Kicking off with the long-awaited Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and Harper (Myha’la) one-on-one is a sign that this week’s episode of Industry means business. What it turns out to be is a prelude to dizzying events that leave every single character marked by a scheme that goes deeper than Whitney Halberstram’s (Max Minghella) vision for Tender. Non-negotiables don’t matter when nefarious figures pulling the strings have a treasure trove of blackmail material they are willing to unleash to achieve far-reaching goals. Rather than spinning their wheels, creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay (who wrote this episode) continue to raise the stakes each week. I would never accuse the pair of slow storytelling. Maintaining momentum is part of the HBO finance drama special sauce that continues to surpass expectations. Even still, “Dear Henry” has all the markings of a season finale—or at least penultimate episode—with its array of bombshells that blow the core relationships sky high.
The opening Yas and Harper confrontation is one of this week’s tamest, replaying old grievances and leveling new accusations. It is a warm-up to the main events, offering a reminder that the frenemies are great sparring partners even as they go through the motions. Yas puts on a bullish front, believing this is another round of Harper picking at her happiness and profiting from the mess. But the mask is slipping, and, in private, Yas seems less convinced of Whitney’s motives. She heeds Harper’s warning (“You have been duped by a man who saw you and your husband as fools”) and tries to get Henry to open his eyes. Stubbornness runs in this marriage. Henry (Kit Harington) bats away his wife’s concerns and pulls at her personality flaws in the process. Insecurity is a powerful tool in Whitney’s arsenal, and established thorny dynamics allow his influence to fester and poison.
But it isn’t Yas and Harper who take center stage in “Dear Henry.” Nor is it the man whose name appears in the episode title, whose extramarital sexual relations will get audiences talking. Instead, it is the recipient of a different blowjob that changes the course of SternTao’s road to victory and reveals a far broader conspiracy that brings Russian influence into the already sprawling web of lies. More importantly, is Industry shedding another original cast member? Eric’s swift fall from grace, coupled with a change to the end credits that show Eric walking down a leafy suburban street, signals a departure. If this is Ken Leung’s swansong, then he gets a doozy of a concluding outing that should be front and center when Emmy voting begins.
Even if voters overlook the Industry stalwart’s tour-de-force performance, it will be hard to shake Leung’s expression of bone-deep fear. Illuminated by the glow of his phone, director Luke Snellin lingers on Eric’s frozen, slack-jaw response before revealing the cause behind this extreme reaction. Once again, the hotel suite plays host to devastating news, but this is not Harper learning that her mother is dead, with the backdrop of her co-workers discussing Rishi’s (Sagar Radia) legal predicament. Juxtaposing Lily (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) telling her father that she loves him with Eric learning he has engaged in a sex act with an underage teenage girl is a one-two punch. We are left to work out Molly’s (whose real name is Mary) age from her passport, but the panic etched on Eric’s face says everything.
Given the extremes that see Eric going from his “favorite ever day in finance” to giving it all up, the foundation of this trajectory comes from last week’s heart-to-heart with Harper. The sharp swing from Eric bursting with pride at Harper’s presentation laying out the Tender fraud to pulling the plug on his involvement with zero explanation highlights Leung’s expressive range and the dynamite chemistry opposite Myha’la. Given their shared vulnerabilities in the previous episode, what follows is even more painful as Harper responds to the rejection with quiet fury. He fails at covering his heartbreak, but does a better job of keeping Harper in the dark. It is better for Harper to hate him and think he is a coward than for Harper to know the content of the video. There are still selfish undertones because he is ultimately saving himself, though Harper would receive blowback in this underage sex trafficking scandal.
Among the many morally bankrupt characters, Eric is the most self-aware. It is why he is the ideal candidate to go toe-to-toe with Whitney live on CNN. Even if Whitney has intended whistleblower Tony Day (Stephen Campbell Moore) in his back pocket, Eric has weapons in his arsenal, like calling Whitney’s bluff: “However bad you want to tell the audience I am, let me tell them: I’m worse.”
Whereas Eric speaks to real emotions and refuses to hide his nature, Whitney’s entire personality is an illusion. It is only when he is starring in his own psychosexual drama that we get flashes of intention beyond the business. Manipulation is how Whiteny operates, but his lusting after Henry as he watches him in the shower appears genuine. Henry’s blissful ignorance that he is being watched is a perfect analogy for being blind to Whitney’s ulterior motives. The aristocrat is pliable, reinforcing how Jonah (Kal Penn) previously described Whitney’s methods of “liquoring up” his targets. Henry’s sobriety is no more, and he thinks he can control his impulses. Even as doubts brim beneath the surface, Henry opts for oblivion over interrogating his reality.
