The ‘Industry’ S3 Finale Was Written as If It Was the Series Finale

Last week HBO announced it was picking up “Industry” for a fourth season , but it would be a mistake to assume co-creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down wrote the Season 3 finale with next season in mind.

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“We want the finale to act as a satisfying conclusion if the show was to never come back,” said Down when he was guest with Kay on IndieWire’s Toolkit podcast . “It doesn’t have to be satisfying in that everything in the story is wrapped up, but it has to be emotionally satisfying.”

While on the podcast, Kay and Down said they took this same approach to the Season 2 finale, in which they were determined to not leave Harper’s ((Myha’la) secret (a lack-of-a-diploma) an unfinished storyline, resulting in the surprising conclusion of her being fired. It was a plot point that Kay and Down admit they only later realized, when they sat down to write Season 3, had painted them into a corner — the series’ lead was no longer at the bank that anchors the show?! The co-creators insist they took this same don’t-worry-about-next-season approach to writing the Season 3 finale, possibly even more so.

“I thought it would be awful, I think if we wrote like an enormous cliffhanger and then the show would never came back,” said Down, to which Kay quickly added, “We did a kind of an extremist version, I mean we literally almost laughing at that very idea. We scorched the Earth. It’s satisfyingly final.”

It’s not an exaggeration. The London Pierpoint office that was the central node is no more. The question of “Will They or Won’t They” seems fairly well resolved for Robert (Harry Lawtey) and Yasmin (Marisa Abela), who is leaving the industry and her damaged family name behind for high society. The closest thing to a Season 4 storyline is Harper passing interest in reconnecting with Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass), who we’re told is finishing up a prison sentence in Indiana. It’s hard to even pinpoint exactly what business, or even city, would unite the characters.

Down added they “left the door open” to Season 4 possibilities when writing the Season 3 finale, but when asked if the show was headed to America — as all signs are pointed — Down replied, “Who knows, who knows.”

So, what to make of the flash-forwards (approximately six months into the future) at the very end of Season 3? The co-creators were clear they were written to give a sense of emotional resolve to characters whose storylines might not continue if the show was canceled after 24 episodes.

Rob Is a Different Man

After Robert’s gut-punch with Yasmin deciding to marry Henry , the one solace for the audience is that maybe Robert will finally get out of this cutthroat world. Which is why it’s a bit of a surprise to see him in the near future as a new man, with a slick new look, and a Don Draper-like confidence and sales pitch for psilocybin mushroom pills.

“It’s quite a cynical ending for him, even though it’s kind of like punched the air in some respects,” said Down. “We spend the whole season toying with the idea that he’s going to break free of this world. He doesn’t know how to operate in it. He finally realizes that he’s not going to even find romance in this world, so you think he’s going to leave.”

The inference is Yasmin’s betrayal has turned the only heart-on-his-sleeve character on “Industry” into this confident salesman, well on his way to making his own fortune.

“I think actually the moment where he starts the journey towards that fuckboy haircut and his salesmanship [referencing the flashforward], is when he leaves Lord Norton’s house, he thinks back to that moment in that flashback Yasmin was saying that she’s never fallen in love with anyone, and he thinks like, ‘God, I kind of wish I could be a bit more like that,’” said Down.

Added Kay, about the look on Lawtey’s face as he pulls away from Yasmin, “That smile is really ambivalent. I think people will pitch different things onto what that smiled means as he drives away.”

Yasmin 2.0 Is a Monster

Not surprisingly, Yasmin has taken to life as the future Mrs. Henry Muck when we see her six months into the future, after making her shocking decision to marry Henry (Kit Harrington).

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“It’s like a duck to water. I think it’s like very easy for her to fall into Lady Muck,” said Abela of her character in an interview with IndieWire. “I think she feels like it was what she always was sort of destined to do.”

What is a surprise is Yasmin has hired Alondra (Angela Sant’Albano), the deckhand he caught her father sleeping with in Season 3, Episode 1 , to be her private secretary. In a moment of great empathy, Alondra tells Yasmin she saw her father Charles (Adam Levy) and his friends sexually abuse under-aged girls, as young as 12-to-14 years old, on the boat.

“If he ever did that to you, when you were young, if he hurt you like those girls, I want you to know you are seen and protected,” Alondra says, to which Yasmin responds by lashing out, yelling, “He never,” but not before a persistent Alondra catches her off-guard with a warm embrace, that sends Yasmin into tears.

Abela told IndieWire she’d assumed during Season 2 that the relationship with her father crossed boundaries, and she had been sexualized at a young age, but that with her Season 3 storyline she felt the need to create for herself a more concrete backstory of what exactly her childhood was like, and answer the abuse question for herself.

“I think that I had to come to decisions on my own,” said Abela. “I don’t think that that needs to be taken as gospel. I like the fact that people can read into it whatever it is that they want to read into it… but yeah, I did definitely have come to a conclusion.”

Post-hug, Yasmin collects herself, exits the room, and in a cold-blooded fashion instructs her butler to fire Alondra.

“Yasmin 2.0 is like a monster,” said Abela. “I think that we’ve seen from Season 1 to the end of Season 3 the the biggest evolution ever — this girl who was getting salads for everyone, wide-eyed, deer in headlights, to that moment. Yasmin has turned into, I guess, her father in a way, in that moment.”

Abela continued: “I think that moment is just her in order to survive and building up as many walls as she can around her own trauma… I think that if she scratches the surface too much, obviously she’s still miserable, but she’s just okay not scratching the surface. I think that’s why Yasmin is slightly different to the other characters too. I don’t think she understands Robert and Harper’s desire to scratch so far beneath the surface of what it is makes them happy. She’s like, ‘I’m good. Like, let’s just leave this. Superficially, I’m fine, so I’m fine.’ She’s better at compartmentalization than they are.”

Rishi: And You Thought Ep 4 Was Rough

Season 3, Episode 4, was one long panic attack , as the Rishi (Sagar Radia) hit rock bottom, or at least what we assumed was his bottom, as a gambling addiction caught up with him. The issue of his debts though resurfaced in a big and surprising way in the final episode of the season, as his estranged wife Diana (Emily Barber) is shot in head right in front of him by the man he owes money.

“He’s got the gift of [talking] himself out of every situation,” said Kay of the logic behind the scene. “Everything’s digitized, he’s always talking to Rob about the fact that no one’s holding the money. We were really interested in what it would look like if life was no longer an abstraction for him. It was something so final, something he couldn’t talk his way out of felt like the right ending point for him.”

Added Down: “It’s a pretty tortured metaphor, but that idea of a gambler’s mentality, which is as long as you’re winning, you keep going back for more until the point where you’ve lost everything. And I think actually, if we were to come back and do a Season 4, where we found Rishi having had the most acute consequence of his life, it would be really interesting to see how he actually [responds].”

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