{"id":405503,"date":"2026-01-12T23:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/405503\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T23:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:45:10","slug":"industry-is-back-in-a-big-way-and-with-a-new-story-to-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/405503\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Industry\u2019 Is Back in a Big Way\u2014and With a New Story to Tell"},"content":{"rendered":"

TV<\/a>TV<\/a>Brain bleeds, short sales, sex toys, and board meetings: All the market indicators point to a big return for HBO\u2019s \u2018Industry.\u2019 Here\u2019s our recap of Season 4, Episode 1, \u201cPayPal of Bukkake.\u201d\"\"HBO\/Ringer illustration\"\"<\/a>By Katie Baker<\/a>Jan. 12, 3:04 am UTC \u2022 11 min\"\"<\/p>\n

If HBO\u2019s thrilling high-finance series Industry had concluded with its Season 3 finale\u2014as the show\u2019s creators once thought it might\u2014it wouldn\u2019t have been a very happy ending. It would have been a really good one, though! In that episode<\/a>, titled \u201cInfinite Largesse\u201d\u2014a reference to a Denis Johnson short story about an ad-man has-been\u2014Industry\u2019s characters conspired, kissed, regressed, blustered, held a sub rosa rendezvous down by the river, and bore witness to bloody murder. They said things like \u201cnothing comes from nothing\u201d and \u201cmoney is peace.\u201d They sold out (and tuned in<\/a>). Watching it at the time, I was simultaneously left wanting more and feeling like I\u2019d seen way too much, the mark of a top-notch goodbye.<\/p>\n

But as we now know, Industry\u2019s story didn\u2019t end there. With this weekend\u2019s Season 4 premiere, \u201cPayPal of Bukkake\u201d\u2014a reference to Peter Thiel\u2019s brainchild, and a sex act\u2014showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay have moved beyond the old Pierpoint & Co. roadshows and written a simultaneously grim and bright new beginning, one imbued with both the thrill of exploration and the discordance of jetlag. \u201cA globe-trotting, sort of conspiracy espionage thriller,\u201d is how Down described the scope and sweep of this new season to me in a recent Zoom interview. \u201cThe realm of those kind of films in the \u201990s and early noughties.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Season 4\u2019s opening hour alone takes viewers onto a druggy dance floor and a foggy golf course. It introduces new characters like Max Minghella\u2019s ambitious Whitney Halberstram, who insists that \u201cyour story begins when you start telling it,\u201d and Kiernan Shipka\u2019s inscrutable Haley Clay. It references both Austrian banks and the Ghanaian economy. And viewers get the sense this is only a glimpse; that we ain\u2019t seen nothin\u2019 yet; that the itinerary is only going to get much wilder from here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Bottom Line<\/p>\n

So, what happened in this episode?<\/p>\n

When we left off from Industry<\/a> in the fall of 2024, most of the characters were on the verge of something new and unforeseen. But even as they step briskly ahead into Season 4, it\u2019s clear that they\u2019re bound by familiar old hangups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Harper (Myhal\u2019la) was poised to start a shadowy new short-selling fund backed by the White Walker\u2013eyed Otto Mostyn, but she now finds herself bristling against both her investors and her employer. Her former boss, Eric (Ken Leung), was pushed off into unemployment with an eight-figure cheque for his troubles, but an early, cushy golf-course retirement does not feel like heaven on earth. Yasmin (Marisa Abela), who abruptly (and rudely!) got engaged at the end of last season to squirearchical dilettante\/C-suite failboi Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington), begins Season 4 by telling polite company that her man is regretfully down with a bad cold\u2014when the truth is that he\u2019s lounging aimlessly around his estate in an unbreathable bathrobe, crushing drugs between the heel of a boot and the lid of a harpsichord. Rishi (Sagar Radia), whom we last saw staring down his shattered new reality\u2014in which his own actions led to the violent death of the mother of his child\u2014is back as a fallen streetwise op, getting his dopamine hits and paychecks through fun \u2019n\u2019 flirty acts of impulse and instinct, same as it ever was.<\/p>\n

