Warning: This article contains spoilers.
We’re nearing the end of a very crazy season of the HBO drama Industry. To recap, short fund SternTao spent the last two episodes trying to uncover the skeletons in Tender’s closet, only to find out the closet is completely empty.
In Episode 7, we find out that the letter Whitney (Max Minghella) wrote to Henry is a “threat” (Yasmin’s words), or a “guru terrorist manifesto” (Henry’s words), implicating Lord Muck in Tender’s downfall.
In a heated argument, Yasmin lays out the stakes quite neatly for the couple: “We live in a house paid for by Tender. Both of our salaries will be cut off. Our stock is worthless.” Henry admits he’s bought Tender stock with the rest of his money, but he’s less concerned about their finances, as his reputation is on the line.
“I am a good person, and the world shall tell that back to me, otherwise what am I doing here?” he screams in Yasmin’s face. But the couple comes to realize they’re victims of Tender’s schemes, and for the first time this season, it feels as if they’re finally a team. Kit Harington and Marisa Abela, come get your Emmys.
At SternTao, we find out Tender’s stocks have snapped back following the fintech company’s barrage of press releases. Harper, in turn, suggests they “catalyze the audit that kills them.”
What would an audit find? In Whit’s own words, “Fraud, embezzlement, market manipulation.” Furthermore, his justification for these crimes reveals just how bullish and cunning an individual he is. “It’s simply a misalignment between the velocity of my vision and the velocity of regulation. That gap is where smart people have always made money.” Finally, he pitches his solution to all their problems: a hostile takeover of Pierpoint.
Yasmin, on the other hand, orchestrates an attack on Tender through headlines, with the help of newspaper magnate Alexander Norton (Andrew Havill) and Harper (Myha’la), who goes to FinDigest to spread the word that Business Secretary Lisa Dearn (Chloe Pirrie) was “in bed” with Tender execs and letting red flags go unnoticed.
Everything is Crashing
In New York, Whit gets kidnapped from his room just as he gets ready to make his escape. We now know that his Lithuanian passport from the last episode was, in fact, a fake one he intended to use. He’s brought to an SUV by that rando who joined Rishi and Jim in Episode 4 just before the journalist died from an overdose (or did he?). In the SUV, Tender board member Ferdinand Schwarzwald (Nico Rogner) pressures Whit to seal the deal with Pierpoint, and Whit — for the first time in this show — cowers, clearly exhausted by the many ruses he’s put up at this point. Max Minghella, you get an Emmy too.
The next day, he joins Henry to offer Pierpoint a merger deal. In the flight back home, Henry asks why one of the Pierpoint execs seemed so eager about the merger, to which Whit replied, “Maybe he dated Hayley,” confirming that he was, in fact, pimping out his executive assistant to business partners.
Back in London, Henry finds out he’s been abandoned by Yasmin, with her leaving Tender just as the company goes under heavy scrutiny following Dearn’s resignation as business secretary. The audit that may kill Tender is underway.
And just as Henry begins to spiral, Pierpoint exec Wilhelmina Fassbinder (Georgina Rich) calls to say that its deal with Pierpoint isn’t going through, as she used Whitney’s “little charade” to jack up the bank’s sale to a different company. Whitney, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found since landing in the U.K. Maybe he still had use for his Lithuanian passport after all?
At SternTao HQ, however, things are looking up, with the Serious Fraud Office set to announce an investigation into Tender.
For the YasHarper truthers, the last scene is a treat. This season, there’s been very little interaction between the two female protagonists who once dominated the show’s screentime, and this totally makes up for it. Yasmin says she envies Harper’s intelligence, and Harper says she wants to be in Yasmin’s body and see how the world opens up around her. The two sum up everything that makes their dynamic so compelling.
“I really resented you for being a breathing example of how I was less,” Harper says.
“I choose to love you for being a breathing example of how I can be more,” says Yasmin. Enya’s “Only Time” kicks in, and I’m sobbing.
In the end, they go out and “do all the things that Lorde sings about,” but I don’t recall Lorde singing about kissing the woman you’ve had a years-long homoerotic frenemy-ship with in the club.
Catch up with the latest episode of Industry before the season finale next week on HBO Max.
