Men's Health March 2, 2026 0 Comments

Myha’la Reveals Shocking Secrets Behind Industry Season 4 Finale—Prepare for a Wild Ride Into TV’s Darkest Abyss!

Ever felt like the universe is handing you a win wrapped in bittersweetness? That’s exactly the vibe in the jaw-dropping season 4 finale of Industry, where Harper Stern (Myha’la) nails a high-stakes victory by shorting the fintech app Tender—only to be left standing solo, with her mentor Eric mysteriously vanishing from her life. It’s a classic “the cheese stands alone” moment that’s as triumphant as it is tinged with heartache. But what happens when success isn’t exactly the celebration you imagined? As Harper dives into a chaotic Parisian evening with her bestie Yasmin, the glam fundraising dinner unravels into a dark plunge nobody saw coming. The season masterfully balances career wins and personal losses, making us wonder: in a cutthroat world, can you truly have it all without paying a steep emotional price? If you thought Industry couldn’t get any more intense, think again—especially with a fifth and final season just on the horizon.

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THE CHEESE STANDS alone. The opening moments of the masterful Industry season 4 finale, “Both, and,” see Harper Stern (Myha’la) stand triumphant. Having called her shot to short the fintech banking app Tender (and, by proxy, exposing Max Minghella’s Whitney Halberstram as a criminal fraud in the process), she’s just garnered herself quite a payday. Despite her success, the moment brings mixed feelings, as Harper’s longterm mentor Eric (Ken Leung) abruptly stepped out of her life a few episodes prior—and she still doesn’t know why. A well-deserved and awaited victory feels bittersweet without Eric there.

As it goes in the world of Industry, good things are fleeting at best. The episode jumps forward roughly six weeks, as Harper goes to meet her best friend Yasmin (Marisa Abela) in Paris for a fundraising dinner in support of a new British politician she’s working with. As if the dinner—wherein Harper is seated next to actual Nazis—couldn’t have gone worse, the evening takes a left turn down into the absolute depths of hell and then some.

As Harper and Yas sit and converse after dinner, the show slowly reveals that Yasmin is, ostensibly, a madame and has a group of young women, ahem, engaging in god knows what with the collected men. A (rightfully) horrified Harper tries and fails to talk some sense into Yasmin, but not before her friend reveals that Eric slept with one of the girls and that he believed her to be underage. While the audience knows the truth about what happened, the reveal crushes Harper to her core, only finding some bit of solace amongst her situationship Kwabena (Toheeb Jimoh). It’s another bold finale in a series that’s known for sticking the landing—and one that was just renewed for a fifth and final season on HBO.

myha'la harper stern industry season 4 ending explained

HBO

Myha’la, Toheeb Jimoh, and Miriam Petche in Industry.

Myha’la, just as she did for season 3, sat down with Men’s Health to talk all about the finale, what she’s looking forward to in the final season, and more.

MEN’S HEALTH: How much were you told up front about Harper’s arc this season?

M: [Creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay] always share a general arc where they’re like, “This is what Harper’s going to do. This is her goal. This is what we hope to show you. ” As the season goes on, and they get inspired, sometimes some of that changes. They were like, she has her own fund, then she breaks off, and she does her own thing. But I didn’t really know a lot of the details going in. By the time we got to the last two episodes—which came a little later than the others—I really didn’t know what was happening. It was all a surprise to me.

MH: What was your reaction to the big scenes between Harper and Yasmin in episodes 7 and 8?

M: I was like “Uhhhh…” [Laughs]. I read the show when I first get it, like how a fan feels when they watch it. I’m always like, “Oh my God, what the hell?” I was glad Harper and Yasmin had their redemption night out. They both really needed it. I thought “Oh, the fans are going to eat this up,” and thank God they did.

Then I read episode 8, and I was really depressed. In true Industry fashion, you can assume if something goes well or is nice, or if the characters are on some kind of high, they’re immediately going to be snatched off that pedestal and dragged down into the deepest depths of hell. Which is what happens in the last episode. Every time I finish the season, I think, “How are we going to come back from this?” Which, I think, is the point.

