Industry Season 4 Episode 2 Ending Explained: Did Henry Muck Kill Himself?

“Industry” is always at its peak when it comes to men’s descent into madness and effectively oblivion. Like what happened in last season’s “White Mischief,” which brought out a star in actor Sagar Radia, who’s mostly been consigned to the shadows, both in reel and real life, before that. Naturally, fans expected the show to take the same route and give us another hour like that this season as well, and from what we saw in this episode, I guess it’s safe to say the makers have heard our plea. This episode, rightfully titled “The Commander and the Grey Lady,” of course has HBO royalty, Kit Harrington, in charge, and he has fully justified it by dropping the performance of his career and has possibly propelled the show’s chances at next year’s Emmys. Despite being part of the main cast from last season, the character was mostly orbiting around the nexus of Yasmin-Harpee-Robert-Eric, essentially slipping into a cog-in-the-wheel role. However, this is the episode where Henry finally takes the center stage, and Harrington justifies his casting.  While I don’t think what you saw would’ve gone over any of your heads, so this article is going to be more of a discussion than an explanation about the ending, because “Industry” watchers do come with a high IQ, or at least that’s what I like to believe. Let’s get into it.

Right in the middle of the episode, Henry finally makes an entrance—a grand one, I would say—at this fortieth birthday party dinner. That’s all Yasmin asked from him: to behave normally to the public in order to keep them afloat. But with the arrival of this guy, the Commander, Henry decides to be something a little different from what his wife and uncle, Alexander, want him to be. Going full bonkers, and in a very “Boar on the Floor” manner—the “Succession” fan inside me had to make this reference—he ends up humiliating Labor Party minister Jennifer Bevan by forcibly making out with her. That’s straight-up harassment for sure, but in Henry’s defense, he was calling out Jennifer for trying to butter up Alexander, a conservative oligarch, so that Henry’s uncle’s newspaper would stop badmouthing her. That’s not exactly something a Labour Party minister should ideally do, but this is not an ideal world in any capacity, so Jennifer can’t be blamed either. Anyway, Henry then goes on to put on a show of his self-pity routine by publicly calling himself a failure and apologizing to Yasmin and Alexander for disappointing them. The man is being honest as hell, but clearly that doesn’t help Yasmin and the Muck family at all, as they wanted Henry to lead them as the perfect, aristocratic man of the family, or at least pretend to be one. 

The brilliant thing about “Industry” is you’ll have to work really hard to find even one scene that overstays its welcome; the writing is so precise that a character always knows when to quit, and in this context, to leave the scene and move to the next one. So the fallen prince leaves his castle and, with the Commander in company, tucks himself into a local pub, a place that usually doesn’t see the likes of his stature. More specifically, we find Molly, Henry’s maid his wife hates, chilling with a group of people there; you get the drill. The Commander, expectedly being a bad influence, whispers the thought of taking Molly to bed in Henry’s ear. Objectively and also logically, that just doesn’t make sense when you’re married to someone like Yasmin Kara-Hanani, who, despite all your sad-boy crap, hasn’t been unfaithful to you, even though you fail to get it up for her, effectively wasting her prime youth. But as the Commander says, men, especially the ones who are on the path of ruining their own lives, have a kink for shame and disgust, both for their own selves.

Henry ultimately doesn’t do that, though; instead, he sits at their table, trying to engage in a conversation. When Molly addresses him as “Sir Henry,” he asks her to drop the “Sir” for the time being. That pisses off this guy who was constantly trying to get into Molly’s pants and getting rebuked, and he decides to say some really mean things about Yasmin, given Henry should let it pass as he’s “one of them,” momentarily. Clearly the guy is into self-destruction, because nobody in their right mind would do something like that. Henry beating the crap out of the guy and getting his hands bloody was inevitable. That’s also the most alive he’s felt a while, as the Commander spells out his thoughts.

Because he is Sir Henry Muck, he gets away with it, and everyone at the pub starts acting like nothing ever happened. Nobody even minds Henry sitting at the bar and continuing his conversation with this old man, who used to be a priest, once upon a time. The man, in fact, married Henry’s parents and attended his father, Robert’s funeral too. Meeting Henry after all these years was not on his cards, but on the night of Henry’s fortieth birthday, in that working-class pub, the man goes on to say something that probably ends up saving Henry. He sort of apologizes to Henry for not saying anything to the little boy at his father’s funeral. Robert died young, exactly on the day he turned forty. The priest regrets not comforting Henry then, and looking at what the boy has turned out to be, he holds himself responsible to some extent. Thanks to these words, the Commander finally disappears.

Because here comes the biggest twist “Industry” has ever pulled off—the Commander was never there in the first place; all he was was a figment of imagination living inside Henry’s mind. It is none other than Robert that Henry keeps seeing, and he tries to channel himself after him. That’s probably what happens when you witness your father shooting himself to death as a little boy. Robert left Henry scarred for life, and Henry never got better. He tried, with Lumi and Yasmin and everything else, but the shadow of dead Robert never let him be his own man. The big reveal, of Henry’s father being the Commander, is eye-opening for both the characters and the viewers. Henry’s next move after this realization is also something that shouldn’t surprise you: he locks himself into the garage and starts the car engine, hoping to fade out from the world, just like his father once did. 

The answer to that would be both love and purpose. Had there not been the former, Henry would have never cared about the latter, and wouldn’t have decided to come out of the garage. While it did look like Yasmin married this guy to save herself and cleanse her public image after that scandal regarding Charles, it is also true that there were feelings involved. Despite being a vulnerable, self-destructive loser, Henry fell in love with Yasmin. And I suppose what drew Yasmin closer to Henry was his honesty, the acceptance of himself as a failure. But then Henry lost himself to the demons from his past, and Yasmin kept trying to rescue him. Her entire attempt to hitch Henry with Whitney by getting herself a job at Tender is a sign of that, but the reason for Yasmin to do that is more than societal or financial. She does love Henry. I’m not sure at what point that happened—more specifically, at what point she got over Robert and Henry found a place inside her heart—but as things stand now, Yasmin is completely into her husband. So much so that even when Henry has no issues with her sleeping with other men, because he really can’t do it, Yasmin wouldn’t take that route. Sure, there’s the prenup and the infidelity clause angle, but knowing Yasmin, if she really wanted it, she would have done it. 

But everything has a limit, and Henry, with each passing day, was crossing that for Yasmin. Perhaps her admission that she’d play the grieving widow at his funeral in the near future and then forget him earlier in the episode is the thing he remembers in the car that pushes him to come out of the garage. It can safely be said that Robert Muck didn’t have a partner like that. Henry and Yasmin’s marriage was built on convenience, but the romance between these two is also something that can’t be ignored. How else would you explain Henry coming back to his mansion, screaming Yasmin’s name, and making love to her on the bonnet of his car, without caring about the world? As that happens, a relieved Alexander looks from afar, giving his nod to Yasmin. Yes, it’s very creepy to watch your nephew and his wife getting it on, but in the context of the story, the uncle can be pardoned.

The episode rightfully ends with Sir Henry Muck, finally with a smile on his face, driving his car out of a decades-old depressive episode, with Yasmin beside him—at least that’s what it looks like. And the proposal that they have a child only makes sense here; Henry clearly wants to set an example as a father. His father failed him, which is all the more reason for him to prove he is better than that, now that he has beaten his father by living in the world one more day than him. The question is, how does Yasmin feel about it? Her expression is not downright excited, if I have to be honest. Is it because being a mother kind of reduces her to a carrier of the next man of the Muck empire, instead of being a partner of Henry in the true sense? Let’s leave that discussion for the weeks to come, I would say.