Industry ends season 3 with a slew of beginnings

Starting your season finale with the following bit of dialogue is but one of the reasons we should all toast Industry as one of the best series of post-Peak TV: “So, I’m sure you’ve all been programmed to expect something radical. But what I have here for you today is nothing new at all.” At a time when streamers and networks are feeding us shows we can half-watch while we scroll, stuff meant to merely complement what’s on our second screen, this HBO drama insists on our rapt attention with every line, every frame, every scene. That’s not novel yet it does feel radical.

Robert (Harry Lawtey) is not talking about 21st-century television but he may as well be. Salesmanship, as he’s found, has little to do with the product you’re selling. But we’ll get to what he’s selling later. (The episode is circular in structure, with Robert’s words serving as the frame of what this finale achieves.) What’s important to know is that this installment is anchored by the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It’d be an argument for the resilience of the system we call capitalism, but again and again we’re shown that such a system only stays in place because a select number of folks (mainly but not exclusively men) insists on keeping it there—some for their benefit, others for their amusement, plenty for both.

And so, while the episode begins with a changing of the guard at Pierpoint—sorry, what’s soon to be Al-M’iraj Pierpoint—don’t be fooled by the cosmetic changes afoot. Sure, as Eric (Ken Leung) puts it to the Pierpoint employees once the sale to Ali’s team is all but complete, what they’re witnessing is history in the making (“Pierpoint’s history is a history of change,” as he puts it) but that’s all smoke and mirrors, a salesman’s pitch that’s as stale as it is effective: “Money is peace,” he waxes on. “Money is civilization. The end of the story is money.” All of those words are little else. It’s clear Pierpoint is on the precipice of a change, and no matter how well Eric sells this pitch, enough of his employees know better than to buy into his mythologizing. It’s why Rishi (Sagar Radia) bolts, burning bridges as opposed to going across them (as Eric had suggested they all do), and immediately gets to work trying to get hired by Harper (Myha’la) and ostensibly trying to do the same for Sweetpea and Anraj (Miriam Petch and Irfan Shamji).

For if the cruise ship of an institution that is Pierpoint seems headed for some major changes, the nimble operation led by Harper and Petra (Sarah Goldberg) seems ready-made to withstand the every fickle winds of modern capitalism. It would have helped if Leviathan Alpha had made the kind of money they’d hoped to with the Pierpoint short, but as we learn, Petra pulled the plug on the short at the right time (from an ethical standpoint) and also, of course, at the very worst time (from a financial one): They made money on the short but not exorbitant amounts of it—all because she opted to do the right thing (much to Harper and Otto Mostyn’s dismay).

Harper and Petra may have come to a begrudging detente (“No more unilateral decisions,” they agree) but for those of us who know Harper, it would only be a matter of time before she needed out from what feels like a satisfying, well-oiled machine of an enterprise. She loves the hunt too much. She’s a predator—or likes to think of herself as one. Aggression and self-defense have become indistinguishable for her.

Which is why it was a joy (a cruel one, no doubt) to watch her humiliate Rishi. During what he’d hoped would be a friendly interview for a job he desperately needs (gambler that he is), Harper shows her teeth, asking him to point out exactly when Eric had first decided to axe her (at Rishi’s wedding, he shares, relishing throwing someone else under the bus). She eggs him on to talk about how the only people that succeed at what they do are psychopaths with predatory instincts…all before inviting Sweetpea(!) to sit in on the interview and reveal, of course, that there was no way she’d hire him. “Time’s up,” he’s told, a final flourish where you can see him at a loss for what to do. And as he pleads, Sweetpea delivers the cruelest and realest line of them all: “You make it very hard to give a fuck.” It’s a delicious scene, made all the more thrilling for how simply it’s shot. (That frame of Harper awash in grays and blacks, with only the green grapes giving it a pop of color? Divine.)

This all happens at the same time as Rob and Yas (Marisa Abela) find themselves at an estate in the country owned by Henry’s uncle. It’s not quite what was on the schedule during their road trip but Yas has a way of keeping plenty of plates spinning. Instead of returning to London, Yas suggests to Rob they stop by there. Henry (Kit Harington), she coyly says, has invited them over. She doesn’t really share that she’d called him perhaps with the sole intention of reconnecting, as the Hanani publishing lawsuit is still an annoyance she’s trying to defuse and Henry’s Viscount uncle (you know, the one who controls an entire media conglomerate) may come in handy.

Rob, though, puppy-eyed as he is by this now sweeter, gentler Yas, agrees to the detour, not knowing, perhaps, what he truly got himself into. He gets to suffer through Henry’s latest transformation (he’s seen the light and wants now to dedicate his life to public service!) and is only slightly baffled when he realizes they won’t just stop by. They’re asked to stay through the weekend for the birthday party being thrown for Viscount Norton (Andrew Havill). Initially, it seems like the weekend in this lavish estate (think Downton) may well play backdrop to the budding romance between the young (ex) Pierpoint  employees. And for a while, we are thrown into a loving montage where it might seem like Yas will forsake all she’s ever had to make a life with the tender working-class boy who’s been so good to her.

