Industry season 4 episode 3, "Habseligkeiten, sees Harper and Yasmin going through dangerously opposing paths, hinting at an imminent clash between the two friends. In truth, "friendship" might not be the correct term to define Harper and Yas' relationship; they're not enemies either, it's a secret third thing. This week's episode's title might work as a good definition: "Habseligkeiten" is a German word that means "possessions closest to your soul.”
The idea of possession has haunted Harper and Yasmin's relationship from the start: they've battled for control over Robert, over clients, and over each other. But "Habseligkeiten" points less to material property than to sentimental value. Harper and Yasmin do love each other, but they have no idea how love works. In the end, the only option left is to keep each other close, no matter how much damage they cause to each other in the process.
Set roughly one month after the last episode, Industry season 4, episode 3 opens with Harper and Eric in their new "office," a fancy hotel suite, making final adjustments to properly launch their new business: a short-only fund they named SternTao. While Eric sets up meetings, Harper contacts FinDigest reporter Jim Dycker, who is convinced Tender is processing illegal porn and gambling payments out of Africa.
Meanwhile at Tender, Henry is now CEO but it is Yasmin who's calling the shots as his "paid consultant", a position Henry most certainly made up to keep his wife around. Yas convinces Henry to turn his mental health issues into a powerful narrative, which he uses to apologize to Jennifer Bevan and regain her trust.
Harper and Eric meet with skeptical investors, piquing their curiosity by mentioning plans to short Tender despite the company's growing market value. For those who don't know, short refers to a trade that aims at profiting from a decline in an asset's price. Harper is confident that Tender's illegal activities will come to light, even if she’s the one who has to drag them into the open.
Pleasures close to the soul
Industry season 4, episode 3 heads to Austria, where the Tender team joins Moritz-Hunter Bauer and his mother, Princess Johanna, in their house, where they hope to finalize a deal to acquire Moritz's bank, IBN Bauer. A very awkward dinner ensues as Henry and Whitney try to keep it calm in the face of Moritz's passive-aggressive political remarks, which conceal his heavily antisemitic beliefs. Things take a rather sinister turn later, when Yasmin notices a painting in the house signed by none other than Adolf Hitler himself.
After an intense but seemingly successful dinner, the HBO show delivers its steamiest scene of the season so far. Yasmin lures Hayley, Tender's young executive assistant, into her room to engage in dominance-driven sexual games with Henry and her. Hayley, looking for an opportunity to please her superiors, gladly surrenders.
Harper and Eric confront the thin line between friendship and partnership
Since Industry season 1, Harper and Eric have been struggling to maintain a strictly professional relationship. Things reached a boiling point in season 3 when they became sworn enemies and took jabs at each other's private lives to hurt one another. Now that they are back into an amiable relationship, things are supposed to be easier, but they aren't.
The line between friendship and partnership in SternTao gets even blurrier when Eric secures an investor in the Tender deal, but only on the condition that Eric acts as guarantor of a sum of $10 million, which equals his entire family fund. Harper stresses that she would never ask him to comply, but he does so anyway.
It is night, and Eric encourages Harper to forget work for a while and go out. Harper's idea of giving herself a break, however, involves picking up a fight with Kwabena. She goes back to SternTao's HQ and snaps at Eric, which, in turn, creates an opening for a rare heart-to-heart conversation.
This reinforces how Harper is only able to retreat from her methodical, workaholic character when she's angry. She's only herself when she's out of control. "This is life or death for me", she confesses to Eric. The two come clean to each other and agree to commit fully to the company's next steps.
Here, the word "Habseligkeiten" looms over the characters again: their work, their talent, is the possession that comes closest to their soul.
Things are about to get intense in Industry season 4
At FinTech, Jim Dycker is faced with two options: publish a heavily redacted story about Tender's shady activities or forget all about it. He chooses the former. Meanwhile, Harper and Sweetpea head to Sunderland, where they discover that Jim was right all along: Tender is disguising transactions related to porn and gambling, obscuring their original source.
Harper asks Sweetpea to come work with her at Stern Tao, but Sweetpea hesitates, citing Harper's tendency to leave people behind. Harper gives her word that this time is different. This marks the second promise she makes to Sweetpea in this episode of Industry, and it’s clear she’s going to break both. The other concerns Rishi, with whom Sweetpea asked never to share a room again.
By the end of Industry season 4, episode 3, parallel plans are put in motion. The Tender team attends a meeting with government regulators to persuade them to let the IBN Bauer Bank merger go through. The meeting doesn't start well, but the arrival of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff ultimately steers the meeting in a more favorable direction. In the meantime, the SternTeo team -- now made up of Harper, Eric, Sweetpea, and Kwabena -- meets Kenny in an unexpected PierPoint reunion at Deutsche Bank, where they hope to carry out the Tender short.
Industry season 4 episode 3 review
After two episodes of setting up plot threads and new characters, Industry season 4, episode 3 finally moves the story forward. It's not an explosive episode, but the psychological games are in full swing. All the scenes in Austria carry an unsettling mood, and the Hitler painting is the icing on the cake.
Industry's social commentary tends to be very subtle beyond the financial world, but the show found in the Bauers a sharp critique of how aberrant ideologies camouflage themselves in the internet's treacherous space: here's a seemingly affable man who owns a century-old bank and is popular on Substack. The fact that he and his mother are devoted Nazis seems almost trivial.
It's great that Kiernan Shipka is getting more screen time in the HBO series, but let's hope her character won't be used only as Yasmin's sex toy. Industry's sex scenes are usually rich in character insight, but this time, the erotic encounter between Hayley, Henry, and Yas doesn't tell us more about Hayley as much as it reinforces what we already know about Yas and her kinks. At least she finally got herself a threesome after that failed attempt in season 1 with Harper and Rob.
Overall, Industry season 4, episode 3 is twisted, sexy, and sets the stage for an intense confrontation between Harper and Yasmin, once again on opposing sides. The HBO series is at its best whenever it promotes heated rivalries between its characters. The parallel storylines worked very well in this episode: opposing forces winning their own battles and advancing into enemy lines. Now, it's time for a collision between the two sides, and only one will emerge victorious.
Industry season 4 airs on Sundays on HBO Max.