‘Industry’ Bosses on That Shocking Finale and Whether [SPOILER] Was Inspired by Ghislaine Maxwell: ‘All of This Was in Her From the Very First Moment’

Mar 1, 2026 6:00pm PT ‘Industry’ Bosses on That Shocking Finale and Whether Was Inspired by Ghislaine Maxwell: ‘All of This Was in Her From the Very First Moment’ By Alison Herman SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains plot details from “Both, And,” the Season 4 finale of “ Industry ,” now streaming on HBO Max. “Industry” ends its penultimate season both strangely hopeful and the bleakest it’s ever been. The HBO drama, co-created by Oxford alumni and ex-bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, is admirably unafraid to leave behind what no longer serves it: the fictional bank Pierpoint & Co., which collapsed at the end of Season 3 and occasioned a de facto soft reboot in Season 4 ; beloved characters like hardened finance veteran Eric Tao (Ken Leung), who quite literally walked away mid-season after being blackmailed over a sex tape with an underage sex worker; storylines like the fraudulent fintech startup Tender and its co-founder Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella) , which has definitively crumbled into dust in the space of just eight episodes. These changes have also had the effect of underlining the series’ true constants: upstart American Harper Stern (Myha’la) and posh publishing heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela), who began “Industry” as entry-level associates at Pierpoint. Heading into their show’s final act, Down and Kay have positioned the onetime peers in radically different places. Having made a massive profit from Tender’s collapse through her fledgling fund’s short position, Harper isn’t just flying high — literally, on a private jet where she’s being interviewed by New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, playing himself in a cameo. The longtime lone wolf, who’s repeatedly blown up jobs and relationships out of an instinctive need to avoid reliance on others, has also embraced responsibility for her team: trader Kwabena (Toheeb Jimoh), her sometime side piece, and researcher Sweetpea (Miriam Petche), who put her physical safety on the line d...