The "Industry" season 3 season finale was ... wow. If you're like me, you're still wrapping your head around everything that happened. If I didn't know that the show was already renewed for season 4 I'd have believed that this episode was a series finale.
If it had been a series finale — which again, thank goodness it's not — what a way for it to go. This episode was incredible, with some moments you could never see coming and some that you could see coming from a mile away but were no less enthralling. And while ultimately, we know it's not a series finale, it is seemingly the end of an era for this show, closing the book on the Pierpoint chapter.
With that chapter closing, "Industry" can also officially claim the title of best show on HBO. Maybe it's because I watched the first 17 episodes of "Industry" in a week. Maybe it's the recency bias of this episode, which is easily one of the five best episodes of any TV show I've seen this year but only ended mere hours ago. But this show has me forgetting "House of the Dragon" or even "The Penguin," which is still an ongoing show.
I'm not sure it dethroned "Shogun" as the best show of the year, something I claimed it could do this week, but those two shows are now in a class of their own. If I ultimately rank it higher, it won't surprise me. Especially since this episode was a masterclass in what makes "Industry" so great.
Spoilers for "Industry" season 3, episode 8 "Infinte Largesse" follow
Rishi's downfall was everything that makes 'Industry' a great TV show
As I mentioned before, there was a lot to unpack in this episode. But if you only paid attention to Rishi's (Sagar Radia) arc through the episode, you'd have a surprisingly full picture of why "Industry" is one of the best shows on TV right now.
Rishi's arc in the episodes starts with him lashing out, referencing Dante's inferno as he makes a dramatic exit from Pierpoint on his way to join Harper (Myha'la) at Leviathan. As you're watching it, you can just tell he's about to crash and burn spectacularly. It's the only direction the show can go after that brash exit.
And that's exactly what the show does. Rishi walks into Leviathan Alpha expecting a job offer from Harper and instead receives the ultimate humiliation. This show does a great job of not forgetting about things it's done in the past — like when seemingly tossed-aside bankers at Pierpoint appeared together earlier this season to help facilitate Harper's short bet on her old employers — and in this moment, it does it again. Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche), who Rishi has hooked up with and tossed aside. He treated her poorly even in a world where casual encounters are no anomaly.
But she gets her revenge here. As does Harper, who Rishi betrayed at the end of season 2. They both tell him there's no job and this was all just to prove to him that he's a dinosaur and has no place in the modern world of finance. On the way out, he passes by Anraj Chabra (Irfan Shamji) who he constantly belittled rather than mentored, and is now taking the job at Leviathan Alpha that Rishi thought was promised to himself.
If it ended there, that'd be well-executed enough to satisfy anyone. But it was all a bit too obvious, and this show rarely does obvious.
Toward the end of the episode, we come back to Rishi, who has arrived at his apartment to find his bookie Vinay (Asim Chaudhry) there unexpectedly. It was also a surprise for Rishi's (now estranged) wife Diana (Brittany Ashworth), as is the fact that Rishi is now over half a million pounds in debt to Vinay. In a move borne from the love that she still has for Rishi, Diana lashes out at Vinay and you can tell something bad will happen. But it's still a complete surprise when Vinay in a moment of rage shoots her in the head and leaves Rishi there to deal with the aftermath and us to pick our jaws up from off the floor.
Season 3 is an incredible end of an era for 'Industry'
Rishi's story isn't the only one with an air of finality though in the season 3 finale.
Pierpont, the bank that was theoretically the connective tissue for all these characters from the pilot episode, is no more. Bought by a nameless Persian Gulf state, it's now fittingly called Al-Mi'raj Pierpoint and the new owners decide to shutter the London office's sales operations.
The current and former Pierpoint employees are also on different paths as well. Aside from Rishi's demise, almost every character seems to be winding up their time on the show, or at least their storylines that took place over the past three seasons. The lone person still left with a story to tell might be Harper, who is making moves to return to New York and start her own firm that focuses on short-selling companies using "corporate espionage" (read: illegally obtained information).
But this show is always full of surprises and lacks a concrete plot. At its core, it's always been about a story of connected characters, so there's no reason that most of the characters couldn't return for a new chapter that doesn't involve Pierpoint.
Whether they do or not though, season 3 is definitively the end of an era for "Industry." And thanks to an incredible season 3 finale, it ends this chapter on top, as the best show on HBO right now and possibly the best show of 2024.
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