in the volatile universe of Industryall debts must be paid.
In Sunday night’s season three finale, “Infinite Largesse,” no one understood that better than Rishi (Sagar Radia), whose gambling addiction finally caught up with him.
(Spoiler alert: The following includes spoilers for Industry’s finale of the third season.)
Rishi, for the uninitiated, spent much of last season getting deeper and deeper into debt. When the end was over, Industry It delivered one of the biggest twists of the revelation-packed episode when his bookie, Vinay, turned up and killed Rishi’s wife for over £600,000 in unpaid gambling debts. It was the kind of heartbreaking moment that made HBO appointment television on Sunday nights, and according to co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, HBO almost turned it down.
“There was a conversation about Rishi’s wife’s death, which HBO objected to,” Kay says.
Early on, when Down and Kay outlined season 3, they knew they wanted to do a Rishi episode, which fans enjoyed in episode 4, “White Mischief.” Shot as a kind of tribute to uncut gemsIt was there that viewers got a taste of the real Rishi, who turned out to be a gambler with a dangerous appetite for risk, drugs and women.
“We first wrote it with a bow at the end,” says Down. “If you leave your position, the market saves you. He then gets his wife to pay his debt and then makes his phone call, doubling down. We really didn’t think we were going to come back to this. We thought, okay, are we going to show the repercussions of this in some way?”
But HBO saw the potential he had and advised the creators to bring back Rishi 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 prove that your actions in this world have consequences and that you can’t just talk your way out of it?”
When they came up with the idea that it would be Rishi’s wife Diana who would ultimately pay for Rishi’s financial misfortunes, HBO rejected the idea. But Down and Kay knew better.
“At the script stage, HBO wanted to get rid of it,” Kay says. “So we said, look, let us film it and show it to you. And we filmed it, cut it and showed it to them. And they said, ‘This is fantastic.’ We received very few notes. “What you see in the season finale is quite similar to the first cut of that episode.”
Originally, the scene played out differently. “We thought, what if the guy shot Rishi?” The descent continues. “Personally and practically, we wanted Rishi in season four. But it is more heartbreaking that his wife, who is the victim of all this, is the person who bears the brunt. And those are consequences that you then have to live with.”
But by killing off Diana, Down and Kay felt it would provide the perfect setup for the next season. (HBO renovated Industry after WIRED’s interview with the showrunners).
His instincts turned out to be correct. When the finale aired on Sunday, reaction online was swift with fans posting Succession-Responses in the style of the program’s many twists of fortune.
“Industry It’s so good because they just keep moving forward. Mickey and Konrad aren’t at all afraid to set characters on paths they can’t easily undo for plot convenience. This is the ultimate narrative”, @lesliezye aware in X after the end.
Aggregate @cinnaMENA, “From Rishi’s sad bachelor pad scene to Yasmin’s country house collapse, I have emotional whiplash.”
For Down and Kay, it was about taking the story to new heights. “That core is shaken when something seismic happens,” Down says of his intriguing characters. “And having your wife shot in front of you to settle the gambling debt is seismic, which means that Rishi in season four will be a totally different character than he was in season three and before.”
