Summary
Industry returns for Season 3 firing on all cylinders, with Kit Harington providing a fresh burst of debauched energy to an already deeply dysfunctional show.
Industry has always been good, but in Season 3 it’s exceptional. Episode 1, “Il Mattino ha L’Oro in Boca” — an Italian phrase meaning “the morning has gold in its mouth” — is a tour de force of a premiere that includes a couple of standout sequences that rank among the show’s best-ever, especially a coked-out conversation leaden with double meanings that should win Ken Leung an Emmy.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There is a lot going on in this episode, and a lot of it is related to Season 2 and requires a bit of explaining, so let’s break down everything that happened in comfortable layman’s terms.
Pierpoint & Co. Is Going Green
On a macro level, the most significant thing to keep in mind here is that Pierpoint is trying to go green — a private equity strategy described by some of the financial old guard as “greenwashing” or “woke investing” — by pumping up the value of forward-thinking, progressive companies. The irony, of course, is that they’re doing this exclusively to make money.
But, theoretically, the companies and the people they serve also benefit. Of particular interest here is Lumi, a green energy firm fronted by Sir Henry Muck, an extremely wealthy and slightly unhinged tech bro played by Kit Harington. When the premiere properly picks up, Lumi is about to go public with Pierpoint’s backing, which makes for a killer ticking clock device as everyone with a vested interest — which is everyone — waits to see the opening share price.
As mentioned, this affects pretty much everyone, so let’s break it down character by character.
Eric
The good news is that Eric has finally made partner. The bad news is that he’s spiraling out of control professionally and personally.
One of the first things Eric is told by his fellow higher-ups is that he needs to fire someone for no reason to prove he can make tough decisions. So, this is another thing that hangs over the entire episode, since he has several viable candidates, but ends up choosing the least obvious and most ruthless by the end.
Meanwhile, Eric’s wife has left him. In the pain of the separation, he turned to Kenny, of all people, for support, and has developed a surprisingly good relationship with him. But it takes less than one episode for Eric to fall off the wagon, resume drinking, and indulge in cocaine for “the first time since 9/11”.
In a heart-to-heart with Yasmin, who he drags into debauchery with him, we learn that Eric is a bit regretful about showing a vulnerable side to Kenny. We can also tell that he still has a morbid fascination with Harper, who we’ll get to in a bit. Needless to say, when he arrives on the trading floor the next morning — where his wife has dropped off the kids he hasn’t seen in weeks, just before Lumi is about to hit the stock exchange — he fires Kenny, not Yasmin or Robert as he initially intended. “I am a man. I am relentless,” he repeats to himself, while he tries to find a babysitter for his kids.
Yasmin
Yasmin, probably thanks to her work in Back to Black, has essentially replaced Harper as the focal character in Industry Season 3, and Episode 1 puts her through the wringer in a big way.
When we first see her in a six-weeks-earlier prologue, she’s aboard her father’s party yacht, Lady Yasmin, where she catches the old man in the 69 position with a pregnant deckhand. She leaves, disgusted, though a later flashback suggests something even more traumatic than what she witnessed might have happened immediately after.
Back in London Yas is being hounded by the press because her dad has disappeared and she’s on the hook for his long-time embezzlement. Her job’s at risk, her reputation is in tatters, and she’s barely holding things together. Naturally, she gets a call from a Lumi investor the second she gets into work and is privy to a conversation that Lumi may have been fiddling the books on the eve of being publicly traded — a revelation that she, Kenny, and ultimately Eric decide to downplay despite the accusations being valid in the hopes of selling shares for huge profit on opening day.
Later, Henry Muck calls Yas on her private number — which he claims he got from Robert, though Robert claims he gave him her work number — and invites her to meet him. She does, where he’s playing Fives — basically squash with gloved hands instead of racquets — in the dingy basement of a weird manor with his uncle Alexander, who runs the newspapers that have been relentlessly slandering Yas and her father, and his godfather Otto, who tells Yas that his dad owed a substantial sum of money to their club and that she’s now going to have to foot the bill.
Things aren’t going well for Yasmin, in other words.
Industry | Image via HBO
Harper
There isn’t much going on with Harper in Episode 1. Thanks to Yas, she has managed to secure a new job at a hedge fund called FutureDawn, where she’s essentially working as a PA to the woman in charge while buttering up another higher-up named Petra and sending unappreciated nudes to her nonentity boyfriend, Dave.
Harper still lives with Yasmin and Robert and her frenemy relationship with the former is at an absolute boiling point, but there will presumably be much more to unpack in this regard in later episodes.
Robert
And finally we arrive at Robert. Now sober, living with Yas, in a seemingly stable relationship with Venetia, and in the valuable position of managing Henry Muck personally on behalf of Pierpoint, thinks seem to be looking up for him.
But no such luck. Despite his stability, Rob is still sneaking out to spend the night with Nicole, with whom he has a very transactional sexual relationship. But for reasons he can’t articulate, he regularly spends the night there after, and on this occasion he wakes up to find her dead next to him, blood trickling from one of her nostrils.
We don’t know why Nicole died — I don’t think Robert is on the hook for it, since he calls the police immediately and is allowed to go into work straight after. But despite not being a suspect, the death rocks him. He breaks down on the trading floor, prompting Eric to cruelly give him one of those “I am a man, I am relentless” pep talks.
It’s crushing to see everyone turn away in disgust when Robert showcases some genuine emotion. He is truly alone, and the only think he has left to cling to is work. So, he does as he’s told, and he cosies up to Muck as the clock counts down on the opening ball and Lumi’s debuting share price.
And just like that, the power goes out, seemingly all across London. It’s a very sudden and unexpected cliffhanger that throws the premiere, which had already built to a chaotic fever pitch, into complete disarray.
Whatever might happen next?
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