HBO

Marisa Abela and Myha’la in Industry.

MH: It’s funny you bring up hell, because that’s exactly how I felt. How did you and Marisa approach that scene?

M: Dude, it’s honestly so funny. There’s a video Mickey posted when we wrapped. Nobody knew what it was, but we’re doing my last coverage of me walking out of the scene, and it’s a long lens shot. I walk away from her, turn around, and the camera’s on me. But everyone—Mickey, Konrad, the ADs, everyone—is behind the camera all recording because it’s the last show we’re going to do. I’m trying to do a serious [makes an intense face]… you know what I mean? And I was like, “I can’t really focus when everyone’s just waiting to celebrate the end of the shot.” But, anyway, we got the shot. There’s a video of me and Marisa and we’re like, “Yayyyy!” jumping around, holding hands, and laughing.

We’re not the type of actors who need to drop in really hard and discuss for days or whatever. We found a rhythm in the show, in our characters, each other, and the writing, which means we don’t really have to try that hard. It sounds a little—I don’t want it to come off crazy, but because we’re so locked in with each other all the time, the steps or time it takes to get to those places is a lot shorter and simpler because we have all of those relationships already.

We were like, Let’s just get through this, because it’s going to be hard. Because we have all that prep stuff in us already, we know that once they roll the cameras, it’s just going to come.

MH: One of my favorite quotes from when we spoke after the season 3 finale is, “There’s nothing Yasmin and Harper could do to each other that would dissolve their bond. They’re both fucked up, and they see each other as deeply fucked.” Does that still feel true to you?

M: Yeah, totally. They have to be. As they evolve and grow older, they start to change fundamentally. Harper and Yasmin in season 1 are fundamentally different from season 4. They’re fucked up in way different ways [Laughs], and they’re coming to the point in their adulthood where they’re not just flailing around being traumatized. Now is a really crucial, critical point in which you decide what kind of person you’re going to be because of your trauma. Are you going to be a traumatized person who traumatizes other people, or are you going to pivot hardcore 180 and go the opposite way?

It feels like that’s what’s happening. One of them is leaning in and saying, “I’m trying to protect myself by leaning in.” The other is saying, “I’m trying to protect myself from turning away.” But we don’t see it, and that’s the brilliance of Mickey and Konrad. We have no idea. There’s not even a suggestion. They’re obviously not together at the end of the show, but there’s so much possibility for it to go in any direction. I don’t think their bond is dissolved. I don’t think Harper would be as hurt as she is if she didn’t care about Yasmin.

“Nobody loves Harper as much as I do. I’ll go into this last season defending her harder than I ever have, and hopefully I’ll get to give her the sendoff she deserves.”

MH: One of Harper’s strengths is her strength, and how she’s able to hold onto that. What I love about the scene with Kwabena that follows is how she softens up and accepts that reality, which feels like her arc for the season in a lot of ways.

M: Absolutely. Harper has been much more penetrable this season. Some pretty big things happened to her. Her mother passing is huge. Eric becoming a father figure and then abandoning her almost immediately is pretty huge. Everybody has their limits; There’s only so many walls you can build up, only so many masks you can put on before you become overexhausted. The only thing left is vulnerability. She doesn’t actively choose it—I think she just can’t help it.

She’s human. It’s been seasons of pile on, and everyone has a breaking point. Kwabena—even though that relationship is also pretty fucked up [Laughs]—is the only one who doesn’t seem to judge her for the way she deals with these hard things and the way she moves through the world. He’s like, I don’t love it, because you continue to push me away, but I see it, and I want to be around you despite it. No one else has said that. Everyone else is like, You’re a monster. You’re a bad person.

