HBO's Industry to conclude with bold, backward-written Season 5 finale
If you thought the first four seasons of Industry were wild, get ready for things to end on a high note. Fans of HBO Max's most audacious show of the past half a decade know all too well that the series creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, are big fans of big swings. Luckily for the audience, it sounds like the upcoming fifth and final season will be no different.
At an FYC event on Monday in Los Angeles, Down and Kay appeared alongside cast members Marisa Abela, Myha'la, Kit Harington, and Max Minghella to talk about the smash-hit Season 4, as well as the future of Industry as they stare down the barrel of the end.
"We've always thought as the final season but now it's definitely the final season," Down said during the moderated panel portion of the evening, adding, "We say this all the time, we leave everything on the pitch, throw everything at the wall, this time, we're really doing it. It's really quite thrilling as writers to know, to see the end and the finish line in sight."
Season 5 also marks a new start for the duo, as they're taking a different approach to plotting out the season as opposed to seasons past. According to Down, they typically go scene by scene and episode by episode, all leading to a point they can use as the natural resting place for the season. That, for them, was all in service of doing what was most organic for each character and their individual arc. For Season 5, that's not the case.
"This is the only season where we went into it on the first week of the writers' room and thought, 'What is the last thing we see and how do we get towards there?' So we thought about the last images for every character, the last ten minutes of the last episode, and we thought, 'Okay, let's just get the characters to those positions,'" Down said of prepping the last batch of episodes. "It's just been really fun to write the season as well."
Kay added, "We're really surprising ourselves with how much we're enjoying it. It's crazy, but it feels very much like we're just totally in lockstep with each other. Not that we haven't been the whole time, but there's something about knowing we're finishing it, which has brought us closer together creatively."
As of right now, there is no estimated release date or window for Season 5, although with roughly two years between seasons in the past, one can expect the final installment to debut sometime between August 2027 and January 2028. To those who are hoping the pair may have teased anything about what the final moments of Season 5 will look like, no dice. But they did share who was responsible for helping them come to a conclusion.
"Between Season 3 and 4, we had a - name dropping - but we had dinner with Tony Gilroy. He's become a sort of semi-godfather figure in the industry and has been incredibly supportive," Kay said of the Andor creator. "He just like sat across from us and was like, 'You guys have a fucking ending?' And we were like, 'No.' He was like, 'Get a fucking ending.'"
Kay added that the blunt advice from The Bourne Identity creative inspired them to figure things out, and that they have since worked on nailing down the finale. "We've been thinking about it ever since."
The first four seasons of Industry are now streaming on HBO Max.
