‘Industry’ Season 4 Review: New Players, Bigger Risks (HBO Max)

Over the course of its first three seasons, Industry steadily established itself as one of HBO’s sharpest and most respected series, offering a harsh, almost clinical look at the world of international finance. What it never quite achieved, though, was broad popularity—or at least not in the way Succession did, despite covering a similar ecosystem and sharing more than a few thematic overlaps. What separates one from the other? You could point to lightness, humor, and character charisma—elements that Succession embraced openly and that Industry has always treated in a far more tangled, resistant way. My sense is that what has kept the series created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay from breaking through in a bigger way is the sheer distance between the sealed-off, pitch-dark world its characters inhabit and, well, the other 99.9 percent of the planet.

In its fourth season, the show’s creators clearly set out—successfully, to a degree—to build bridges between that insular universe and the lives of ordinary mortals. They do so by pushing the drama even further, into something almost operatic in its details and implications, dealing head-on with issues that go far beyond business deals and financial maneuvering. By shifting the focus toward emotions and moving the barrage of financial jargon into the background (it’s still there, but you can now follow what’s happening even if you have no idea what on earth they’re talking about most of the time), Industry becomes more accessible. If you want to call it that, more soap-operatic. And unquestionably more entertaining.

What the series still seems incapable of fixing, however, is the lack of empathy generated by almost everyone who passes through it—from its two central protagonists to the surrounding circles of power: businessmen, politicians, billionaires, aristocrats. Harper Stern (Myha’la) and Yasmin Hanani (Marisa Abela) were never exactly innocent to begin with, but the levels of cynicism, coercion, sadism, cruelty, narcissism, and outright violence—both emotional and economic—that they display turn them into deeply monstrous figures. Even when the script makes an effort to frame them as victims of various forms of violence—familial, racial, social, physical—there are behaviors that become impossible to tolerate, even when applied to the most “broken” people imaginable.

That’s a hard place to escape when watching Industry’s fourth season. It’s difficult to feel joy or genuine concern when either of them goes through something major or life-altering. For all their differences, Harper and Yasmin are so cold, calculating, and at times downright ugly that real connection is elusive—unless you happen to see your own behavior reflected in theirs. I don’t doubt that the world they inhabit runs on these kinds of codes, but Industry isn’t a documentary. At the very least, you should be able to empathize, even partially, with how its characters act and the choices they make. Here, that rarely happens.

And it’s not for lack of trying. If anything, the fourth season introduces a wave of new characters that makes the two women look almost like “poor creatures” by comparison. So much changes that, at times, it feels like you’re watching a different series altogether. Spoilers up through season three and the first two episodes of season four. Harper starts the season clashing with her current boss at the asset management firm where she works, decides to walk away, calls the now-retired Eric (Ken Leung), and sets up her own operation—one of those outfits that scrutinize companies, bet on their collapse, and make money for investors when the stock falls. Yasmin, meanwhile, is dealing with the emotional breakdown of her husband, Sir Henry (Kit Harington), who has just lost a local election and finds himself adrift at 40—the same age at which his father took his own life.

Running alongside their stories, Industry introduces a new set of players. Chief among them is a company called Tender, a fintech offering digital wallet and payment services, eager to distance itself from the slightly grubby ecosystem around it (they’re tied to a controversial OnlyFans-like company) and firmly in the sights of the current Labour government. Led by a group that looks suspicious from their very first scene—Max Minghella’s Whitney is the brains of the operation, but he’s hardly alone, and they’re linked to an Austrian bank with a Nazi past—, Tender becomes the season’s main battlefield. Armed with a piece of circulating information and aided by a financial journalist investigating the company (Charlie Heaton, finally playing someone his actual age after years as the perpetual teen on Stranger Things), Harper takes them on as prey, aiming to profit from their downfall. At the same time, Whitney persuades Yasmin and Henry to join Tender in key roles, setting the stage for a renewed clash between these longtime frenemies.

From there, the season spirals into a series of dramatic, explosive, and chaotic situations involving everything from family trauma to child abuse, from sexual perversion to criminal activity, from Russian mafias to corrupt politicians, from domestic violence to the murkiest dealings of unscrupulous businessmen. Each battle opens doors that lead less to resolution than to darker, more ominous corridors, and almost every situation brings out the worst in people. As is now customary, nearly everyone comes equipped with some personal trauma meant to explain their behavior—but explanation is not justification. Monstrosity isn’t just inherited. It’s also practiced.

Fueled by these escalating tensions, Industry has edged closer to a more classical form of television storytelling—the kind that makes you immediately want to watch the next episode to see how the previous cliffhanger resolves, where everything feels like a matter of life and death. Guest stars also appear, including Kiernan Shipka—the now very grown-up actress once known as Don Draper’s daughter on Mad Men—whose presence is bound to spark conversation. Along with her come other familiar tools of traditional TV drama, devices the creators largely avoided in the first two seasons and began cautiously flirting with in the third. What they still haven’t managed to resolve, and what continues to keep the show at arm’s length from that classicism it occasionally seeks, is the emotional distance created by its characters. They suffer, they feel, they face life-or-death situations. Yet very little of it crosses the ethical, moral, and economic barrier that separates their world from ours.