‘Industry’ Stars Unpack Eric’s Shocking Episode 6 Discovery and the ‘Ultimate Betrayal’ That Follows

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Industry” Season 4, Episode 6.

Despite Harper’s rigid boundaries in her partnership with Eric at the start of “Industry” Season 4, the walls come down when Harper leans on Eric in Episode 5 in a particularly tender moment out of character from the typical cutthroat environment.

Their heart-to-heart, prompted by the abrupt death of Harper’s mother, is exactly what Eric (Ken Leung) has been asking for since he decided to partner up with Harper (Myha’la) and put $10 million of his own money into Stern Tao, with Leung noting Eric “ends up being there for her in a way that he could never summon for his own kids,” calling out the irony of the situation.

It certainly wasn’t a concerted choice for Harper, with Myha’la saying, “if this hadn’t happened to her, she would continue to push him away in in that way, but tragedy happens, and she was desperate for someone to hold her in it, and he was there.”

She added that Harper wouldn’t necessarily trust anyone else in her life with her grief — noting that “all of them are messy or troubled” — whereas Eric has long been a paternal figure to Harper. “He invited it and she feels safe to do it,” she said.

By Episode 6, the pair shares a victory when their bet against Tender pays off, with Myha’la pointing to Harper’s anxiety-inducing trades through the seasons. “These are also unpredictable, but … the success of it is there in the air, and there’s just joy and excitement at the end, not like, ‘Oh, thank God I’m not dead’ at the end,’ ” she said.

“It was great to play that scene in that space where everything was like, ‘what’s going on’ and uncovering dark secrets … it’s a stressful place and a haunted kind of space, and then in that moment, it was just bright,” Leung added.

In proper “Industry” fashion, that joy doesn’t last too long, with Eric not too much later receiving a haunting video of himself with a sex worker from Episode 5, alongside the sex worker’s passport that reveals her birth year of 2011, meaning she is 15 at the oldest. The messages, sent from an unknown number, shake Eric to his core.

“It was built up to a point that it plays you — you put up the scaffolding, and then kind of let it happen,” Leung said. “[It’s] so painful. There are certain things that happen when in life, where we’re like, ‘oh, here I am feeling this because of this,’ and there’s a part of you that’s watching it too. It was that too.”

With his daughter in the other room asking about ice cream, Eric takes in the information just enough, but Leung notes he’s not in a place to suspect who sent the video in that moment, especially given the further betrayal he feels from the sex worker. “I’ve always felt like Dolly wasn’t just some girl in the hotel, some flame, I think Eric thought that he had found somebody special,” Leung said. “It was just tragedy on tragedy, betrayal on betrayal.”

While Eric keeps up his pretenses, by the end of Episode 6 he greets Harper with an attorney present as his representation explains Eric will be bowing out of Stern Tao and dissolving their partnership. The move not only serves to protect himself from further extortion or blackmail, but is also made in an effort to protect Harper, with Leung saying “he recognizes that he is a tumor that needs to be removed.”

For Harper, who pushed Eric to no success to tell her what his concerns are, dissolving their partnership is “the ultimate betrayal.”

“It’s abandonment, like in your face abandonment,” Myha’la said. “All of the things that she was afraid could come true if she was vulnerable with him do almost immediately. She feels alone in the world, and all the legalese around it as well, severing ties, ‘you don’t owe me anything — we’ll never speak of this again,’ it’s so official, and it’s so blindsidey.”

Unlike their tender Episode 5 moment, Myha’la specifically pointed to the presence of the lawyer during the confrontation as “the exact opposite of the thing that he asked from her,” saying “she’s like, ‘I’m trying to be this version of myself with you that you asked for,’ and he’s like, ‘defer to the lawyer.'”

“It’s just f–ked,” Myha’la continued. “That’s the thing that leads abandoned people, abandoned children, to think it’s their fault, whatever the thing is, like they weren’t important enough, they weren’t good enough.”

While Leung likened Eric’s downfall to a “kind of death,” Myha’la underscored the creativity of “Industry” creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay to keep the story going, adding “I want to work with Ken for the rest of my life.”

There could still be more of Eric and Harper’s partnership, or at least friendship, to come, with Leung noting “as long as two people are living, anything can be mended.” “With these particular two people, though … it depends on what’s in it for them … [there] has to be something in it, because they have experienced the stakes of it,” Leung said. “They’ve experienced what they’ve had to give up and sacrificed and risked in order to be close.”

At the same time, Myha’la noted that without their common goal in mind, the pair might no longer have aligning pursuits that would being them together.

“I also think of traders, people in finance, as gamblers — I think they all are addicted to gambling … I feel like, if both of them are like, ‘Oh, we’re addicted to gambling, and we’re gambling together,’ and then one person is like, ‘Oh, I’m sober now — I’m not gonna gamble anymore,’ it feels like a betrayal, but it’s also really awkward, because now it’s like, you’re addicted and I’m not. I’m not playing anymore,” Myha’la said, also pointing out the age gap between the pair.

“Why would we hang out if we’re not enabling each other or feeding our addiction?” Myha’la continued. “Then it goes to this emotional thing .. [of] why are we addicted? And that’s the conversation that Harper’s not having, certainly not with him.”

With her losses of friendships, including a tottering one with Yasmin, and her mother’s death, the wins for Stern Tao are bittersweet for Harper, per Myha’la, who notes “there’s too much s–t going on for her to think, ‘how am I doing?’ She’s just trying to make it through the day.”

Myha’la and Leung kept tight-lipped about the possibility of a Season 5, with Myha’la saying tongue-in-cheek, “even if we had those conversations, we couldn’t tell you.”

“Industry” airs Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.

The post ‘Industry’ Stars Unpack Eric’s Shocking Episode 6 Discovery and the ‘Ultimate Betrayal’ That Follows appeared first on TheWrap.