When we first started following Industry Season 4, I had my reservations. The former interns had all grown up, left their original Pierpoint incubator, and betrayed each other enough to become the most untrustworthy ensemble ever to appear on HBO. That’s saying a lot considering the backstabbing lineage of shows like The Sopranos, Game Of Thrones, and Succession, which all prided themselves on infinitely despicable family power struggles. But in the chosen family enclave of professional ambition, the sisterhood between Yas and Harper struck some familiar and spooky notes. My dear friend, a lawyer, confessed to me their “love-hate” relationship with the finance procedural saying she found the characters unrealistically detestable. I could give her that. What I wouldn’t tolerate, however, is the concept that unlikable characters don’t fuel the obsessive parts of our lives. In white workplaces, there’s always a Yas, lying in wait to snipe at your reputation, peering down from the perch of racist mediocrity and subterfuge with an eye on their next chess move. Lacking talent, purpose, and often the requisite drive to envision solutions to big problems, they choose the most capable Black person in a position they envy and take them down. I have been the person in that position, despite never striving to be important at work or in anyone’s sights. There’s something about Black intelligence they find threatening beyond belief, even in positions of authority.

Yas sets up her betrayal cleanly, as any workplace enemy would, by cozying up to Harper at her highest moment. SternTao, now down a partner and the last single source of solidarity, has just netted its signature windfall. Although Sweetpea jokes she could’ve made more than $2M “selling feet pics on OnlyFans” — a particularly sharp, nasty riff considering her tryst with Kwabena alluded to the inherent desirabilty of tiny blondes and hulking blacks on every platform — this is a coronation for their small firm. They’ve graduated to the big leagues, and there’s no mistaking it. Harper is up, for real this time. She bet on her vision, the general incompetence of arrogant analysts to see past their own hype (see: the AI bubble holding our GDP together by a floss pick), and her willingness to expose frauds. Like Eric, she’s no good Samaritan. She wants money and has found the flaws in a system that rewards misinformation and narrative appeals. Yas wants in and hopes to pull the hat trick of a career change, a divorce, and a bandwagon hop all at once. She cannot live with the simple knowledge that Harper’s bested her again. So she does what all white women in workplace merry-go-rounds do, she pulls her race card.

It was first a curious play when show creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay chose to create the lead in the image of Ghislaine Maxwell, the disgraced socialite sex trafficker. Yas seemed both too incompetent to be fully conniving, and not wired for the kind of cruelty needed to pursue such a path. I was short-sighted in the way these two terrific writers couldn’t be. I was fully locked in as a viewer, thinking of the biographical parallels only in the periphery. Kay and Down had other plans. They wanted to stick the landing. What they’ve shown over four seasons is that deception is no substitution for cleverness, but in a game where every player is both astute and mendacious, you can’t be the only honest player. Yasmin is a woman of “soft skills” sometimes underused. There’s no language she doesn’t speak, including that of seduction, and she’s finally learned to play her hand. The reason she envied Harper is that she was playing the game on Harper’s terms, which no good competitor does. She had to learn to play the game on her terms, which would mean presenting herself as innocuous, a false ally, and then turning on the very people who got her into those rooms. She successfully flipped Henry, another pawn (just with a good posh safety net), and would only need Harper to come to heel.

I’ve had too many workplace white woman encounters to name here but the common theme is a genteel racism that assumes the Black competent person won’t be trusted anyway. So when a white woman steering the conversation about your job has a chance to undermine you in private, they always will. They’ll talk about how you’re smart but “too big picture,” or hardworking but “with an attitude issue,” small caveats to engender suspicion on the part of their (inevitably) white listener. They set the terms and reinforce doubt.

Yas has a mountain to climb in badmouthing Harper while still needing her resources. But it’s not steeper than the social status free solo she’s done to get her grips on access to media, economic, and now, sexual power. She will stop at nothing. Ironically, I thought this season would prove that was true of Harper, who came to a reckoning with herself after her mother died. Though it’s unclear whether Kwabena had much to do with her come-to-Buddha moment, there’s a grounding moment in that scene as she decides there’s no cash-out worth being so isolated. Yasmin, on the other hand, has only known loneliness. Her father was a noted abuser and sex offender who offed himself rather than face his crimes. She’s been associated with the most prominent failson of her country for years. She cannot prove her worth among other highly talented strivers. She sees her only option as a Machiavellian turn toward the evil she was raised in.

For the character, it makes the most sense.