Another week of HBO‘s Industry, another completely unhinged episode of the series. This time, on Season 4, Episode 2, “The Commander and the Grey Lady,” the focus turns to The Saddest Man In the World ™, aka Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington). Spoilers past this point, but it’s his birthday, and things do not go well.
How badly do things get? Well, I’ll tell you as we recount the 13 craziest, most unhinged moments of the episode as if this was prime listicle timez, well over a decade ago. Let’s get into it, because Henry is gonna get real depressed if we don’t. After all, it’s his party, and he’ll cry if he wants to.
Oh, and just a warning: we usually keep things PG here on the site, but given this is Industry we’re going full uncensored, so be warned.
1. There’s Always One At Every Election
The episode begins with a. flashback to Henry, who should have been a shoo-in, losing a MP (Member of Parliament) election for Wakefield to Jennifer “Jenni” Bevan (Amy James-Kelly). Compounding things a bit is that he’s on stage with Count Binface, from the Count Binface Party, who gets 309 votes.
Here’s the hilarious thing, though: this is a “real” candidate who has appeared in UK elections since 2019. Actually comedian Jonathan David Harvey, he was originally called Lord Buckethead of the Monster Raving Loony party, but had to change his name for copyright reasons. Since introducing the character in 2018, Count Binface ran for general elections in 2019 and 2023, as well as in the London mayoral elections in 2021 and 2024. His past platforms included such items as reducing Piers Morgan emissions, and renaming the London Bridge the Phoebe-Waller Bridge.
The amount of votes here is consistent with his general election levels, but in both mayoral elections, Count Binface garnered over 20,000 votes each time, about 1%. Anyway, it’s just another level of embarrassment for Henry, on top of the main kick in the nuts of losing to Jennifer.
2. Fulfill Your Function
I guess we’re swerving from “shocking” moments almost immediately, but on the morning of Henry’s 40th birthday, Yasmin (Marisa Abela) wakes Henry up from his hungover stupor mid-afternoon, while a housemaid, Molly White (Esther O’Casey), pulls back the curtains. A pissed off Yasmin yells at Molly to leave, so she can have a private conversation with her husband.
But Henry lays out the theme of the episode: “Yasmin, you have to let her fulfill her function. Just let her do the curtains.”
So what is Henry’s function? And what is Yas’s? That’s what this episode is about! Okay, back to unhinged outrage, even *yawn* thematic resonance. (Also of note, this sets up Molly, who becomes important later in the episode).
3. Henry Goes Gun Shopping
After getting a repaired watch as a birthday gift from Yasmin, which we later find out was Henry’s fathers, Lord Muck heads to the gun shed and takes a gun out of the shelf… And it sure looks like if he wasn’t interrupted, he would have shot himself in the face. Instead, he babbles about getting the locks repaired, but: yikes.
4. PSA: Do Not Kill Your Uncle
Well, that escalated quickly. While walking out to go hunting with his uncle, Alexander Norton (Andrew Havill), Henry confronts him about not wanting to use meds anymore (though he has been self-medicating). Alexander tells him that he’s going to lose Yas if he keeps it up, to which Henry pulls his gun on him and says “What if I finished you here?”
So while two onlookers observe as if this is a regular occurrence, Henry grabs the gun and shoves it into his chest. Perhaps more shockingly, Alexander has some… Good advice? While the muzzle of the shotgun is pressed against him, Henry’s finger on the trigger? He tells Henry that instead of avoiding his pain, he should figure out a way to feel it, and “integrate it” until “one day you’ll find you’ve walked out of the woods.”
Huh, maybe I need to tell my therapist to try gun therapy.
5. Love In This Tub
Trying to reconnect with Henry, Yas visits him while he’s in the bathtub. The dominant Yas tells Henry to stand up, and he does, at attention, all ripped abs and chiseled butt before he lies down in the water again.
Yas then reaches down and begins to jerk him off in the bathtub… Until he pushes her way, telling her to stop. After a pause, Henry tells her, “look, if you want to fuck other men, you can, alright?”
Yas stalks out of the room, offended — as she should be.
6. You’re Going To Ruin The Tour
While in his robe smashing pills on the harpsichord — aka where we found him in the season premiere — a school tour full of kids shows up. “You’re not meant to be in this part of the fucking house,” screams Henry. He pauses, then adds, “I’m sorry, can you, uh, can you just leave me alone?”
The tour guide gets the children out “quick as you like now,” but yeah, that’s gonna be a highlight of the tour, for sure.
7. Aunt? Ma’am
Claire Forlani shows up this episode as Cordelia Hanani-Spyrka, who upgrades majorly from Prime Video’s ill-advised Cruel Intentions reboot to something actually shocking. You might notice the “Hanani” surname, and yes, she’s Yasmin’s aunt, though there’s a lot more to it as we delve into yet another messed up Hanani family relationship.
She’s introduced partying at Yas’s costume celebration for Henry, talking about a new, younger man she’s seeing who shocks her by saying “bend over so I can see it.” The sexually frustrated Yas seems into it, living vicariously through her giddy aunt. “Does it make me a bad mother to want to be fucked?” asks Cordelia.
The worst is yet to come, though. Later on, Cordelia is found giving Otto Mostyn (Roger Barclay) a blowjob by Yas. He laughs when it’s done, and offers her a breath mint.
“Well,” he says. “A mint for the cock breath. You’ve got a better mouth than your brother.”
Er…. Yikes. That’s Charles Hanani (Adam Levy), Yas’s father who it was very strongly intimated if not outright said raped Yasmin as a child, and perhaps for longer. So when Yas kicks Aunt Cordelia out on the street by episode’s end, it’s because of the reference to Charles — and not because Cordelia is sleeping with a 29 year old and sucking off Otto.
