In the volatile universe of Industry, all debts must be paid.
No one understands that better than Rishi (Sagar Radia), whose gambling addiction finally caught up with him in Sunday night’s season three finale, “Infinite Largesse.”
[Spoiler alert: The following includes spoilers for Industry’s third season finale.]
Rishi, for the uninitiated, spent much of the past season falling deeper into debt. As the finale concluded, Industry gave him one of the revelation-packed episode’s biggest twists when his bookie, Vinay, showed up and killed Rishi’s wife over £600,000 in unpaid gambling debts. It was the kind of gut-wrenching moment that has made HBO Sunday-night appointment TV—and, according to cocreators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, HBO almost nixed it.
“There was a conversation about Rishi’s wife’s death, which HBO balked at,” Kay says.
Early on, as Down and Kay outlined season 3, they knew they wanted to do a Rishi episode, which fans were treated to in episode 4, “White Mischief.” Shot as a kind of homage to Uncut Gems, it was there viewers got a taste of the real Rishi, who, it turned out, was a gambler with a dangerous appetite for drugs, women, and thrill-seeking.
“We first wrote it with a bow at the end of it,” Down says. “He gets out of his position, he’s saved by the market. He then gets his wife to pay back his debt and then he makes his phone call, doubling down on it. We really didn’t think we were going to return to this. We thought, OK, are we going to show the repercussions of this in some way?”
But HBO saw the potential in it and advised the creators to return to the repercussions of “White Mischief” later in the season. “They said, we have to show what happens to him.” It presented a unique challenge for Down and Kay. “How can you actually show that there are consequences to your actions in this world and that you can’t just talk your way out of everything?”
When they landed on the idea that it would be Diana, Rishi’s wife, who ultimately paid for his financial misfortunes, HBO pushed back. But Down and Kay knew better.
“At the script stage, HBO wanted to get rid of it,” Kay says. “Then we said, look, let us shoot it and show it to you. And we shot it and cut it and showed it to them. And they were like, ‘This is fantastic.’ We got very few notes. What you see in the season finale is pretty close to the first cut of that episode.”
Originally, the scene played out differently. “We were like, what if the guy shot Rishi?” Down continues. “Personally, and practically, we wanted Rishi in season four. But it’s more heartbreaking that his wife, who is a victim of all of this, is the person that bears the brunt. And those are consequences that he then has to live with.”
But by killing Diana, Down and Kay felt it would provide the perfect setup for next season. (HBO renewed Industry after WIRED’s interview with the showrunners.)
Their instincts proved right. As the finale aired on Sunday, reaction online was swift, with fans posting Succession-esque responses to the show’s many turns of fortune.
“Industry is so good because they just keep moving forward. Mickey and Konrad are completely unafraid to put characters on paths they can’t easily undo for the sake of plot convenience. This is peak storytelling,” @lesliezye posted on X following the finale.
Added @cinnaMENA: “From Rishi’s sad bachelor pad scene to Yasmin’s country house breakdown I—I have emotional whiplash.”
For Down and Kay, it was all about elevating the storyline into new heights. “That core is shaken when something sort of seismic happens,” Down says of his scheming characters. “And your wife being shot in front of you to settle the gambling debt is a seismic thing, which means that Rishi in season four will be a totally different character than he was in season three and before.”