Summary
Back and as depraved as ever, Industry Season 4 kicks off with a necessarily slower premiere as the new status quo is established.
You might recall the ending of Industry Season 3, and if you’re particularly asture you might recall that it really did feel like a proper, no take-back ending. Pierpoint is gone. Eric has retired. Harper got the fund she always wanted. With this in mind, it’s kind of a surprise that Season 4 is here, but throughout Episode 1, “Paypal of Bukkake”, it becomes obvious that there has been a necessary reinvention. And it’s a pretty comprehensive one, which is why the premiere devotes virtually all of its hour-long runtime to establishing it properly.
This includes checking in with all of the major characters — the ones who have returned, anyway; Robert is sadly absent — and figuring out where they’re at these days. There’s a new Labour government in the U.K., and that government is wheeling out some particularly Orwellian policies about online safety that are threatening to cost people a lot of money — or make them a lot of money, depending on where they’re standing when the die is cast. All the key players need to get themselves in the right position, and this episode is about getting them there. It isn’t masterfully tense in the way Industry sometimes can be, but it’s still pretty damn good for such a functional chapter.
New Blood
Curiously enough, the season opens not with any familiar faces, but with two new characters. A young-ish man locks eyes with a young-ish woman across the dancefloor of a crowded nightclub. They take some drugs, dance, and go home together, as people in nightclubs tend to. Whatever they do with each other is uncharacteristically kept off-screen. But it’s the next morning when things go wrong.
The man is Jim Dycker, a journalist. The woman is Haley Clay, assistant to the man who will play one of the key roles of this season. His previous assistant disappeared from public view in mysterious circumstances. Jim has been talking to her. He’s looking to find out more about Haley’s boss, Whitney Halberstram, who we will later learn is the CFO of Tender, a payment processing company that made its name in gray markets like gambling and pornography. Needless to say, Haley isn’t very happy about the deception and throws Jim out.
With nobody else to turn to with the power to do anything about what may or may not be going on with Tender, Jim turns to the show’s perennial disruptor, Harper Stern. But we’ll get to that.
Tender Resignation
The slightly provocative title of this episode, “Paypal of Bukkake”, is an offhanded reference to Tender. Some important context: The new Labour government is planning to pass some online safety legislation that would mandate age verification when using purportedly “adult” content on the internet, which would drastically affect the bottom line of companies with a financial stake in some of the shadier corners of the web. That includes Tender, who are the payment processor of choice for Siren, a fictional OnlyFans-style website that has become extraordinarily popular.
Tender’s CEO, Jonah, wants to stay the course and retain the company’s unique position, but the CFO, Whitney, wants to pivot away from adult content and rebrand Tender as a kind of “bank killer” that’ll reshape the financial markets. Jonah and Whitney have been best friends and business partners since college, but the former is happy with his lot, while the latter has the kind of ambition that extends beyond spending company money on alcohol, drugs, and women. So, Whitney presents Jonah with a bit of an ultimatum, although it’s disguised as a conversation, and when he realizes that Jonah is never going to see his point of view, he pulls the trigger on having him ousted as CEO by a board disgusted with his general sense of hygiene. Of course, Whitney also nominates himself as the interim CEO.
This comes after he has already severed the company’s relationship with Siren, so Whitney’s well on his way. For now, it isn’t entirely clear what his plans consist of, but they definitely involve cosying up to British high society — represented mostly by Yasmin, who is still engaged to Henry Muck, who is in a state of deep depression that she’s disguising as a cold he needs to get over — and the current Labour government. Whitney also has a bit of a sinister contour to him, given the missing assistant. He’ll fit right in.
Charlie Heaton in Industry Season 4 | Image via WarnerMedia
The Grass Isn’t Always Greener
This brings us to Harper, who begins Industry Season 4, Episode 1 as the queen of her own little fiefdom, a short-selling fund bankrolled by Otto Mostyn. But she’s becoming increasingly frustrated by being constantly babysat by Otto’s lackeys, who keep nixing her propositions for viable shorts. She’s big into the idea of shorting Siren, a theory she confirms by paying Rishi, whose life has evidently imploded to a considerable degree, to peep through some emails on a phone swiped from someone in the government. This is successful but causes a bit of a rumble, given she’s going off-script, and she’s also adamant about holding the position rather than cashing out at a profit since she’s just pathologically predisposed to risk.
Speaking of which, when she gets word that the LilyLara fund has put in a request to withdraw their capital, she makes the bold step of gating it, sending out a client-wide email promising a change in strategy and more lucrative short-term gains, but, crucially, cutting a lot of very rich people off from considerable amounts of their money. It’s a disastrous play. One of her clients almost dies of a stroke in her office, and Otto tells her, to her face, that the tactical play of keeping her around as a “progressive face” is no longer worth the effort. Otto has just been anointed in the House of Lords, so he can basically say whatever he wants at this point.
LilyLara turns out to be Eric’s fund, and when Harper calls him to berate him for pulling out, it turns into some sage wisdom and then, in a roundabout way, a business proposition. Harper wants to partner with Eric on a new endeavour, and since Eric’s retirement clearly isn’t satisfying him — he’s lounging around playing golf with rich dudes, one of whom, in the background, is clearly implied to be Donald Trump — he clearly considers it. But can they trust each other?
A New Alliance
Through Yas, Harper meets Whitney and talks her way into his bedroom within about five minutes. Unsurprisingly, he has some very particular kinks in that arena, which Harper is more than happy to oblige him with, one assumes because it’ll give her more leverage for later.
The next morning is when Jim calls with his proposition. Harper can’t go into detail since she’s still in Whitney’s company, but it’s clear she’ll bite. And, given Eric is waiting for her when she gets home and agrees to team up with her on their own venture, it’s equally clear that a lot of Industry Season 4 is going to be defined by Harper and Eric taking on Whitney and Tender — and perhaps the entire British government and aristocracy while they’re at it.
Sounds good to me.
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