At a gay club, Henry loses his inhibitions, but it is hard to read Whitney’s dance moves as anything other than controlled. While cruising in the dark room, Whitney leads Henry to a glory hole, showing Whitney’s influence and how the series continues to push sex-scene boundaries. The latter has already chalked up an earlier gay experience to being a private-school rite of passage; this new encounter proves Henry’s fluid sexuality goes beyond his adolescent surroundings. Or, he is hitting the self-destruct button once again. The repetition of Whitney’s “Dear Henry” voiceover acts as a reminder of the catastrophe unfolding as the episode progresses. But the first couple of times this device comes into play is when Whitney is in close physical proximity to the man he is writing to, emphasizing intimacy before Whitney shatters Henry’s ability to keep his heart pure.
No matter how hard Henry tries, his ability to do the right thing is no longer an option because he is “at the mercy of forces much larger than ourselves.” With each season of Industry, the world expands to include the political climate. “Dear Henry” reveals how deep this plot goes, with references to Cozy Bear (the tech arm of the SVR) as part of the overall puppet masters. Eric’s video is the tip of the extortion iceberg, and it is a timely sex trafficking story given the Epstein-files drama playing out right now. Sex and blackmail are hardly 21st-century phenomena (Peacock’s Ponies depicts how the KGB uses hotel rooms as bases for this in the late 1970s), and Industry certainly has enough opportunities to extort the sexual predilections of its characters via honey traps.
Hayley (Kiernan Shipka) comes clean to Yasmin about her role in the larger Whitney puzzle, in which Whitney relies on women from an escort service to play the role of assistants while also luring powerful men into compromising situations. It is a sharp shift from the “Thank you, mommy” demonstration, revealing how limited Hayley’s options are after her confrontation with Whitney fails to score a hefty payday. Approaching Yas is a last resort and not without other bombshells, like the threesome in Austria, being one of the many pieces of “razoblachenie” (Russian for “exposure”). There are shocks aplenty for the characters and audience alike, and Industry maintains its thrilling, unpredictable streak with only two episodes remaining this season.
Stray observations
- • Whitney’s name on his Lithuanian passport is Vytautas Andriulevičius. (Vytautas The Great is a Lithuanian national hero.) In the grand tradition of American reinvention storytelling (à la Jay Gatsby and Don Draper), Whitney is primed for any interaction. Henry makes a point of saying he doesn’t believe Whitney’s story of his mother’s attempted suicide, and it makes sense to question his entire persona. “Well, don’t worry, man. I’ve got plenty of middle-class friends,” says Henry. It is this condescension that also fuels Whitney.
- • Staying on story and sticking to a narrative is key to both the SternTao and Tender sides of this season. Whitney is manipulative, but Eric’s ability to spin a yarn is far more persuasive as a viewer. The Mets better watch out, though, because Eric says his “life in markets overlays perfectly onto my life rooting for the Mets.”
- • If some of the financial plotting has been unclear, then Harper’s presentation at the ALPHA conference does a fantastic job of laying everything out. It is also notable that Harper is wearing her gray power suit once again.
- • After doing all the legwork in Accra, Sweetpea (Miriam Petche) and FinDigest editor Edward Burgess (David Wilmot) are beaten to breakfast at Clardiges by Whitney. When you have everything on the line, you make sure you are early rather than on time. Rookie error!
- • Some names and faces that pricked up my ears: former Pierpoint trader Anraj Chabra (Irfan Shamji) at Harper’s presentation and, even more importantly, a Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass) mention.
- • “The greatest mistake I ever made was moving Tender to this piss-wet, history project of a fucking island.” Say what you really feel, Whitney. In the same phone call to Harper, Whitney invokes his namesake and sings Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).” Never has this song sounded more detached from emotion. Yas says that Harper doesn’t know Whitney, but little does she know that Harper has been privy to late-night calls and dildo preferences.
- • What does Sir Henry Muck sing in the shower? “For He Is An Englishman” by Gilbert and Sullivan. Henry belts out the comic opera number even though “Both Sides Now” by Judy Collins is playing in the adjoining room, adding to the intensity of Whitney’s arrival and gaze. The Collins hit also plays over the credits as Eric walks away.
Emma Fraser is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
