THE PERFORMER | Marisa Abela
THE SHOW | “Industry”
THE EPISODE | “Both, And” (March 1, 2026)
THE PERFORMANCE | The gradual evolution of Yasmin Kara-Harani across four seasons of HBO’s high-finance drama has been fascinating to watch. She was a wide-eyed young equities trader when we met her in Season 1, albeit with a few cruel tendencies, but now she’s fully transformed into a monster, willing to turn a blind eye to horrific crimes to keep her tenuous sense of self-worth afloat. It’s been a masterful transformation, and Marisa Abela deserves full credit for maintaining a thin sliver of humanity inside Yasmin, even as she sunk to shocking new depths in this week’s finale.
Yasmin’s power play to marry upper-crust washout Henry Muck blew up in her face, and she and Henry said goodbye this week, with her plainly telling him, “I don’t love you anymore.” She wasn’t heartless: Abela’s voice cracked and her brow furrowed when Henry asked Yasmin if she ever loved him, replying “Yes” with a flood of emotion. Her mind was made up, though. While Henry blubbered and begged for her to stay, Yasmin went back into her familiar survivor mode as she flatly informed him, “Whatever it is you’re feeling, it’ll fade.”
Abela took Yasmin to the dark side
With Henry out of the way, Yasmin soon eyed her next power play: cozying up to far-right political firebrand Sebastian and inviting Harper to a posh dinner where lily-white Germans complained about the “erosion of our culture.” Harper soon put it together that Yasmin was in bed with extremists… and putting them in bed, literally, with the very young women she brought to the party. She confronted Yasmin directly, and Abela wore a condescending smile as Yasmin justified her immoral new venture, her voice turning brittle as she declared: “We both know this world will own you if you don’t harden up.”
To prove her cynicism, Yasmin showed Harper video of her mentor Eric having sex with an underage girl, Abela’s eyes gleaming with smug superiority. Harper was shocked to see Yasmin descend into Ghislaine Maxwell territory and offered her a hand to lead her out of this. But Yasmin instead peered up into Harper’s eyes and revealed her true motivation, Abela catching her breath as the truth spilled out: “I feel important here… I’m necessary. I feel new. I feel less pain. That’s it.”
But the pain wasn’t fully gone, of course. In a heart-wrenching coda, Yasmin took a private moment to listen to an old voicemail from her late father — a man who terrorized and abused her while he was alive, mind you — with her lying on the ground like a corpse while playing the message over and over. It’s clear Yasmin is broken beyond repair, and it’s scary to think how low she might sink in the upcoming final season. But as low as she goes, Abela’s fiercely inspired portrayal never lets us forget that even the biggest monsters are more human than we might think.
Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in the comments!