The new season of Industry launched with major power shifts. The first episode sees Harper Stern and Eric Tao forming a new partnership, while Whitney Halberstram seizes control of the company Tender from his co-founder. The episode, titled “PayPal of Bukkake,” premiered on HBO and HBO Max on January 11, 2026.
This season picks up about a year after the dramatic fall of the Pierpoint trading floor. The characters have moved into new roles, but they are still driven by the same hunger for power and control that defines the high-stakes world of finance.
Harper Stern’s Struggle for Control at Her New Fund
Harper Stern appears to have achieved her goals. She is now 30 years old and runs her own short-only fund at Mostyn Asset Management. She commands respect, arriving at work in powerful custom suits. However, she quickly feels trapped by her billionaire boss, Sir Otto Mostyn.
Otto has assigned a minder to watch her every move, and her investment ideas are questioned. Harper wants to short a company named Siren, a major platform for adult content. Her team doubts the move, and her clients get nervous. When a key investor suddenly pulls money from her fund, Harper makes a drastic decision.
“Iโm really tired of dancing around the fact that I was promised a fund and given what feels like a separately managed account with claustrophobic levels of oversight,” Harper tells Otto.
She sends an email to all her clients, invoking an “emergency gate” to temporarily block them from withdrawing their money. The move backfires immediately. An angry client, James Ashford, confronts her and suffers a medical episode, crashing through her glass desk. Otto then reveals his true motives, implying he hired Harper as a diversity figurehead for a world where he believes “woke shit no longer moves the needle”.
Eric Tao Returns From Retirement at Harper’s Request
After her disastrous day, Harper makes one phone call: to Eric Tao. Eric has been living a life of luxury in retirement, playing golf and being waited on at his home. The show hints that a famous former U.S. president is playing on a nearby golf course.
Despite his comfortable life, Eric answers Harper’s call and flies to London. Their dynamic has changed. Ken Leung, the actor who plays Eric, explained the shift in their relationship.
“Well, he suddenly needs her more than she needs himโฆ She, I think, represents for him a way to understand his daughter,” Leung told Variety.
They meet in person and have a raw, honest conversation about their past and future. Harper states clearly that she will not be “a punching bag for another man’s fear” again. They agree to start a new fund together, with Harper firmly in the lead. This reunion sets the stage for their partnership for the new season.
Whitney Halberstram’s Hostile Takeover of Tender
A major new storyline centers on Tender, a fast-growing payment processing company. It was founded by two Stanford friends: Whitney Halberstram and Jay Jonah Atterbury, played by Max Minghella and Kal Penn. Tender processes payments for adult sites like Siren, which has made it very profitable but also given it a risky reputation.
Whitney has a grand vision to transform Tender into a “bank killer,” a full-service digital bank. To do this, he believes the company must cut ties with the adult industry and clean up its image. Jonah, the CEO, disagrees completely, wanting to keep their lucrative business as it is.
“Sometimes the next thing is just to continue being very good at the thing weโre fucking doing,” Jonah tells Whitney, defending the status quo.
Whitney does not listen. He goes behind Jonah’s back and terminates Tender’s contract with Siren. He then orchestrates a board meeting, using Jonah’s unprofessional behavior as grounds to remove him as CEO. By the end of the episode, Whitney has ousted his best friend and taken over as interim CEO of Tender, setting his new plan in motion.
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New Characters and Key Appearances
The episode introduces several new faces who are central to the season’s plot.
- Jim Dycker: Played by Charlie Heaton, he is an investigative journalist for FinDigest who is secretly looking for dirt on Tender. He manipulates Whitney’s assistant, Hayley Clay (Kiernan Shipka), to get information.
- Kwabena Bannerman: Played by Toheeb Jimoh, he is a trader on Harper’s team at Mostyn and is also in a sexual relationship with her.
- Jennifer Bevan: A Labour Party Minister, played by Amy James-Kelly, who is pushing the new Online Safety Bill that threatens companies like Siren and Tender.
Other returning characters find themselves in new positions. Yasmin Kara-Hanani is now Lady Muck, married to Sir Henry Muck. She uses her social skills to host networking dinners, trying to secure a position for her troubled husband at Tender. Rishi Ramdani is seen recovering from the trauma of last season, doing shady information-gathering work for Harper in pubs.
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