In each case, everyone is still extremely themselves. But then there are all the other themselveses: the whole batch of new characters that are just hitting the Industry scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the very beginning of \u201cPayPal of Bukkake,\u201d two of those newbies get together during one crazy night. One is a dance floor gawker played by Stranger Things\u2019 Charlie Heaton who winds up being an enterprise journalist from FinDigest named James Dycker. The other is Haley, a crazy-chill coolgirl exec assistant who made the mistake of answering some emails out of professional courtesy. And throughout the episode, two other fresh (if recognizable) faces\u2014Tender executives Whit and Jonah, played by Minghella and stoner portrayer<\/a> turned Obama staffer Kal Penn\u2014repeatedly banter and butt heads about the direction of their payment processing platform, whose clients sure do include a lot of purveyors of porn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take long before the old world of Industry and the new have well and truly collided. Harper\u2019s two minions at work are the returning ingenue Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche) and the sardonic newcomer Kwabena Bannerman (Ted Lasso\u2019s Toheeb Jimoh). Yasmin seeks to broker working harmony between Whit and an ascending politician, even as her own marriage seems to be souring. Harper and Whit scratch each other\u2019s backs, so to speak, and circle one another\u2019s bodies of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the time \u201cPayPal of Bukkake,\u201d ah, finishes, it has featured a boardroom mutiny at Tender predicated on, among other things, personal hygiene; an iPhone password being observed by Rishi\u2019s eagle eye at the pub; and a bona fide word o\u2019 the day: sesquipedalian There are sex toys and short sales; Harper and Eric getting their messed-up band back together (maybe); Harper and Yas drifting apart; and as the episode ends, Henry looming just outside of the frame as a generational chaos agent, a real toddler-in-chief capable of upending even the most elite spaces.<\/p>\n

Turns of Leverage<\/p>\n

On Industry, characters love borrowing trouble\u2014and are always up to double down. Whose bets are paying off this week, and who is in the midst of a downward spiral?<\/p>\n

Leveling up: Newcomer Whitney Halberstram spends most of this introductory episode tightening his grip on power at Tender\u2014while his now-former friend and business partner, Jonah, crashes all the way out of the C-suite. Now, might Whit have some skeletons in his closet? Almost certainly, but for the time being, they\u2019re neatly hidden somewhere behind that salmon-colored sweater and hefty strap-on. Underestimate this guy at your own boardroom peril.<\/p>\n

Credit crunched? Harper Stern can\u2019t be doing too badly when she\u2019s got that bitchin\u2019 four-piece suit, but the girl hasn\u2019t been having the best few days at the office. Between Roland\u2019s middle-management hovering, Otto\u2019s disdain, Kwabena\u2019s midcoital preoccupation with Sweetpea, the glass shards in Harper\u2019s office carpet, and the (passive-aggressive?) greeting card from her mom, she\u2019s really getting it from all angles. Can a reunion with her old mentor (and\/or a phone call with the guy from FinDigest) put things back on track?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"All images via HBO<\/p>\n

On the watch list: Is it possible for Rishi to ever regain his old trader swagger, or has he forever doomed himself to a life of paper-bagged cash transfers? And are Yasmin\u2019s ongoing machinations actually going to add value\u2014or just yield dwindling returns?<\/p>\n

Tender Offers<\/p>\n

Is that a \u201cprivate banker in your pocket,\u201d or are you just happy to see me? Here\u2019s the latest haps at Tender, the most ambitious \u201cbank killer\u201d in Canary Wharf.<\/p>\n

\u201cYOUR FUTURE IS A MOUNTAIN,\u201d it says in neon on the Tender HQ walls. (Employees love to be reminded that their day-to-day is an exposed uphill climb. But imagine the views!) \u201cTo think this all started importing dupe BAPE hoodies from Puyang,\u201d says Jonah during his and Whit\u2019s last supper, reflecting on the humble origins of their rapidly-expanding empire Whit smirks in return: \u201cMichelangelo made David,\u201d he muses. \u201cYou birthed a platform for rerouting porn payments.\u201d Whit doesn\u2019t seem like the nostalgic sort, though, and as Season 4 begins, it\u2019s clear that he\u2019s hell-bent on a pivot. What\u2019s a lot murkier is the what-to, and the why.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman perversion is a Hydra,\u201d argues Jonah, a real ball-knower when it comes to the hedonist mindset about why parting ways with horndog merchants would be tough. \u201cJerking off is recession-proof,\u201d he adds later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whit, meanwhile, seeks to trade all this licentiousness in for something more grown-up: a legit banking license that can help Tender launder its image into something more reputable. He isn\u2019t interested in aligning any longer with businesses like the OnlyFans-esque Siren (nee \u201cColonel Creampie\u201d). His vision is much grander: \u201cOur comp is no longer Stripe or PayPal,\u201d Whit says after getting the board to oust Jonah. \u201cIt\u2019s not even Chase or Goldman Sachs. We\u2019re going to be all these things and more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s all this then with the weekly trips to Africa, and this bowl-cut bro named Ferdinand who is always lurking around, and the AWOL former assistant? Also, just when did Whit become all tight with Yas? As a day-one Industry viewer I felt kind of affronted when he called her a \u201cdear friend,\u201d because I think I would know about this dear friend, thankyouverymuch. It was a lot like the feeling of squaring off against a longtime bestie\u2019s newer bizarro-buds at a wedding.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, I think these people are capable of almost anything to stop someone looking too closely,\u201d the FinDigest reporter warns Harper near the end of \u201cPayPal of Bukkake.\u201d It seems likely that we\u2019re about to find out what happens when an unstoppable force meets Harper\u2019s level of oppositional defiance.<\/p>\n