No, it’s because she clearly knew what Charles was doing to Yas and other children. And also, he did it to Cordelia, as well. When Yas confronts her about this, Cordelia pauses, then says, “We had a very bohemian childhood. It was a different time.”
The trauma Yas suffered at her father’s hands still cuts deep, and as we saw at the end of Season 3 is something she hasn’t even come close to accepting, let alone dealing with. Can Yas integrate that pain and head out of the woods?
Not this week!
One last kicker? Cordelia tells Yas as she’s leaving, “Oh, your father told me, that he was going to terminate you. Until he found out you were a girl.”
8. Whitney Wants Henry For Tender CEO
During a curiously sexually charged scene (though what scenes on Industry aren’t curiously sexually charged?), Whitney Halberstram (Max Mighella) offers Henry the CEO job at Tender, which seems like a wild swing given they just fired Kal Penn’s character for misconduct. Whitney explains it’s because England is all about access, and that’s what Henry can provide. But there’s got to be more to it, particularly as Whitney keeps touching Henry and getting in his personal space. And Henry is an absolute disaster area mess. So…
9. Yasmin Doesn’t Get Out The Vote
Probably the funniest line in the episode, after the meeting with Whitney, henry is getting wasted in his room. Yas enters and yells at him, with him shooting back, “why did we buy that shed in Wakefield if you didn’t even vote for me?”
“Oh, grow up,” Yas yells. “I’ve never voted, what fucking difference would my vote make.”
Reader: lol. Also: please vote.
10. Meet The Parent
After the fight with Yas, Henry takes some LSD and heads to his party, proceeding to harass and sexually assault Jennifer, until he’s grabbed by The Commander (Jack Farthing), who takes him out for a night on the town. I’m going to go ahead and spoil this part now, because it’s immediately curious that Henry does acid and then a man nobody refers or talks to shows up: The Commander is Henry’s father, who he’s hallucinating because this is also when Henry’s dad died by suicide: the day of his 40th birthday.
This imagined dad not only takes Henry out dancing at a local pub, but encourages him to sleep with the maid from the earlier scene, Molly. This leads to Henry beating the crap out of a local who is hitting on her as well and blathering on about how she loves “horse cock” and “taking it up the shitter,” with the pub people covering for their local lord.
On the one hand, the imaginary friend is an extremely tired fiction trope, and here it’s abundantly obvious what’s happening pretty much from the first time The Commander appears on screen. On the other we do get to see Henry kick the crap out of a dude, so that’s pretty fun.
The overall point is to let Henry hit rock bottom, so he can come back together with Yas and sign up to work for Tender. But the undiscussed aspect of this is that Henry is at least partially manic-depressive, and his demeanor towards the end of the episode leans towards mania.
11. Hayley’s Comment
Right after kicking out Cordelia, Yas finds Hayley (Kiernan Shipka), Whitney’s assistant, asleep on a couch upstairs. “I’ll get a room made up,” Yas tells her.
“Or I could just… Get in with you,” Hayley says.
Yas, of course, calls her bluff (?). “Okay then,” Yas says.
“Oh, um,” Heyley stammers. “I was. I’m sorry. I was kidding.”
“Okay,” Yas says. “So I’ll get a room made up.”
Uhh… Are we shipping #HaYas, folks?
12. The Noose Tightens
As you might have been able to tell from above, I’m not a huge fan of the “imaginary dad” storyline. But the moment after Henry realizes he’s been hallucinating his dead dad all night is pretty horrifying, as The Commander tells Henry he’ll see him soon, and asks if he can show him where it hurts. The Commander slowly pulls down the neck of his shirt to reveal the bloody, ragged mark of the noose he hung himself with as Henry, watery-eyed stares on in terror.
The issue is that it’s supposed to be a “oh my god you didn’t see this coming” moment… And it does lead to another horrifying scene where Henry tries to kill himself via asphyxiation with a vintage car in the garage, while remembering seeing his father hanging himself from the tree in the yard. That car, by the way, is the same car Henry’s dad used to help hang himself (presumably, he attached the rope to his neck, then to the car, looped it over a branch and let it pull him up?).
13. The Watcher At The Window
That mania I mentioned earlier? Henry hears Yas’s voice, and drives back to the house. “If you ever put me through that again,” Yas says, running to him in her robe, “I will be the one to kill you.”
They then proceed to make love on the hood of the car, while Alexander watches from the window. Yes, there’s a sense that Yas has replaced one perverted father figure for another. But there’s also a real sense here that this is the pact Alexander and Yas have made, to preserve and support Henry at all costs. I’d argue it’s not sexual so much as transactional, like a lot of this series. Perhaps more transference from Yas’s end; and paternal preservation on Alexander’s. Still pretty weird, though, and it ends with Alexander saying, “Spring is coming.”
Henry, too. Zing!
One final bonus, the killer end to the episode, as Yas and Henry drive off to a cover of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name,” Henry shouts, “Maybe we should try for a child.” Yas’s silent reaction — turning her head, the smiling dropping from her face, licking her lips — says paragraphs.
Industry Season 4 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Industry premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET. Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Industry Season 4 with premiere dates.
- Sunday, January 11, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 1 – “PayPal of Bukkake”
- Sunday, January 18, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 2 – “The Commander and The Grey Lady”
- Sunday, January 25, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 3 – “Habseligkeiten”
- Sunday, February 1, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 4 – “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn”
- Sunday, February 8, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 5 – “Eyes Without a Face”
- Sunday, February 15, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 6 – “Dear Henry”
- Sunday, February 22, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 7 – “Points of Emphasis”
- Sunday, March 1, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 8 – “Both, And” *Season Finale*
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