HBO's corporate drama 'Industry' is finally back. Here's a quick refresher

It’s been about two years since Season 2 of HBO’s seedy corporate melodrama Industry aired. The series finally returns for a third season on Sunday, but, if you barely remember a thing about where we left off, you’re likely suffering from what I call hiatus brain.

Industry, with its cavalcade of ruthless investment bankers and ever-shifting alliances, absolutely warrants a refresher before jumping back in. Let’s get into it.

Where we left off

The show’s premise is simple: In Season 1, a class of young recent grads were thrown into the cutthroat, coke-strewn world of fictional investment bank Pierpoint & Co. in London. Some have fared better than others – one of them literally died from a combination of energy drinks and stimulant pills in the pilot episode – but all of their souls were ultimately compromised as they vied for permanent positions within the firm.

Season 2 took place in the immediate aftermath of the global COVID-19 shutdown, with Pierpoint and its clients re-emerging to seize on all the economic vulnerabilities created in the pandemic’s wake. Looming over the return to work were rumors that the company’s New York and London sales teams might be consolidated; everyone was on edge.

Harper (Myha’la Herrold), the crafty and amorally reckless trader who’s been called a “narcissist” to her face on more than one occasion, spent last season wooing a new client, hedge fund manager Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass). She also strategized a plan with her boss and mentor Eric (Ken Leung) to convince Pierpoint management to keep them on amid the layoffs, while throwing two of their colleagues, Rishi and Dan, under the bus.

While dealing with Jesse, Harper did what she does best, which is to say she played huge, ethically dubious moves that both impressed and mortified Eric. However, his tolerance for Harper’s increasingly risky gambles eventually wore thin when, in the season finale, she passed an insider trading tip about the possibility of a huge corporate merger on to Jesse – who then used the info to make a ton of money on both sides of a trade. Worried about the legal bind she put herself and Pierpoint in, Eric blindsided Harper by revealing her long-held secret to management: that she faked her transcripts and never graduated from college. (He didn’t mention anything to them about the insider trading, though.) “I’m doing this for you,” he told her. She was fired, and Rishi got to stay on at the company.

Yasmin (Marisa Abela) struck up a professional and personal relationship with Celeste (Katrine De Candole), one of Pierpoint’s private wealth managers. We were also introduced to Yas’ dad Charles (Adam Levy), a sleazy and well-connected business mogul/playboy with whom she has a strained relationship. She and Celeste worked to move Charles’ financial assets to Pierpoint, but the whole thing quickly fell apart: Yasmin became aware that the family’s wealth was significantly drained because Charles paid off a number of women with whom he had affairs in exchange for signing NDAs. Eventually, she suggested they stop dealing with Charles and other people like him, but Celeste shrugged it off, much to Yasmin’s horror. In the finale, Celeste cut her loose from the account.

Yasmine also lambasted Charles in the middle of a restaurant, accusing him of “grooming” her teenaged nanny years ago. She told him she wanted “nothing more to do with [him],” but as Charles harshly reminded her, she’s been financially beholden to him in every possible way her entire life. Later that evening, she returned to her lavish flat to find the locks changed.

Meanwhile, struggling salesman Robert (Harry Lawtey) took on a new client, Nicole Craig (Sarah Parish). After a meeting over dinner, she made a sexual advance on him, and they began an uncomfortable ongoing affair, with Nicole manipulating his relative inexperience and junior status at the firm. Eventually, Robert found out that Nicole’s predation of Pierpoint staffers like him is a pattern and open secret – she’d attempted the same with Harper (as seen in Season 1). Robert was distraught and tried to sever ties with her, but by the season’s end, when she bailed him out of jail after he was arrested for drug possession, he’d resigned himself to their old ways.

Who’s out and who’s in for Season 3

At the end of the first season, Gus (David Jonsson), the urbane Eton and Oxford grad, wasn’t hired at Pierpoint, though he was still in the mix in Season 2. At first, he got a gig as a tutor for Jesse Bloom’s son; then he was hired to work for a member of Parliament. Through the latter gig, he gained that crucial intel he passed along to Harper, knowing exactly what she’d do with it. Jesse’s rogue act turned out well for Gus’ boss, who got promoted to secretary of health, but like Harper, Gus’ skirting of ethics ultimately got him fired. (Although as we’ve seen again and again, no bad deed goes punished for long – or at all – within the finance world; he quickly secured a new job with Jesse.) Gus won’t return for Season 3 – Jonsson’s been busy doing some other big things lately – but the fallout from his actions reverberates all throughout these upcoming episodes.

And in an environment full of old-school finance bro stereotypes – abrasive, vulgar, and ever coked up – sales associate Rishi (Sagar Radia) was one of the worst of their kind. After hanging around the background in Season 1, he became more integral to the Industry narrative in Season 2. He (very) briefly hooked up with Harper in a bar bathroom on the eve of his wedding, and survived the chopping block at Pierpoint once Eric decided to turn Harper in to HR. In the forthcoming third season, he’ll take on an even bigger role as Pierpoint faces a pivotal moment in its history.

Also: Harper and Yas’ frenemy dynamic goes into overdrive, and a new absurdly wealthy and arrogant white dude enters the scene in the form of Henry Muck (Kit Harington), a green tech CEO. More than anything, be prepared for Season 3 to be the most dramatic and stress-inducing yet.