Mergers and Acquisitions<\/p>\n

Activist investor? I hardly know\u2019r! This is a judgment-free zone to discuss emerging \u2026 corporal synergies in Industry and do our due diligence on who\u2019s doin\u2019 it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While a lot of things about Industry have changed over the years, the show has consistently pitched two plot tentpoles: (1) getting rich and (2) getting laid. That still appears to be the case in Season 4. Despite the episode\u2019s title (and Industry\u2019s history), this episode does not, in fact, showcase any bodily fluids. But it does have some very choice words from Haley that I\u2019m too shy to reproduce here, and some very short shorts on that new gal pal of Eric\u2019s. Plus, there\u2019s Jonah\u2019s \u201creal pommel horse\u201d story (fittingly, I snorted), and Whit enunciating lines like \u201cebony GILF gets force-fed\u201d while glancing professorially over his glasses.<\/p>\n

And obviously, the episode also revolves around the reliably randy Harper. She schtups her new(ish?) trader, Kwabena. (Jimoh, an Industry rookie, told me over Zoom a few days ago that this scene was the first one he filmed. \u201cMy first day on set was asking Harper if we should do anal,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cI was like, that is the most Industry welcome anyone could get, isn\u2019t it?\u201d)<\/p>\n

Harper also delivers a finish him<\/a>\u2013level blow to James Ashford\u2019s ego that actually shatters glass. And with Whit\u2019s encouragement, she gets unforgettably literal with the phenomenon famously described by Michael Lewis in his seminal late-\u201980s Wall Street memoir<\/a>, Liar\u2019s Poker:<\/p>\n

To this day the phrase brings to my mind the image of an elephant\u2019s trunk swaying from side to side. Swish. Swash. Nothing in the jungle got in the way of a Big Swinging Dick. That was the prize we coveted. […] And of course, no one actually said, \u2018When I get out onto the trading floor, I\u2019m going to be a Big Swinging Dick.\u2019 It was more of a private thing. But everyone wanted to be a Big Swinging Dick, even the women. Big Swinging Dickettes.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m being honest, I actually had trouble suspending disbelief in this scene, NOT because of any Whitkinkshaming or any flaws in Myhal\u2019a\u2019s performance but because it immediately made me think about Abbi in Broad City<\/a>. You never forget your first, as they say.<\/p>\n

Watch Watch<\/p>\n

Time is a flat circle, ideally powered by quartz. Here, we examine Industry\u2019s tick-tocking timepiece(s) of the week.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the delightfully-named Dimepiece<\/a> at the end of Season 3, Down and Kay laughed that one of the faux prop watches worn on an early season of Industry left a character with \u201ca green mark\u201d on their arm. (Miss u, Harry Lawtey!) But that was then, and this is now. So the pair also shared their aspirations for featuring some real wristware this time around: \u201cSeason 4, we\u2019re going for Patek and Richard Mille,\u201d Kay said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Based on my squinting assessment of Whit\u2019s watch this week, which is hard to get a full look at but does seem a lot like Richard Mille, they were successful in achieving that particular KPI. Like the watch itself, Whit\u2019s gears are visibly turning.<\/p>\n

