. He tries to obfuscate, tell the traders things are fine and they aren’t having it. Then, he tries to go the identity route, talking about his immigrant past. This also gets him nowhere. So what does Eric do but launch into a sermon on the meaning of money? After all, it’s why they’re all there, isn’t it?
“Money tames the beast. Money is peace. Money is civilization. The end of the story is money.” So says Eric, quoting a Denis Johnson story called “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden.” This quote is plucked from a moment when the main character of the story, an adman, is explaining an award-winning commercial he once made for a bank. In the commercial, a bear chases a rabbit. When the bear finally corners the rabbit, the rabbit gives the bear a dollar bill, causing the bear to sit down and stare into space. The idea here is that money has the propensity even to flip the natural order on its head. Prey can outmaneuver predators, provided they can pay the price.
It’s a moment where I think we’re watching Eric talk to the traders, sure, but mostly, he’s talking to himself. Here is a man trying to steel himself after a midlife crisis, after the institution he has dedicated his entire working life to nearly crumbled. Ken Leung is stunning in this scene, delivering lines that I philosophically might disagree with in a way that makes one want to nod along and say, “Amen.” And the traders agree. Eric’s speech gets everyone through troubled waters. They live to see another day, even as Eric looks stunned and a little bewildered in the empty amphitheater after the speech is over.
Flash forward a few months: Yasmin is in full Lady Muck mode, planning a wedding with a guest list including B. and M. Obama. She’s swanning around, doing coke and drinking in the afternoon with her secretary, who is none other than Alondra, the pregnant staff member from the Lady Yasmin. Possibly emboldened by the line of coke, Alondra tells Yasmin that Charles and his friends abused very young girls on their boat. Girls as young as 12. She then soldiers on, telling Yasmin it’s not her fault if Charles abused her at such an age, too. Yasmin loses her mind. In disgust, in rage, in sorrow, yes, all those ways, but also in what can only be described as the terror of someone who is having a lifelong delusion yanked out from under them. Instead of facing what Alondra is saying, Yasmin strides out of the room and instructs Henry Muck’s footman to fire the secretary. How awful that she cannot see she is simply doing a female caricature of her father: doing drugs, spending other people’s money, refusing to see harm where it has been done (even when it was done to her), and cutting out the people who try to have some semblance of honesty.
Harper is, thank God, bored of the good life. She takes a meeting with Otto, telling him she’s reconsidered his offer and wants his money but not his legacy. She wants to start a short-only hedge fund, and she wants to move back to New York to do it. For some reason, Otto agrees to this. I truly cannot fathom how a hedge fund could exist only shorting stocks, although, from a television perspective, the idea of Harper engaging in corporate espionage and shady dealings for a whole other season is very intriguing. Unlike Yasmin, who has turned into the worst version of herself to save herself, or Robert, who has excised himself from the financial game to stay alive, I see Harper’s change this season not as a teleological arc, going from beginning to end, but rather an inward deepening. She knows herself better now. She’s struck out on her own, tried both the high and low road. Now, she wants to be her own boss for real and use the low road for the high road. I don’t think she sees herself as some sort of banking Robin Hood. Instead, I think she’s honed in on what matters to her: the thrill of the chase, the high of the kill. She wants to hunt big corporate game, and she wants it to hurt when she fells them. So, the short-only fund. I’m into it!
Then, there’s the alma mater. Pierpoint is now Al Miraj – Pierpoint. Wilhelmina ousts Eric, and the bank is closing its London trading floor. It’s a move the show has circled for two seasons now — you might recall Eric’s panic last season when Adler and DVD tried to maneuver moving everyone to New York. Maybe that’s why Eric seems less shocked when he’s greeted with the news of his firing. In the dog-eat-dog world of Pierpoint, even his Hail Mary save isn’t enough to keep him in power. Eric takes his baseball bat down to the empty floor and says good-bye to the shoe-shine guy, having a little cry.
But most importantly, he gets a call from none other than Harpsichord, who is calling to thank him for his blurb for her Forbes 30 under 30 spot. Money tames the beast, Eric said, and maybe it’s the huge resignation check Pierpoint cut him, or the new sense of independence Harper has, but their phone call is amicable, resigned, even a little nostalgic. I hate to think this is the end of their relationship, but I also can’t see how they’ll run into each other again. When Eric told Harper to take care, it made me feel a little weepy. There’s still love, or at least respect, there between them.
Loose Change
• I didn’t put it in the full recap because truly I had no idea how to work it in, but RISHI, OH MY GOD. Tragic ending and an obvious call to Uncut Gems. Diana really didn’t deserve that and I don’t know what Vinay is thinking. How’s he going to get his money back now?
• There are some things I am wondering if we’ll pick up next season: I assume Rob having unprotected sex with Yas means there could be a possible illegitimate Rob-Yas baby? All the Jesse Bloom callouts make me think we might get a return of Jay Duplass, who remains one of my favorite characters to date. Will season four be in New York, following Harper? (And can we have more Harper, please? Myha’la is such a good actor; I would like to see her do more on-screen next season.) Finally, please consider this my plea for Yasmin’s wedding to be shown in the season four premiere.
• In the double-Gemini chaos mode, I wonder if we’ll ditch this cast of characters entirely in season four and take a whole new set of new grads starting up at Al-Miraj Pierpoint, Skins style. Or maybe we’ll launch a few decades into the future, and a mini Hanani-Spearing will be cutting their teeth on the trading floor?
• Everyone, it’s been such fun watching this season with you. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did. I don’t know how we’ll pass our time while we wait for season four, but I can say genuinely that I’m hopeful we get to experience that together whenever it should come out. Thanks so much for reading and engaging.
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