There’s a level of safety she feels with him so that she can be the vulnerable version of herself that she’s being sort of forced to be. All of the bad things that have happened to Harper have shook her up, and now she’s like, Oh, I think maybe I need to be held and not to continue to push people away, which is what I think she tries to do with Kwabena. If I were her friend, I’d be like, “Girl! Find someone else. Yes. But find somebody else.” But, you know, I’m not [laughs].

MH: Because the attention gets shifted in the midst of Harper’s conversation with Yasmin, we don’t get a lot of time to sit with the Eric of it all. When she leaves that room, what are her immediate thoughts?

M: The loss is tremendous. It’s really hard, because Harper doesn’t want to even engage with that part of it. She says, almost immediately, Fuck this video, bro. Let’s not go there. She’s already mourned him, and there were so many question marks. She’s watching the destruction of her friend right before her eyes, and Yasmin tried to use Eric as a justification for why she’s descending into the second level of hell. More than anything, she just feels so alone. I’m not sure that there are any coherent thoughts about that. I think she’s just feeling really, really alone, and really afraid.

HBO

Myha’la and Toheeb Jimoh in Industry.

MH: You mentioned Harper’s mom. Did you have a conversation with Mick and Kon about never getting to see Harper’s mom?

M: I never asked them, “Why don’t we ever see Harper’s mom?” I think a practical answer is that her mom is in New York, and they don’t ever speak. If we’re following Harper, they would only ever be on the phone, but they don’t talk to each other.

If we all had it our way, we’d have another eight episodes, and we’d be able to do flashbacks or travel to New York. Unfortunately, a lot of those things end up being practical. How many hours do we have to shoot the show? How expensive is it to shoot in New York? There are a lot of factors. We’ve definitely tried, over the years, to incorporate her mom, but it just never felt right. We’d cast someone in the first season that we ended up cutting. In the first or second season, I filmed with someone. It was a FaceTime and it just didn’t feel right, so they cut it.

I think there’s also something to be said about how jarring it is to be like, Oh, wait, her mom died. Harper has a family. You know what I mean? I think it challenges the audience to be like, Oh damn, she’s human. She has a life outside of this world that nobody understands. She gets affected by real world things. She’s not just a detached human being who only exists in Canary Wharf.

MH: I’ve heard other actors talk about how they listen to what their characters are telling them. What was Harper telling you this season?

M: At every turn, she was feeling pretty desperate to be heard and to be seen. I think that remains true. Harper has spent three seasons with people calling her a monster. There’s been a real lack of acknowledging her humanity. A lot of that has to do with cultural differences. She’s a Black, American woman living in London in finance. There’s a lot of chips stacked against her in terms of ever really being understood. She’s engaging with some of the most selfish people on the planet. She’s challenging herself in the way she walks through the world, in an attempt to be seen and heard in a different way.

MH: How are you feeling about the season 5 renewal? Is there a relief in knowing that you get to end the show on your own terms?

M: I’ve never done this show with the understanding that it was done. This will be a new, exciting experience. I’ll go into it understanding that I’ll never get to do it again. I do this anyway, but I think I will really relish every moment.

This has been an opportunity of a lifetime. This character is a one-in-a-million. I take so much pride and get so much joy out of getting to play her, be her, and share her with the world. Like you said, it’s ending on all my own terms, but also it wasn’t snatched out from underneath me in an unexpected way, like if I had done a season and been like, Oh, that was great. Maybe we’ll do this next time or whatever.

Nobody loves Harper more than I do. I would even say that about Mickey and Konrad. Obviously they love her, but they love all the characters. Nobody loves Harper as much as I do. I’ll go into this last season defending her harder than I ever have, and hopefully I’ll get to give her the sendoff she deserves.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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William Goodman is a freelancer writer, focused on all things pop culture, tech, gadgets, and style. He’s based in Washington, DC and his work can also be found at Robb Report, Complex, and GQ. He’s yet to meet a jacket or cardigan he didn’t love. In his free time, he’s probably on Twitter (@goodmanw) or at the movies.