**Spoilers for Industry Season 3 Episode 7 “Useful Idiot,” now streaming on Max**
In a show with characters as cutthroat as those in HBO‘s Industry, no betrayal really comes out of nowhere. Everyone in this brilliant series is out for themselves and willing to shank their best friends to get ahead. Nevertheless, it was still chilling to watch Eric Tao (Ken Leung) use his long-time friend, colleague, and boss Bill Adler’s (Trevor White) secret brain cancer as leverage to get ahead during Pierpoint’s most desperate moment yet in Industry Season 3 Episode 7 “Useful Idiot.”
We learn that Harper’s (Myha’la) plan to short Pierpoint ironically coincides with the firm’s lavish 150th Anniversary Celebration, prompting a black tie-dressed war council of sorts, to grasp at a strategy to keep the storied financial institution afloat. When the Federal Reserve point blank refuses to give Pierpoint a bailout, the situation seems especially dire. Some on the board suggest selling major shares to oil tycoons in the gulf, desperate to own a legacy western bank. Barclays is smelling blood in the water and wants to buy Pierpoint. Bill Adler vehemently opposes both plans, but finds himself slipping on his own train of thought in the meeting. Eric tries to help, but only draws attention to Bill’s secret diminishing cognitive health.
Outside, Bill points out a purge is coming, so it’s time for a “push.” He wants Eric to have his back pushing to sell those shares of Pierpoint to Mitsubishi — a foreign company he feels more comfortable doing business with. However, when Bill has an emotional outburst later in the overnight session, CFO Wilhelmina Fassbinder (Georgina Rich) whispers to Eric that the Mitsubishi plan won’t work and that Bill considers him a useful idiot. So when an opportunity arises to leave Bill behind…Eric takes it. He throws Bill under the bus, revealing his cancer diagnosis to all, and setting the stage for Egyptian tycoons to swoop in.
When Decider asked Industry star Ken Leung about Eric’s betrayal, he tied it directly to his character’s relationship with none other than former protege, Harper Stern.
“I think it’s not so obvious, but I feel like it’s kind of connected to what happens with Harper in that he’s kind of created a monster in Harper. At least, in his mind, he’s given her all these weapons that she’s now turning on him,” Leung said. “Eric is the kind of person who sees this business as whatever works, you do. Regardless of the effect it has on a fellow human being. You know, he doesn’t reflect on that so much.”
That said, Leung doesn’t think Eric Tao was wholly unmoved by what eventually befalls Bill in Industry Season 3 Episode 7.
“I think the moment in the conference room when Bill — he kind of falls apart — I think Eric is sincerely moved by that,” he said. “But I think then from the journey from that room to the elevator, wheels start to turn. And maybe he learns something from what Harper has done to him and turns that on Bill, as ‘Well, this is how things work.'”
In fact, speaking of Harper and the elevator and Bill, Ken Leung revealed that Industry shot a whole extra scene wherein Eric explains what he’s about to do to Bill and why.
“There’s a scene that we shot at the elevator with Bill. The elevator door is about to close, and Eric steps in, stops it from closing, and they have a little exchange,” Leung revealed. “And he says to Bill, basically, you know, ‘You made me this. I am this animal, thanks to you.’ That was like sort of his farewell kiss off to Bill.”
“So I think that’s what’s happening in that in that moment, in that betrayal.”
It’s the inevitable betrayal that happens when friends and mentors teach their closest companions that nothing matters except the trade.