When Konrad Kay and Mickey Down tackled age verification for the latest season of Industry, they didn’t expect it to become such a hot-button political issue. “It was in the ether of British politics, but it wasn’t front and center when we started writing the scripts or shooting it, and then it really flared up as a kind of front-page-of-BBC topic of conversation,” Kay explains.
The fourth season of HBO’s edgy and darkly humorous financial drama, premiering Sunday, expands Industry’s focus from the cutthroat world of investment banking to include tech, porn, age verification, and political discourse. As the season kicks off, there’s tension among the top executives at Tender, a fintech firm that has just gone public. They’re debating whether to keep processing payments for Siren, an adult platform similar to OnlyFans. While adult and gambling sites contribute significantly to Tender’s revenue, some executives are wary due to impending age-verification laws and anti-porn sentiments from the UK’s Labour Party, feeling it might be wiser to clean up their public image.
In reality, the UK’s Online Safety Act, which mandates age verification for accessing porn and other restricted content, went into effect in July 2025, long after Kay and Down had crafted the plot for this season of Industry. However, the implications have paralleled those affecting Siren. Pornhub’s UK traffic plummeted by nearly 80 percent due to these regulations, and similar challenges are surfacing in the U.S., where almost half of the states have implemented age verification laws. In December, Congress considered 19 bills aimed at enhancing online safety for children and teens, although some critics argue that these measures may be unconstitutional.
“It’s kind of shown how fragile free speech absolutism is,” Down says, highlighting the “wildly different” opinions on the topic. These range from puritanical views even in liberal communities to a more censorial “shut everything down” stance from conservatives.
While Industry has been somewhat of a sleeper hit for HBO, it gained significant traction during Season 3, with viewership for the premiere rising by 60 percent compared to Season 2. Season 4 capitalizes on this momentum and feels more relevant than ever. “We’ve got the OnlyFans piece and then we’ve got the fintech piece, and then we’ve got the fraud piece,” Kay notes. He adds that “in the back half of the season, we got the ascendant face of authoritarianism in the UK and the US.”
The new season pays more attention to junior banker and part-time OnlyFans model Sweetpea Golightly, who keeps her identity hidden in her adult content but ultimately has her identity exposed without her consent. It offers a more nuanced perspective on the realities faced by modern online sex workers, who are often depicted in much simpler terms on television.
“She started Season 3 saying, I’m an empowered woman. I have this OnlyFans account. I never leave money on the table. In Season 4, we’re exploring what happens when that begins to shift,” Down explains. “It can be empowering and exploitative.”
Almost every character in Industry embodies both empowerment and exploitation, depending on the context. While this season has a strong topical focus, a major highlight of the show is the way it unravels the complex and often uncomfortable layers of its characters.
Last season followed publishing heiress Yasmin, portrayed by Marisa Abela, through the aftermath of her Epstein-like father’s disappearance, for which she was arguably partly responsible, while also confronting the extent of his abusive behavior. Despite her history of suffering from his predatory nature, Yasmin also exploits those around her, a pattern that continues in Season 4 as she navigates her marriage to the aristocrat-turned-failed tech bro, Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington).
