Six episodes in, Industry Season 3 is rounding into the homestretch, and as a result, there's a lot going on. Too much to catalogue here. But that doesn't mean we can't try. It's time to check back in on our beloved characters and bask in their various manias and journeys into delirium.
Harper Stern: Going Down As She Goes Up! Over the last three weeks, we've gotten the full Harper experience. Particularly on the most recent episode, where she is twisted by the arm to go along with using her only friend to pull a fast one on Pierpoint. Harper becoming the monster she was always born to be is a consistent theme of the series. Her revenge against Pierpoint, and specifically Eric, has been inevitable since the end of the second season. And both of her confrontations to end the episode, first with Eric, and then with Yasmin (more on that later), were excruciating to watch. It's hard to say she doesn't deserve it, but nobody on this show deserves anything good. They are soulless husks, obsessed with money and the power/exaltation of the sell above their own humanity. Nevertheless, Harper makes her big bet and for the time being it looks good, and that's what these people live for, at the expense of whatever personal relationships they claim to want.
Eric Tao: Going Lower Than Rock Bottom. Every time it seems like things can't get worse for Eric, he finds a new low—sometimes within the same episode. He's losing money to Rishi's ponies, losing his job, losing control, and losing his mind. His mood soars and then plummets from one moment to the next. He's reflecting on his life and his youth with Bill Adler, as he deals with the latter's cancer diagnosis on the one end. And then he's masturbating in the bathroom after being screamed at for being too horny on a lunch with Yasmin. He has no joy. More than likely, going after Harper and then firing Yasmin as a projection of his own insecurity and self-disgust is as close as he can get to feeling good.
Yasmin Kara-Hanani: Going Down. Who among us hasn't at least tried to kill their parent? No character on any show has done a better job of portraying the pitfalls and trauma of being a sexy young woman than Yasmin on this show, and Season 3 has been a master thesis on the subject. Throughout the season, men leer at her menacingly, whether out of malice or out of desire—it all looks the same really. And the conclusion of the flashbacks from the cocaine boat and how her father ended up disappearing are genuinely shocking. If there's a criticism of the show, particularly this season, it's that so much happens in each episode that it's hard to sit with the weight of much of it. The fight between Yasmin and her father would be enough for one episode, but on top of that we end with the fight with Harper that revisits many of the same themes. Industry characters like to speechify at each other and use therapy speak in their fights, but it certainly works to cut through the pretense. Yasmin and Harper say the worst things to each other, and like any fight, everything they say is true and also is really about themselves. The same goes for her fight with her father and even her words to Eric, particularly coming on the heels of Henry revealing himself to be just another abusive boss.
Robert Spearing: Going Down But Maybe Up. Robert's having a bit of a manic season, shifting between his own psychodrama, his complicated feelings about Nicole's death, and routinely being Pierpoint's, and by proxy Henry Muck's, punching bag. And then, taking a little time for an ayahuasca trip and some self-examination. Whether he was ever really going to be the fall guy for Lumi and Pierpoint's shady business is hard to know, but it has put things into perspective for him and now he's indifferent to whether the whole ship goes down, as long as he gets out alive.
Henry Muck: In Stasis. Henry Muck comes out of his startup's failure unscathed and probably pocketing a couple mil in stock before its collapse. In the end, he was a wealthy boy playing businessman for a while, no real stakes and no deep feelings for anyone who got trampled along the way, including Yasmin, who ends up reliving the cycles of abuse with her father through her relationship with Muck. We probably haven't seen the last of Muck, but as a character there's nothing really left to him.
Rishi Ramdani: Going Up. Well, we finally got Rishi's big one. His Uncut Gems episode allowed Rishi to channel some mania-induced self-sabotage befitting of Kendall Roy. He is a gambler and an addict, which of course he is—why else would he have that job and that much energy to devote to it? This show is about empty people who can't buy self-worth and happiness no matter how much money they make. Rishi hates his family and his home in moneyed, white-bread Old Britannia. He has over-leveraged himself, both literally at work and figuratively everywhere else. But at least he only owes money to what seem to be the nicest gangsters ever put on TV. So he's got that going for him. And like he said, what's the difference between being right and being lucky? For Rishi, even when he's down, he's still up.
Sweetpea Golightly: Going Down. I hope Onlyfans is making you good money, because you will be next to Yasmin in the unemployment line soon.
