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Spoilers below.
“Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca,” the title of Industry season 3’s premiere episode, translates from Italian to English as, “The morning has gold in its mouth.” A less literal translation might be something like, “The early bird gets the worm,” but it’s clear that the HBO series’ creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, prefer the literal. They reference the phrase both in the episode title and in the premiere script itself, a nod toward the money the next day promises as the employees of Pierpoint & Co. cheer a new IPO. Industry is a finance drama—a clever one—but it’s historically operated best as a Euphoria-like soap, zooming in on the follies and traumas that define its characters’ personal lives. Money is merely a vehicle, the driving force that will trap our protagonists in the morning’s golden teeth.
As with most of Industry’s dramas, season 3 kicks off with an extraordinarily ill-advised party. On a yacht belonging to her father, the publishing tycoon Charles Hanani (Adam Levy), Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) drifts miserably from port to starboard, a glass of white wine perpetually within inches of her manicured fingertips. An onlooker might call her sadness chic, if the circumstances weren’t so startling: Her father has been pinpointed for historic embezzlement from his company, Hanani Publishing, adding further grist for Yasmin’s already booming daddy-issues mill. She seeks a reprieve in her guest room, only to discover her father and one of his pregnant employees 69-ing on her bed. Industry, baby! We’re so back!
Six weeks later, Yasmin shows up to the Pierpoint trading floor after a scuffle with a snooping photographer outside her apartment. Nor are the paps the only ones interested in the Hanani business. New hire Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche) has 50,000 Instagram followers, a ring light at her desk, and an apparent Daily Mail addiction: When Yas walks by, Sweetpea’s computer screen is open to a tab labeling Yasmin “The Embezzler Heiress,” and Sweetpea wastes no time asking Yas why Charles disappeared from the Hanani yacht shortly after their party. But Yasmin doesn’t have the energy to indulge Sweetpea’s questions, apart from admitting she’s “accrued quite a passionate gay following, for some reason.” Sweetpea gawks at her with barely repressed envy, but Venetia Berens (Indy Lewis)—whom Industry fans will recognize as a recent grad from season 2—makes no attempt to conceal her disdain. “Have they offered you a Boohoo campaign yet?” she taunts Yasmin. “Every penny counts now, right?”
Yasmin attempts, instead, to focus on the upcoming IPO of Lumi, a green-energy company helmed by Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington, adopting the perfect blend of posh charm, entitled sleaze, and sheer incompetence). Yas phones her on-again, off-again colleague-lover-friend Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey) to warn him that Lumi’s investors are getting antsy about the company’s latest (read: suspicious) earnings report. But the “fucking tote-bag journalists” aren’t convinced Lumi going public isn’t a cashgrab. (I’m adding “tote-bag journalist” to my Instagram bio.) Muck’s answer to these naysayers? “The Luddites always sharpen their knives for disruptors.” He’s a British aristocrat; of course he’s media-trained.
But media training can’t rescue Muck when one particular investor calls him on B.S. This investor then offers to buy half his equity back for 430 pounds a share, far below Pierpoint’s valuation of 480. Muck, offended, tells this investor he can have all his equity back at 430. For those who care less about Industry’s financial nuances than its coke-fueled raves, a brief translation: Muck does not appear to be very good at business.
Meanwhile, Eric Tao (Ken Leung), recently promoted to partner at Pierpoint, has been part of the push for the firm’s investment in ESGs—environmental, social, and governance-related companies like Lumi. But Pierpoint bigwig Bill Adler (Trevor White) wants Eric to prove he can manage at a higher level. The test? Cut someone from his desk, expeditiously. Eric considers axing Yasmin, given the unwanted attention she’s drawing, but he recognizes her desperation to prove herself—and that’s something he can work with, or otherwise manipulate. He tells her not to worry about Lumi “diddling with the numbers” in the eleventh hour, and instead fires Kenny (Conor MacNeill). Eric’s always nurtured his own brutality, likening it to a valuable asset. But even coming from him, this is a vicious move. Kenny took Eric in after Eric’s wife kicked him out. Whatever his many faults, Kenny showed Eric empathy in an hour of need. But in that empathy, Kenny witnessed Eric’s weaknesses. Eric won’t allow that again.
