So, here we are. Industry Season 4 has finally come to a close, and as it has, the show has dropped a couple more bombshells about Tender, finance, and Jeffrey Epstein.
What? Yes, you read all of that right. This season, we’ve had to deal with Hitler sympathisers, glory holes and people jumping off balconies to escape the police, as well as the revelation that, for the rich, morality only comes in shades of grey.
As it turns out, everybody is worse (and more morally corrupt) than you thought. And with the show bowing out on an explosive, emotionally devastating high, it’s time to unpack the ending.
Tender is gone
Episode eight, titled Both, And, opens with Tender on its knees. Harper (Myha’la) and Eric (Ken Leung)’s plan to expose how the firm isn’t what it says it is has paid dividends, and we open with Labour minister Jennifer (Amy James-Kelly) sitting on a talk show panel, trying to explain the government’s relationship with the now-defunct app.
Harper is over the moon because she’s now a multi-millionaire. It’s a big win for her, given that she basically bet her entire career on Tender’s stock being overvalued; on the other hand, Yasmin (Marisa Abela) is desperate.
She immediately asks husband Henry Muck (Kit Harington) for a divorce, the better to distance herself from the blazing bonfire happening at Tender HQ. But Henry is in deep trouble of his own – he is facing jail time for his role as COO.
Fortunately for him, Whitney Halberstrom (Max Minghella) has a way out. Or does he? Whitney hints to Henry that he’s actually involved with the Russians, and offers him a fake Lithuanian passport and a route out of the country.
Henry, being a “proper Englishman,” freaks out and throws the fake passport in Whitney’s face. “I’d rather die as me than run away as you,” he says, and chooses jail instead. Kind of: by the end of the episode, we see him drinking and fishing in the countryside, only with an ankle monitor on. Essentially, the rich have gotten away with it yet again.
The downfall of Yasmin
Yasmin, on the other hand, is scrabbling around for ways to survive. Her solution is to fall in with Sebastian Stefanowicz (Edward Holcroft) and his political party, which rather resembles the real Reform UK.
She organises a meeting between him and Henry’s uncle, Alexander, and soon enough, Harper finds herself invited to a campaign dinner in Paris, along with Kwabena. The pair have a disagreement: Kwabena tells Harper he heard stories of Yasmin being a “sadist” at school, and refuses to come to the dinner.
Yasmin ends up seating Harper next to the Nazi sympathisers, Moritz-Hunter Bauer and his mother Johanna – you know, the ones who had a Hitler painting in their Austrian chateau. Naturally, Harper is uncomfortable, and rightly so. She later tells Yasmin that they looked at her as though they wanted to “skin” her, but despite a flash of regret on Yasmin’s part, she presses on regardless.
We then find out that Yasmin has gone one step further and completely embraced the darkness. At the end of the meal, her former maid, Molly, is led into the room, along with Dolly (the underage girl Eric was sleeping with) and Hayley.
She has created a honeytrap of her own, using escorts like Hayley (Kiernan Shipka) to seduce and gather compromising footage of her own guests. Harper is appalled, but Yasmin is on a mission to convert Harper to her way of thinking, telling her that she’s giving the girls social access they would never otherwise have.
To convince her, Yasmin shows her the footage of former mentor Eric sleeping with the underage escort, telling her that Eric also knowingly slept with an underage girl, which is a lie. “The world is not exploitation or opportunity,” she tells Harper. “It's both, and!”
It’s all very Ghislaine Maxwell, and we see Harper make one more attempt to sway Yasmin from the path she’s been taking.
"If you have cared about me at all ever, you will take my fucking hand", she says.
“I'm sorry,” Yasmin replies. “The world is showing you what it is.” As Harper leaves, she attempts to convince Dolly to leave with her, but is unsuccessful. It looks like the pair have split up for good, once more, and the scene ends with Harper and Kwabena having a heart-to-heart about their situationship.
Harper on top
The series ends with Harper giving a journalist an interview on her private jet. She’s made it, but what’s more interesting is how Harper has chosen to open herself up to her emotions rather than turn away from them.
This season, she’s embraced her vulnerabilities and her relationships with Sweetpea (Miriam Petche) and Kwabena (Tobeeh Jimoh) rather than running from them, as Yasmin has. As it turns out, Harper does have a moral compass of sorts, as well as friends – and it’s Yasmin who’s utterly alone.
“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,” Harper coyly replies.
Will there be another season?
Yes, fortunately. The show even hints at it in the final scene, where the air stewardess asks Harper if she’d like another G&T.
“Are you done?” she asks. It’s a subtle joke from the showrunners; of course, Harper is never done.
“It was like the Mad Men [S5] 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," Konrad Kay, one of the show’s creators, told the Toolkit podcast. “Of course, the loop is going to start again. It was that kind of ending.”
We’ve even had a first look at the new season via a teaser image that shows lines of cocaine being racked up on Henry and Yasmin’s wedding photo. Oof.
Industry Season 4 is streaming now on BBC One and iPlayer
