SPOILER ALERT: This story contains plot details for “The Commander and the Grey Lady,” Season 4, Episode 2 of HBO’s “Industry,” now streaming on HBO Max.
All is not well in the House of Muck.
After underlining his credentials as a failed entrepreneur in Season 3, “Industry” creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay plunge their silver spoon-fed aristocrat Henry Muck (Kit Harington) into dramatic new lows in the second episode of Season 4. In the first few scenes alone, he’s humiliated on stage at the local election in his bid to become a Conservative Party member of parliament, then back at the vast country pile sees his relatively fresh marriage to Yasmin (Marisa Abela) loudly unravel as he lies hungover in a four-poster bed, mopes around in a silk dressing gown feeling sorry for himself, and gives up his libido in exchange for lines of coke (and much more).
But that’s not all. At a glittering birthday party Yasmin (kitted out like Marie Antoinette) throws for Henry, he ups the drug-taking with some LSD, and then, leaving the party, embarks on a violent adventure with a visitor. At the pub, having gotten into a physical fight with one of the locals, the audience learns that the friend Henry’s with is a figment of his imagination — the ghost of his late father (a man looming large over all his growing mental health woes). Later, back at the estate, Henry tries to end it all for good in a garage (his father had also taken his own life).
For Harington, who was only brought into “Industry” in Season 3, the episode — almost entirely set on Muck’s grand estate — was the opportunity to give Henry a much more complete and complex character, warts and all, than seen before.
“The importance of it was to see him as I had always known him, as a real and fully rounded person, not just a kind of villainous character who comes in and steals the girl, but someone who actually has a real trauma in his past — and who wants to do good at the heart of it, but is struggling,” he tells Variety. “And I thought, if we could see that see in all its ugliness, then we might empathize with him.”
For all the upper-class hijinks, Henry’s descent also raises the topic of male suicide, an “important subject matter that needs to be talked about,” says Harington. “No one should go through that, no matter how privileged you are, no matter how despicable a person you are.”
“Industry” watchers will note that the episode is the show’s wildest departure from its origins yet. Season 4 in itself serves as an mini-reboot of the series, expanding the story away from its financial roots and into ambitious pastures new. But this dark tale — directed by Down and Kay — is easily the furthest its felt from Pierpoint, with the ghost element also dragging the drama into new genre realms. “A neo-Gothic period drama in a big house,” is how Kay described it to Variety.
“One thing you know about Mickey and Konrad is that they’re not afraid to take a wild swing, and land it,” says Harington. “And I think it works, because it’s all in Henry’s mind — we’re seeing it mainly from his perspective. So it is supernatural, but Henry has just popped an acid. And we’ve also set the episode up as being very strange and odd and surreal in its placement in this house. I think they’ve done it very cleverly.”
Despite having added numerous layers to Henry — who actually emerges from Episode 2 somewhat rejuvenated and with his relationship with Yasmin refreshed following a quick shag on the bonnet of his sports car — it hasn’t changed his opinion of the character.
“You know, I still think he’s an egotistical nightmare and completely self obsessed,” he says. “But at the heart of it, I really like him.”
