Club Benefits
I'll be honest, I was nervous about "Industry season 4. I fell in love with this show back in 2024 when I watched the first 17 episodes of "Industry" in a week. Then, it was nearly my pick for best show of the year in 2024. But if you watched the "Industry" season 3 finale, you know that it didn't just feel like a season finale — it felt like a series finale.
Turns out, that was an intentional choice by the show's creators, who weren't sure they'd get picked up for a fourth season. But even though the show was ultimately renewed by HBO, I was worried a massive shakeup was coming and that the show I fell in love with wouldn't survive the changes. I was even concerned enough to leave "Industry" off my most anticipated shows of 2026 list.
Spoilers for "Industry" season 4 premiere follow
'Industry' remains the perfect cocktail of sex, drugs and hunger for power
I could pretend that my concerns about this show weren't assuaged until the end of the season 4 premiere. That I needed to see Eric and Harper reunited, planning to get the respect they so crave, or that I needed to see the epic boardroom (metaphorical) execution of newcomer Kal Penn's Jonah establish Whit (Max Minghella) as our villain of the season.
But I'd be lying. The first three minutes of this episode have essentially no dialogue. Instead, we watch a man stalk a woman through the London nightlife, at least partially set to "Firestarter" by British electronica legends Prodigy. For a second, I thought, "Wow. We're going in a totally different direction here."
Admittedly, if I had just watched the season 4 trailer, I'd have known that we're not going in a different direction at all. Instead, the show was merely setting the board for the upcoming season, which seems set to be the same combination of power-hungry people seeking to satiate their addiction to sex, money, power, drugs or a combination thereof. We get plenty of all four in this episode, too, whether it's Harper (Myha'la Herrold) wearing a strap-on sex toy before she presumably uses it on Whit, or the final scene of the episode where Kit Harington's Sir Henry Muck uses a boot to smash pills on a harpsichord before the credits roll.
This premiere has set the stage for an epic season 4
This episode, as crazy as it is, is essentially all exposition. Which, given how entertaining it was to watch, is all the more impressive. By the end of it, we have our battle set for the season, with at least three already interconnected factions set to face off in the arena of London's financial industry.
The main battle appears to be Harper vs. Whit, a struggle made all the more compelling by their romantic interaction in this season premiere. But I would expect Jonah to enter the fray on the side of Harper, given that his humiliating dethroning at the hands of Whit has him likely thirsting for vengeance.
But Harper isn't the only familiar face involved in this fight. Now married to Sir Henry, Yasmin (Marisa Abela) is in full power-broker mode, and she seems set to get heavily involved in Whit's company, an alt-finance platform called Tender.
There's no universe in which Harper and Whit both come out of this season unscathed, but is it possible the real winner of season 4 will be Yasmin? Could it be Eric (Ken Leung), who has seemingly returned to start a fund with Harper to take down companies like Tender and make millions (if not billions) doing it? Or could Otto (Roger Barclay), the newly elevated Lord Mostyn, prove that the oldest money and power is who always wins, regardless of how the world changes? I already can't wait to watch the rest of "Industry" season 4 and fight out. Based on season 4's 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it's clear I'm not alone.
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