It's all "Smoke And Mirrors" on this week's Industry

To say our economy is a made-up system is reassuring and frightening in equal measure. The work Yas (Marisa Abela), Rob (Harry Lawtey), Eric (Ken Leung), and Harper (Myha’la) do on any given day rests on this conviction. As Eric puts it to Yas while the Lumi launch is inadvertently thrown into chaos (by that blackout that greeted its public IPO launch), “This is all smoke and mirrors. But it is indivisible from reality.” You make reality, he tells her, which is a great pep talk as well as a dour vision of how the modern global economy works—at the whims of petty men and women like Eric and Yas, like rich boy CEO Henry (Kit Harington) and socially conscious investor Anna (Elena Saurel), who find themselves struck between the world they see and the one they wish to create, the profits they already make and the money they so desperately want to exponentially multiply.  

It’s a rather bleak outlook on the world and our economy—but one that, as ever in Industry, gets laced with scenes that toggle between tragedy and farce with such ease that you’re constantly left wondering how a show about stock trading could be this insightful and funny at the same time. Yet here we are, going strong as its third season unspools against the backdrop of Henry’s company, Lumi, going public and setting the stage for conversations around responsible investment, privileged spoiled brats, and the uncaring men and women late-stage capitalism insists on producing.

As London quickly bounces back from the blackout, the folks at Pierpoint are scrambling to right that Lumi public trading ship—which is challenging, what with Eric having fired Kenny (Conor MacNeill) on a whim and both Yas (after a coke-fueled evening) and Rob (after seeing Nicole’s dead body that very morning) trying to just get through the day. But try they must, even as Otto Mostyn (Roger Barclay) calls to rankle Yas further, causing her to faint all but on the spot. Just don’t expect Eric to be forgiving: “You wanna know what’s worse than a ringing phone?” he bellows at her. “SILENCE!”

Meanwhile, at what was supposed to be a crowning moment for Lumi’s founder and CEO, we get to witness how quickly Henry’s affable facade can break. As Henry and Rob head back to the Lumi offices to regroup after what feels like a spectacular debacle that’s resulting in an ever shrinking valuation, Henry is panicked yet composed. His smile may show he’s fine but his eyes are letting us know that he’s anything but—so much so that he begins making ever more irrational choices, including the decision to talk to the press (an idea Rob rightly thinks is the wrong approach): “I respect the man in the street, not the man in the office,” he tells a friendly reporter over Zoom, inadvertently admitting that smart investors had, perhaps, bailed on Lumi ahead of that morning, a quote that ends up sending Lumi stock into a downward spiral, with everyone at Pierpoint trying desperately to keep it from hemorrhaging.

Rob knows how bad it’s all looking—for Lumi and for himself. It’s enough to embolden him to finally confront Henry, who finds himself adrift in his office’s children’s play area, his eyes glazed with what could have been, as if he were seeing his righteous plans going down in a roaring blaze that would bring no one glory. Their confrontation is arguably the highlight of the episode, with working class Rob getting overly emotional in attacking Henry’s moneyed privileged upbringing: “Your wins are yours, and your losses are someone else’s problems,” he yells at him. Which leads to the best line of the episode: “Why don’t you just call me a posh cunt?” Henry taunts him. (Rob won’t, of course.He’d rather let everyone else call Henry that behind his back.) 

Did any of us have “Rob and Henry fight each other with a sunflower plushie” on our Industry season three bingo card? I didn’t think so. And yet how refreshing to find such class warfare be so violently depicted here. Is Rob really a parasite who can’t back up his own high-horse moralizing? Is Henry not any better for wanting to make a buck and the world a better place at the same time? Does it make a difference, given that this fight is but a plaything for them both with little consequence other than bruised egos all around? 

Then again, egos, bruised or otherwise, are precisely what make up the world of finance—or at least the world of Industry. For while Lumi stock plummets as Henry’s foibles become fodder for insider gossip and tabloid speculation, Anna over at FutureDawn Partners is having a bit of a meltdown herself. She’s invested heavily in Lumi, and she’s trying not to panic once she sees those numbers slowly falling. To make matters worse, Petra (Sarah Goldberg) is cozying up to Harper, eager to get her input on ways to hedge their investments against their Lumi exposure (bet on natural gas and oil, obviously). Petra knows better than to do this with Anna’s blessing so she does so without consulting her, with Harper using her Pierpoint intel to get Yas and a junior trader to get a solid price on those stocks. 

