This week’s episode of Industry on HBO, Season 4, Episode 5 “Eyes Without A Face” debuted a few days early on HBO Max. But in case you missed it, or are just catching up now that it’s aired on the channel, it contained the single most shocking thing that’s happened in four seasons: Harper Stern (Myha’la) and Eric Tao (Ken Leung) having a real, human conversation.
Overall this seems to be one of the big themes of the season, and something that’s been explored in different ways thus far: can Eric and Harper be normal? Can they work together at SternTao? Can they be people who have lives beyond financial transactions? From the viewer perspective, the answer has been consistently “no” as what drew Harper and Eric together when the show began and then blew them up spectacularly is that they saw themselves in each other, two people extremely good at managing money and extremely terrible at managing anything else.
For three seasons, Eric and Harper brought out the worst in each other, episode after episode. Which is why it was so surprising to see them join together in SternTao at the beginning of Season 4. That all comes to a head here in an episode that explores what it’s like if all the characters have honest conversations with each other, and where they net out at the end of that. So we get Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petch) getting Kwabena Bannerman (Toheeb Jimoh) to admit what his kink is (turns out, it’s her), and the duo also get to the truth at the center of Tender, the banking app — or rather, that there’s no truth there, it’s an empty shell of imagined money.
But the main event is Eric and Harper. For Eric, he’s dealing with his daughter getting expelled from school over a catfishing scandal (she was the one catfishing), and that he just cannot bring himself to care about his family. For Harper, her mom dies suddenly, and she doesn’t know how to feel about it.
In the key scene, Eric gently ushers Harper into his room, and tells her that she can talk to him. Harper confesses that her mom “was awful to me. And she tortured my brother so badly, she f**ked him up to the point where he was incapable of loving me. And it’s his love when I was young… That’s the only love I remember.”
This is a jaw-dropper for a number of reasons, but the biggest is Harper revealing her real feelings with no subterfuge, hidden agenda, or jab at the end. And that would be wild enough, but Eric talks to her, asks her honestly, “what else do you remember?” She also remembers “hate” and Harper slowly sits down next to him at the foot of the bed. That’s when Eric confesses about his daughter, and expands that, “I know when I’m with them, I know it’s the only place I should be. But I don’t want to be there.” He knows it’s a betrayal. And Harper is smart enough to know that Eric picked a career built on transactions.
So here we have a woman who lost her parent and feels empty about it, and a parent who feels empty about his kids. And the two just… Talk? To each other? As equals? Asking each other questions and listening to the answers? And it ends with Harper saying all she ever wanted from her mom was for her to see her as the force she’s become, as someone undeniable. “You are undeniable,” Eric says, bringing Harper to tears.
What’s so fascinating about the way Myha’la and Ken Leung play this scene is they’re both tentative, weighing each word carefully as they know that in the past one or both of them would turn on the other. It’s also human emotion, something they are just not used to at all. It’s akin to a robot feeling love for the first time, and the duo of actor play this to the hilt. On any other show, this would be a typical, run-of-the-mill scene: two characters saying their inner feelings out loud. On Industry, it’s unprecedented.
It also ends, sadly, in the place you would expect — at least for one of them. Eric, by episode’s end, has spent time with his wife and daughter, but can only return to the transactions he’s used to. Specifically, he gets a blowjob from a nameless sex worker he’s named “Dolly Hotel Girl” who calls him “daddy” while she sucks him off, and he watches himself in the mirror… Whatever Eric learned this episode, it hasn’t stuck.
Harper, though? That’s a question mark. She tries visiting Sweetpea towards episode’s end and providing sympathy and comfort to her, but it doesn’t work… Sweetpea isn’t ready to be human, she can only do that in private (the episode ends with her sobbing, alone, in her flat). And Harper’s final line of the episode is that she’s going to be working and isn’t to be disturbed. But there’s a hint that something has changed in her with the death of her mother, something that has been shifting all season long. Bannerman yells at her, and rather than obliterating him back, like a good manager she takes it in, hears him, and moves on.
If anything, it’s clear that Eric ultimately can’t change; Harper, at least, maybe can. Is “maybe” enough on a show like Industry? We’ll have to keep watching to find out.
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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