To try and get rid of her sudden surplus Lumi stock, Yasmin calls her old friend, current flatmate, and former Pierpoint colleague Harper Stern (Myha’la). Now working as a lowly assistant at FutureDawn Partners, Harper shows no signs of stopping the schemes that got her fired from Pierpoint. When she walks in on her boss, Anna (Elena Saurel), arguing about ethical investing with portfolio manager Petra Koenig (Sarah Goldberg), the wheels in Harper’s brain are all but visibly grinding into high-gear. Later, Harper corners Petra and attempts to impress her with a contrived spiel about how ESGs are “a utopian opiate for morons who believe in a better world.” Petra might find Harper’s argument desperate, but that doesn’t mean she disagrees.
At home that night, Harper tries to remind Yas to ignore the paparazzi—and the apparent penis flashbacks the latter can’t seem to block out—but Yas can’t even depend on sleep for relief. Instead, she must meet with Muck in his underground dungeon-turned-handball court, where his equally aristocratic uncle, Lord Alexander Norton (Andrew Cavill), and godfather, Otto Mostyn (Roger Barclay), are enjoying a workout-turned-business meeting. These men recognize Yasmin as the daughter of Charles Hanani, and Lord Norton—himself a publishing legend—tells Yas it’d be best for Charlie to “come out of hiding” if he doesn’t want the papers writing about his so-called “Embezzler Heiress.” Muck attempts to relate to Yas, telling her he understands what it’s like for a family member to “ruin your life.” But it’s Otto who proves the most menacing presence: He tells Yas her father has a substantial outstanding bill at their club, and slyly demands she attend a lunch as her dad’s proxy. Yas has no choice but to oblige.
Nor does she choose, at last, to rest her weary head. She next meets with a lawyer friend for a drink, during which she runs into Eric, recently separated from his wife and seeking an escape from his bad date. Yas’ lawyer friend invites him to ditch, and she and Eric end the evening coked-up and naked. (Although not before Eric notes he hasn’t “done blow since 9/11.”) Yasmin initially resists the urge to join them, but acquiesces once she realizes the impromptu celebration will allow her to level with Eric, who otherwise intimidates her. Once equally stupidly high, they agree to treat each other as peers on the trading floor. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Elsewhere in London, Robert is calming his Lumi nerves with the borderline-Oedipean company of Nicole Craig (Sarah Parish), a Pierpoint client who first sexually targeted Harper in season 1 before turning her attention to Rob in season 2. Rob, apparently, hasn’t been able to shake Nicole; he flees to her as a perverted sort of mother-figure-turned-lover. They have sex, then fall asleep in Nicole’s backyard beneath the stars. And then she dies.
These are the Industry moments I love the most—the shockers that veer almost laughably absurd, but that don’t exist solely for the purpose of that shock. When Nicole’s lifeless body rolled off her lawn chair, I actually gasped aloud. But it’s the moments after the corpse reveal that are embedded most in my memory. An obviously stricken Robert calls Yasmin, asking her, “Do you think I’m cursed? It’s just that e-e-everyone dies.” Yasmin, mistaking his shaking voice for drug-induced mania, makes her own tone cruelly patronizing. “Yeah,” she replies, as if speaking to a toddler. “Everyone does die. Are you fucked? What have you taken? Maybe you should stop drinking again.” Rob can’t depend on Yas. He loves her, but he’s never been able to depend on her.
Later, Rob loses it at his desk, prompting Eric to pull him aside for a pep talk in which they scream back and forth, “I’M A MAN, AND I’M RELENTLESS!” (The finance-bro equivalent of “I am woman, hear me roar,” I guess.) Industry has always made a convincing pitch as Toxic Masculinity: The HBO Series, but I hope its gender critiques trend in a more nuanced direction in season 3. Muck, moments before Lumi opens, asks Rob if there’s “more to [Yasmin] than just a photo.” Industry frames Muck in the hypocrisy of his own question. It’s not he who should be asking if Yas has any depth; the audience should be asking why everyone thinks Muck does. Just as he prepares to ring the bell, the lights at the stock exchange cut out. Neither Lumi nor its young CEO have the juice.
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture writer at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE.