Industry Season 3 Began as Silicon Valley and Ended as Downton Abbey

This article contains spoilers for Industry season 3 episode 8.

An unexpected challenge facing pop culture websites with international readerships is simply determining where certain properties come from.

In our increasingly globalized economy, a TV series can be commissioned by a corporation from one country, filmed by a local crew in another, and then receive a distribution plan that includes one, both, or neither nations. Den of Geek U.K. TV Editor/all-around legend Louisa Mellor and I occasionally grapple with these international tweeners, trading Bridgertons and Slow Horses around like Pokémon cards. Rarely have we ever been more stymied by a U.S./U.K. collaboration, however, than with finance world drama Industry.

Created by British writers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, Industry was commissioned as a joint venture between HBO and BBC One, with both networks premiering the show within a day of each other in November 2020. Despite that initial co-equal international ownership, Industry‘s balance of power has noticeably shifted towards the U.S. as the show has progressed through its excellent three-season run. Industry is increasingly perceived as an HBO series, partly because of its similarities to fellow HBO juggernaut Succession, but mostly due to an unfortunate staggered release strategy.

U.K. fans had to wait an additional two months for the second season of Industry to premiere on BBC iPlayer in 2022 and now have to endure a similar delay in 2024 to see the entirety of season (sorry, series) three. You can see this shifting dynamic play out here at Den of Geek. Louisa wrote our season 1 breakdown of the show and I’ve since begun to contribute as it becomes a more distinctly American entity. Onscreen, the show started to incorporate more American characters as well, with American Harper Stern (Myha’la) entering into partnerships with fellow yankees Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass) in season 2 and Petra Koenig (Sarah Goldberg) in season 3.

With the just-concluded season 3, however, Industry found an ingenious way to incorporate the meta-narrative about its shifting national identities and in the process crafted its best season yet.

Industry season 3 begins on a distinctly American note. Our friends at Pierpoint & Co are going all in on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and have found the perfect company to bring to the market: renewable energy firm Lumi, owned and operated by Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington). As if the “Sir” honorific wasn’t a dead giveaway, Henry is unmistakably a member of the British aristocracy. He counts politicians and business magnates as peers, and the creation of Lumi was only possible thanks to the financial largesse of his uncle Viscount Norton (Andrew Havill) and godfather Otto Mostyn (Roger Barclay).

Still, Henry does everything he can to remove the stench of old money from his fresh new enterprise. Lumi looks like something straight out of The Social Network, or more accurately: Silicon Valley. Suits and ties are outlawed in the company’s sterile, yet posh headquarters. Desk space is limited but there are plenty of pillows. Henry himself insists upon wearing a Lumi T-shirt with lime green sleeves to every business meeting.

Despite being a British company with an intensely British CEO, Lumi couldn’t possibly be more American-coded if it tried. It’s a classic Northern California tech start-up that just happened to be hatched in a mansion rather than a Cupertino garage. Of course, it’s also a fraud. Lumi’s numbers are bad and the market realizes it almost immediately after Pierpoint launches its Initial Public Offering (IPO). Within hours, Lumi is toast and Parliamentary inquiries are called to investigate Pierpoint and Muck’s defrauding of British consumers.

The quick rise and fall of Lumi serves as a fascinating fake out for the first half of Industry season 3. It’s almost as if the show is acknowledging, then rejecting its own burgeoning perception as an American-branded enterprise. That’s because, following the implosion of Lumi, Henry quickly drops the “visionary young tech CEO” act and returns to the comfort of that old British money. Industry follows him on his way.

This all culminates in the brilliant season 3 finale, “Infinite Largesse,” in which Yasmin (Marisa Abela) accepts the inevitability of the aristocracy. Yasmin comes from wealth thanks to her awful father Charles’ (Adam Levy) business empire. Everything falls apart for the Hanani family after Charles is revealed to as a lecherous creep and a terrible businessman. When Charles is lost at sea and drowns, Yasmin is left holding the bag for her father’s crimes and her passive involvement in his death is threatened to be exposed by one of Viscount Norton’s newspapers.

At first, Yasmin is determined to get out of this mess on her own. But she eventually gives in and elects to pay a visit to her old lover Henry Muck for assistance, alongside her current (and real) love interest Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey). Long having abandoned his false identity as a plucky underdog, Henry now lives on the massive family estate, having servants serve tea to Robert and Yasmin and sent out on errands to get them a fresh, expensive wardrobe for a family dinner.

Suddenly a season of television that began as a pastiche of Silicon Valley now seems like something straight out of Downton Abbey. In fact, Industry showrunners revealed to Vulture after the finale that the real life filming location for the Muck estate was also used for the 1993 film The Remains of the Day. The harsh visual dichotomy between how the season begins and ends serves as a not-so-subtle reminder of where power really lies in the financial world.

Industry season 3’s return to its own British-ness doesn’t operate on solely aesthetics either. The finale sees Yasmin making a dramatic (and very regency drama) decision. Ignoring her clear love for Robert, Yasmin enters into a nakedly opportunistic and political marriage with Henry. After a whole season spent trying to make it on her own in her father’s absence, Yasmin yields to the reality that the only way to survive the power of the aristocracy is to become them. There is no tech start-up IPO play that will equal the wealth of the Mucks of the world – no matter what Robert says in his psilocybin pitch meetings.

The employees at Pierpoint aren’t the power here. They’re middle men moving money around for the real power that resides in estates that dot the British countryside. In Industry season 1, Harper experiences a panic attack after mis-investing thousands of dollars of a client’s money in the wrong currency. Here, Sir Henry Muck refers to a couple of million dollars as “prosciutto money” – as in literally the loose change one would use to buy dry-cooked meat. Eric Tao (Ken Leung) will discover his own middle-man status later on as he’s summarily fired by the unfathomably wealthy Egyptian firm he helped bring on to save the company.

If TV seasons can be judged by the metaphorical distance they travel between their premieres and finales, it’s hard to think of a more transformative recent experience than Industry‘s third outing. From Silicon Valley in the beginning to a sinister Downton Abbey horror movie in the end, Industry season 3 went on one hell of a journey. In the process, it re-discovered its uniquely British-American identity.

All three seasons of Industry are available to stream on Max now in the U.S. All eight episodes of season 3 will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer in the U.K. on October 1.