Sarah Goldberg (Photo: Simon Ridgway/HBO)

But once Anna finds out…well, all hell breaks loose. She insists she expected better from Petra. They are friends! She’s her kid’s godmother! But even against all that bluster, Petra remains cool, calm, and collected. “Just be a fucking person!” Anna yells at her, hoping to get her to explain why she’d so defy the firm’s mission. Petra, of course, thinks she’s in the right. She’s unmoved by this emotional outburst. She’s tired of losing money and of being guided not by profitable decisions but by make-believe idealism. Before Anna storms off (having disconnected Petra’s keyboard and taking it with her), she turns to Harper, who was forced to witness the entire confrontation: “You are everything everyone said you were.” A sick burn and maybe, as Petra had surmised, an unwitting vote of confidence.

Left alone, Harper calls up Pierpoint. Eric picks up. She doesn’t say a thing. 

Back at Lumi, the board is ready to sit Henry down and give him a talking to, not that he’ll relent that easily. He puts on his signature smug smile, and, with the show’s score revving up the tension in the room, we see how his abrasive charm has gotten him this far. What follows is all machinations designed to prevent Lumi from spectacularly bombing. And it’s all Yas’ idea: Figuring out that Otto Mostyn (Roger Barclay) is meeting with the guy from British Electric in their oh-so-exclusive club, she arranges for Rob and Henry (now patched up after the spoiled rich CEO apologizes, as does Rob) to meet them and, in a canny bit of misdirect, have them photographed together by paparazzi she’d called on herself who remain famished for paps of the “Embezzler Heiress.” Eric may chide Yas for such tricks—which teeter ever so close into unethical territory—but it may be what helps Lumi recover.

And it’s enough to get her an invite from Henry. And it’s so much a date as it is a brazen seduction, which Yas mostly uses to her advantage. Knowing he’s into piss play (yes, really), she guides him to the bathroom where she rebuffs him yet lets him remain there as she hops in a stall to pee. It’s enough to drive him wild. Why else would he run but leave her a very expensive wine bottle the waiter refuses to uncork for her given how rare and vintage it is?

But Yas is ready to celebrate.She uncorks it herself right outside and drinks it with abandon, which leads us into a…FLASHBACK! 

We are now back in Mr. Hanani’s boat and see how he’d tried to patch things up with Yas. This segues to the brief physical altercation we’d glimpsed at last week (which ended with her getting wine thrown on her). But there’s a twist: Harper was there as well. But before her memory could give us more to work with, she’s yanked back to the present where a guy on the bus is snapping pics of her drinking that vintage wine. She then scurries off into the night, trying to put it all behind her. 

Stray observations

• • Do we think Rob’s ever going to tell anyone about Nicole? Or is he going to let his grief curdle inside him? Also, what is there to make of that awkward encounter between him and Nicole’s teenage(!) daughter?
• • Naming your tabloid-obsessed, influencer-coded Gen Z character “Sweetpea Golightly” (played by Miriam Petche) is so hilarious to me.
• • Of course Lumi would have a “no jackets policy.”
• • As anyone who watched Barry will tell you, Sarah Goldberg is a brilliant actor—and so it’s no surprise to find her making Petra such a deliciously fascinating character, a kind of no-nonsense trader who values profit, yes, but also a winning attitude that’s not quite as soft as Anna’s and not quite cruel as Eric’s, nor as insidious as Harper’s own. She may be uncaring but she’s not dispassionate.
• • Speaking of Petra, she may yet prove to be a great ally to Harper: “There is nothing cruel or inhuman about rational selfishness,” she tells her. But she wants Harper to rein in the glee she gets from sticking it to Pierpoint. It’s good advice and perhaps an opening to a more fruitful relationship. Oh, but FYI, she knows Harper didn’t graduate. It’s unclear whether it’s phrased as a threat or an offering—maybe both at the same time.