\"\"Get Me the Comps!<\/p>\n

On the one hand, past performance neither guarantees nor predicts future results, as the SEC requires investment firms to remind clients. On the other hand, plus \u00e7a change! Here are some of the real-world stories that might be relevant to Industry\u2019s fictional realm.<\/p>\n

On Industry: Eric brings up the megafund Bridgewater on the phone to Harper: \u201cYou want to know why people think Bridgewater is the best one in the world?\u201d he asks. \u201cIt\u2019s not underlying returns. It\u2019s \u2019cause [founder Ray] Dalio crows louder than the rest when they\u2019re holding a good position, and shuts up when they\u2019re on a bad run.\u201d<\/p>\n

IRL: Inside all of us there are two Ray Dalios. There\u2019s the titan who published<\/a> Principles, a volume of his principles, like: \u201cManaging the people who report to you should feel like \u2018skiing together.\u2019\u201d And then there\u2019s the oddball despot<\/a> featured in Rob Copeland\u2019s investigative tome The Fund\u2014who sounds like a real piece of work! In contrast to what Eric says, it doesn\u2019t seem like either Ray Dalio ever pipes the fuck down.<\/p>\n

On Industry: Team Tender 2.0 decides to cut ties with their embattled cash cow client, Siren, an OnlyFans competitor that insists, \u201cWe\u2019re not a porn company! We\u2019re an online subscription aggregator!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

IRL: I can\u2019t recommend more highly this 2011 New York feature<\/a> on \u201cThe Geek-Kings of Smut.\u201d Come for the competitive foosball circuit lore and Brazzers coaching tree<\/a>; stay for the respectable holdco names like \u201cManwin\u201d and \u201cMindGeek.\u201d Oh, and for an amazing postscript all these years later? Today I learned that PornHub is owned by<\/a>, literally, \u201cEthical Capital Partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Industry: Tender gets roughly 23 percent of its income from \u201calternative merchants\u201d\u2014the \u201ceuphemistic bull in the earning reports,\u201d per Jonah, that basically translates to: gambling and porn.<\/p>\n

IRL: In its 2018 earnings report<\/a>, the erstwhile \u201chigh-risk\u201d German payment processor Wirecard reported nearly a third of its transaction volume<\/a> came from the category of \u201cdigital goods,\u201d a catchall comprising: \u201cInternet portals, download sites, app software companies, career portals, dating portals, gaming providers, telecommunications providers, Internet telephony, sports betting, and gambling such as poker.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Open Interest<\/p>\n

What are we left wondering?<\/p>\n

First and foremost, what the heck happened to Whit\u2019s former assistant at Tender?! And was Haley\u2019s job reference bluff a savvy now-you-know-I-know move\u2014or a dumb misstep that\u2019ll tip off Whitney to her journo-fueled suspicions?What does it say on Eric\u2019s golf buddy\u2019s hat? After extensive squinting and googling, I have come to the conclusion that it says \u201cPHUK LUZIN,\u201d just like (checks notes) Joe Pesci\u2019s hat<\/a> at a 2001 celeb-am<\/a>? What does it mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN??I have rewound MANY times, and I still can\u2019t tell whether that one member of the Tender board of directors is played by the actor Jon Gries? It would actually make so much sense for his White Lotus character to be somehow laundering his dead wife\u2019s money through an operation like this one. (Side question: Which cinematic universe crossover tracks most cleanly: (a) Kumar rebranded as Jonah; (b) Sally Draper growing up to be the executive assistant of a guy who is always flying to Africa; (c) Divya from The Social Network usurping a murky new payments venture?)\"\"At the end of Season 3, Harper\u2019s shadowy deal with Otto was described as \u201can all-shorts fund in New York.\u201d What happened to keep Harper on this side of the pond? And here I\u2019d been hoping to see her hit Dimes Square\u2026Best band name of the episode? My initial thought was some shoegaze-y group called \u201cAmbient Fog,\u201d but I actually think there\u2019d be something compelling and avant-garde about, like, a garage band with the name \u201cSeparately Managed Account.\u201d\u00a0Speaking of America, I wonder how Rob is doing with his hallucinogen venture? I miss that lad so much. Forever in our hearts, Harry Lawtey.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Katie Baker<\/p>\n

<\/a>Katie Baker is a senior features writer at The Ringer who has reported live from NFL training camps, a federal fraud trial, and Mike Francesa\u2019s basement. Her children remain unimpressed.