Summary
Industry delivers another classic out-of-office episode, with the gang heading to Switzerland for more disingenuousness and moral bankruptcy than usual.
Like Succession, there’s a particular sense of excitement about an Industry episode that takes the cast abroad. There’s something about being freed from Pierpoint’s London offices that seems to compel already debauched people to act even more atrociously, and that’s certainly true of Episode 3 of Season 3, “It”. Ladies and gentlemen, Harper Stern is back doing what she does best – ruining the lives of everyone around her.
Harper was in Episode 1, “Il Mattino ha L’Oro in Boca”, and Episode 2, “Smoke and Mirrors”, but she didn’t dominate them the way she does “It”. This is like the mask coming off – not that it was ever on firmly in the first place – and her true, terrifying form being unleashed. It’s brilliant drama, but it’s not the only thing going on in Bern, Switzerland, where a conference focused on green investments in general and Lumi in particular provides a snow-capped backdrop to Eric’s midlife crisis, Rob’s ambiguous sexuality, and Yas’s… well, whatever is going on with her and Henry Muck.
All Roads Converge
“It” quickly conspires reasons to get every major character in Bern at the same time. Eric, Rob, and Yas are there representing Pierpoint and Lumi in the hopes of reversing public opinion and boosting the share price after the disastrous IPO rollout. Eric is even scheduled to sit on a panel with Henry to talk up Lumi’s theoretical value, despite its on-paper value literally tanking in real-time ever since it went public.
Needless to say, Yas’s inclusion in this trip, insisted upon by Henry, isn’t much to do with work. But more on this in a bit.
Meanwhile, Anna is heading to the conference to evangelize about the green dollar, leaving Harper and Petra behind at the FutureDawn offices – or so she thinks. After learning that Anna has reworked Petra’s contract as her portfolio manager to now include a “philosophy clause” that prevents her from investing without her say-so, she decides that the best course of action is to set up on her own with Harper at her side. But for that they’ll need some seed money to the tune of several hundreds of millions, so they head to Bern to snatch some of Anna’s investors from under her nose on the morning before the conference.
Ken Leung as Eric in Industry Season 3, Episode 3 | Image via HBO
The Night Before and The Morning After
There’s a tremendous amount of disingenuity surrounding the entire conference, but especially during the festivities on the night before the panel. It’s just a bunch of rich people pushing their own agendas and trying to line their own pockets while quietly rehearsing more amenable public-facing positions on sustainable energy. The younger attendees – like Henry’s deeply awful friend Xander – are just using it as an excuse for frivolity, while the seasoned old hands like Otto Mostyn are sneakily getting the real lay of the land.
Yas finds herself trapped between these two agendas. Xander tries to sleep with her immediately, and when she rebuffs him he publicly embarrasses her about her father and the embezzlement scandal. She knows she’s only there because Henry also wants to sleep with her, but she’s also trying to prove to Eric and Pierpoint that she’s a valuable member of the team and not just a hot nepo hire. She also wants to be a friend to Harper by giving her networking opportunities with Henry’s inner circle, presumably knowing that Harper, for all her tokenistic emotional support, is just using her like everyone else.
It’s a dilemma.
Rob, meanwhile, uses his own charms – he’s much less internally conflicted about his curb appeal than Yas is, and seems to be over Nicole – to get close to Frank Wade, a fellow attendee who plans to publish an internal analysis on Lumi that could be damning, by following him into a sauna for a candid chat. This is one of those scenes that some people will take issue with because it’s a bit needlessly provocative, since Joel Kim Booster, who plays Frank, is naked the entire time and is sat playing with himself through a good chunk of the conversation for basically no reason at all.
The Lumi Panel Is A Disaster
Industry Season 3, Episode 3 operates entirely on the basis that everyone knows the Lumi panel is going to be an unmitigated disaster, it just isn’t entirely clear how. In the end it’s a one-two punch during the conference itself that sinks the whole ship. The first is Frank’s report, which is published midway through and paints a stark picture of Lumi’s financials. The second is Harper.
After a string of laughably unsuccessful meetings, Harper goes scorched earth by taking the mic during the Q&A portion of the conference, announcing that she and Petra are starting a new fund, drawing attention to Frank’s report, and implying that the whole panel is just damage control to obscure Lumi’s disastrous launch.
And just like that, Harper has sunk an entire company, almost singlehandedly.
Petra is initially fuming that Harper going public with their new venture has tanked any chance of it getting investment from Team Green, but that was part of Harper’s plan. A knock on the door heralds the arrival of Otto Mostyn, who enters the room with a pretentious King Lear quote – ““Fortune, good night: smile once more; turn thy wheel!”, oh he’s awful – and announces he’s ready to play kingmaker for the new fund, mostly just to upset the ecological applecart.
When he’s on his way out, Otto tells Harper she has “such a progressive look”, which could be a comment on anything from the fact she’s young, a woman, Black, or has a bold haircut – knowing Otto, probably all of the above. Harper responds, “New look, same great taste.” She’s the best. And the worst, obviously.
Harper (Myha’la), Petra (Sarah Goldberg), and Yas (Marisa Abela) | Image via HBO
Harper and Yas Both Win – For Now
With Harper having somehow finessed a lucrative start to the buzziest hedge fund at the conference – she wants to call it “Leviathan”, which is terrible but pretty in-keeping with her general demeanor – she arranges a meeting with Pierpoint to have them manage things. This means a juicy commission for Yas, who did Harper a solid by leaning on Sweetpea Golightly to dig up Petra’s trading record last-minute, and a nightmare for Eric, who has to sit down with Harper the morning after spending the night with a very expensive sex worker (using the name “Robert Spearing”, which is especially hilarious when the sex worker, who’s out twenty grand, makes a huge scene while the real Rob is helping himself to the hotel’s continental breakfast.)
This is where you see the worst of Harper. She knows she has Eric backed into a corner. He can’t not take on the account, and Harper knows it, but there’s no need for her to force him to make eye contact with her the way she does. It’s a sinister power play that proves what Petra suggested in the previous episode – for Harper, this about revenge, and she’s loving every moment of it.
Amidst all this, Yas finally succumbs to Henry’s advances – but not really. In Henry opening up about the trauma he experienced over his father’s suicide and his own suicidal ideation as a child, she has clearly seen a weakness she can manipulate down the line. I refuse to believe that Yas has been won over by Henry’s charms, since he doesn’t have any – despite all his bloviating about Lumi’s cultural importance, he dumps all his stock to make a pretty penny on the current share price at the first chance he gets.
Yas and Henry finally hook up on Henry’s private plane on the way back to London, with a shellshocked Rob and Eric slipping in their AirPods in horror. If nothing else, it looks like the “nepo hire” can play the game better than any of them.
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