Industry’s Punishing Rishi Storyline Hits a New Rock Bottom in Season 4’s Brutal Fourth Episode

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Industry Season 4.

Industry has a reputation for boundary-pushing storytelling. Now in its fourth season, the high-octane HBO finance drama created by former investment bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay has ditched its London trading-floor origins for a more expansive—and nihilistic—exploration of power, class, gender, race, and personal morality.

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But even for a series that’s dealt in shocking deaths, self-perpetuating cycles of abuse, and relentless workplace cruelties, the ending of the fourth episode of Season 4 felt like it was plumbing new depths of depravity. Titled “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn,” Episode 4 offers a clearer look at just how far Pierpoint’s most foulmouthed former mid-level trader Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia) has fallen in the wake of his wife Diana (Emily Barber) getting unceremoniously executed by a loan shark as a result of Rishi’s massive gambling debts in the closing minutes of Season 3.

“That core is shaken when something sort of seismic happens,” Down told Wired of the shocking finale twist back in 2024. “And your wife being shot in front of you to settle the gambling debt is a seismic thing, which means that Rishi in Season 4 will be a totally different character than he was in Season 3 and before.”

Leading up to Episode 4, we learned Rishi was struggling to secure gainful employment as he couldn’t get past even the most basic of background checks, forcing him to accept an offer from Harper (Myha’la) for under-the-table work as a pseudo-private investigator. But it wasn’t until Sunday’s installment that we got the full rock-bottom picture of Rishi’s miserable life. Back to using after a brief stint in rehab and apparent half-hearted suicide attempt, Rishi’s spiraling drug and sex addiction is interrupted by an unexpected call from his late wife’s mother Mary (Melissa Knatchbull)—or “Cow-in-Law,” as he has her listed in his phone—letting him know he is finally allowed to see his toddler son Hugo.

At the meet-up, Mary informs him that if he signs off on changing Hugo’s last name from Ramdani to Hugo’s grandparents’ own name of Smith, they will consider setting up some further visitation, although never unsupervised. Rishi is not a very sympathetic character, but the racist connotations of the posh, white Smith family’s methods of manipulation don’t go unnoticed. “Oh, Rishi, any anger I feel towards you is dwarfed by the scale of my faith in God,” Mary tells him. “Every choice you’ve made denies it, but even a man like you doesn’t stand outside His grace.”

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Later, after Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and Whitney (Max Minghella) successfully plant a hit piece on finance journalist James Dycker (Charlie Heaton) and his editor in one of Henry’s uncle’s newspapers, James is fired from his position at FinDigest. In response, he sets out on a despair-fueled bender and runs into Rishi, who just so happens to wander into the same bar bathroom in which he’s snorting uppers. The two join forces with a mysterious meddling stranger while smoking a cigarette outside the pub and eventually end up back at Rishi’s apartment, where the man hands them a bag of drugs and proceeds to continuously crank the volume up on the already-thumping speakers. Rishi reveals he was the one spying on James and James asks him what it was like for Rishi to see his wife die in front of him, sending Rishi into a PTSD-fueled flashback of the moments leading up to Diana’s murder.

The stranger then conveniently sends himself on a beer run just before Rishi emerges from the bathroom to find James unconscious and the police show up at the apartment in response to a noise complaint, seeding even more suspicions about the man’s involvement in their night out. Fearing he will be blamed for James’ overdose, Rishi goes to the balcony and reluctantly prepares to jump to his death. However, the fall only shatters his ankles, leaving him in agony as he attempts to crawl away before the cops handcuff him.

If you thought Rishi’s future prospects seemed dismal before, this certainly feels like an unprecedented new low for any character on this show. Considering these new developments, it seems as though Radia hit the nail on the head when asked about what he envisioned next for Rishi following the Season 3 finale. “I think it’s easier to see him go a lot more off the rails,” he told Deadline. “We thought he hit rock bottom, and then just a whole other hole opened up.”