It’s not that simple. After seeing Henry at night and calling him out on his bullshit (she’s not buying his rebrand), she wakes up early and has a fortuitous conversation with Norton. Serving as a fatherly figure who nevertheless has to reveal who her own father was (an abuser), he’s kind and gentle, telling her perhaps what she’s long longed to hear: “That has nothing to do with you,” he tells Yas.

What follows (her choosing to gallivant with Rob around the estate, giving us a pastoral vision of their idyllic romance) feels almost too good to be true. I kept expecting it to be a daydream. That’s how jarring it felt—and looked. No two other characters could make a line like “cum for me” feel so romantic. That they cap with twinned “I love you”s almost had me believing Yas would finally change.

Myha’la (Photo: Simon Ridgway/HBO)

Alas, in true Industry form, that all set us up a shocker. Almost immediately, Yas heads to Henry’s room where, in purely practical terms, she lays out why the two should become (go back to being) an item. She’s thinking, of course, about what his uncle told her about being protective of his family…and how he’d hoped Yas’ influence would better his nephew. Sealing such a deal with Henry is a way of keeping the press on her side once the Hanani scandal goes supernova (as it will since she’s refusing to play nice with everyone at the publishing house who’d hoped she’d take the fall for them).

That’s how, by the time the birthday party dinner gets going, Rob learns they’ve gotten engaged(!). How gorgeous and heartrending is the image of the two of them alone at that dinner table, silently accepting what Yas has done? The way the scene is shot, which has us going back and forth between the dinner and the proposal (with sweeping, choral arrangements making the moment feel all the grander), is beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measure. It’s a marriage of convenience, a Jane Austen plot twist with 21st-century trappings. For Yas knows she’s the one gaining more here. (“But Henry,” she cautions him, “I deserve everything.”) 

Does she love Henry? Was she honest when she told Rob she loved him? “I’m good at making people feel like I love them,” she’d told Robert bluntly. “But I don’t know that I have.” It’s unclear if that’s still true. Which makes her decision all the sadder.

And so Harper and Yas (and Eric, who is unceremoniously sacked by the new brass at Al-M’iraj Pierpoint) have to face fresh new starts. Yas fits right into the role of would-be bride. (She’s hired the boat girl! How much of a sadist must she be and/or how selfless can she think herself to be?) Meanwhile, Harper clearly struggles with her work with Petra. She’s bored. Content. Which is not her style. It’s fitting that she connects with Mostyn and pitches him a new firm where she’ll use “forensic accounting and corporate espionage” (her actual words) to short “bad” actors that will likely shield them from criminal suspicions even though what she’s proposing is obviously unethical and illegal.

In the end, it all comes down to Harper’s relationship with Eric. As they talk on the phone (he on an empty trading floor, she on the streets of London), there’s a brutal honesty between them. 

“Being wealthy isn’t the same as being loved,” Eric tells her (or himself?). 

“But most of the time it’s close enough?” she wonders (to herself?). 

The question is left hanging, which is what eventually brings us back to Henry’s pitch. He’s left for the U.S. and is doing the same—only not.

Where does Industry go from here? With a confirmed season four coming, it’s clear we didn’t just witness an ending but a myriad of beginnings: Jesse Bloom is out of prison. Mostyn and Harper are wholly in cahoots. Rob made quite the move. Yas and Henry seem to want to make their marriage work. Eric is flush with money and nowhere to go… Pierpoint may be over but the tenets of Industry remain, and I, for one, cannot wait to see how these various plot threads are spun next season.

Stray observations

• • How did Industry just off one of its characters in the most Tarantino way possible?! R.I.P. Diana (and also Rishi’s sanity, arguably). We could say it felt ripped from a different kind of show but it also felt of a piece with a storyline that could only ever end in such violence.
• • Fun fact: I had to Google whether “Whizz Wheels” was a real rental car company. 
• • Is “prosciutto money” the most insufferable wealth euphemism you ever did hear?
• • “Both Buckleys. No Vidals in the room” has to be the nichest burn Mostyn could’ve drummed up when describing Harper and Petra. And in case the reference went over your head, may I suggest the 2015 doc Best Of Enemies?
• • “Ugh. All these classically educated guys hide their thuggishness behind their verbosity and tailoring”—Petra’s best line all season. 
• • I may become a one-man FYC campaigner for all things Industry. But beyond the stellar writing/directing/acting, I need the Emmys, who have ignored the HBO series in its past two seasons, to see how fabulous the show’s costume design, art direction, editing, and score is.
• • “I love a woman who doesn’t leave money on the table” — Harper on Sweetpea’s extracurriculars. 
• •  Gotta love a good Julie Andrews reference: “Thoroughly Modern Lady Muck” is one heck of a headline.