‘Industry’ Season 4 tackles age verification and OnlyFans — and it’s just getting started

IndustryIt is The season 4 premiere dives headfirst into the debate around online age verification, with the London-based series introducing an online safety bill that mirrors the UK’s own age verification law.

The law establishes age controls on sites with explicit content so that minors cannot use the sites. Ways to confirm a user’s age include facial recognition and banking information. Similar laws will take effect in the United States and around the world, but experts have sounded the alarm over possible security and privacy concerns.

Age verification plays a central role in IndustryIt is Season 4 premiere.

Despite art imitating reality Industryage verification was less of a hot topic than it is now when the series’ co-creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, began working on the season. While previously unsuccessful iterations of age verification were launched in the UK in 2019, in 2022 age verification did not officially come into effect until July 2025.

“We actually ended up writing about it and filming it before it became a thing in the UK, without any sort of consultant inside,” Kay told Mashable in a video interview alongside Down.

This prescience ends up working IndustryThis is the favor. Season 4’s focus on age verification proves the show’s ability to stay relatable, even in the rapidly evolving digital age.

In IndustryIn the Season 4 premiere of , titled “PayPal of Bukkake,” the online safety bill is the catalyst for major change at financial technology company Tender. Formerly a payment processor for porn websites including IndustryAnalog siren of OnlyFans, Tender plans to move away from adult content in order to gain respectability.

Industry Season 4 dives deeper into online adult content.

Miriam Petche in “Industry”.
Credit: Simon Ridgway/HBO

It’s not the first time Industry explored the world of porn. Introduced in Season 3, Pierpoint graduate Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche) has a side hustle on OnlyFans. With season 4, Down and Kay didn’t want to leave this thread hanging. In fact, they wanted to complicate their portrayal of her sex work.

“In Season 3, the image is quite empowering for Sweetpea, and in Season 4, it’s portrayed a little more as exploitative,” Down told Mashable. “I think that ambiguity is interesting, and I’m curious to see how the audience will accept it. It was a 50-50 split in the writers’ room, but we were wondering, ‘Are we telling a story where this is a character who felt empowered to do something from a young age, who now feels exploited by her own decision? What does that mean about her relationship with her own femininity and for women’s empowerment?”

Kay added: “The intersection of pornography, cell phones, the commodification of individuality… It all makes us think about capitalism in 2025, so we ended up looking at all of that.”

Industry Season 4 takes a deeper look at the government.

Amy James-Kelly in “Industry”.
Credit: Simon Ridgway/HBO

In addition to creating more character moments for Sweetpea, Industry Season 4’s focus on pornography and age verification also allowed Down and Kay to further incorporate the British government into the season, especially since age verification has been a “political football” for some time, as Down puts it.

“It was hard to understand what side of the political aisle people were on about this, because there were right-wing comments about why it was a good thing, and you had right-wing comments about how it was a terrible thing, because it was really about free speech and freedom of expression,” Down told Mashable.

In IndustryHowever, it was the Labor government that pushed the bill, which soon landed them in the Tender file.

“It looked like a big opening gamble for the Labor Party in season 4,” Down said. “The Labor Party now seems to me to be an ideologically complex and compromised institution, because they came into government with some really good ideas, but they’re backed by the same kind of hedge fund money and the same kind of media superstructure behind them that the Conservative government was, and that’s kind of what the season is about.”

Although he plays an important role in the first, much of Industry‘s discussion of pornography and age verification takes a backseat to the main point of the season: what exactly is going on with Tender?

The bait and switch is something Industry has already fired, introducing a big topic in a premiere before moving on to something new and unexpected.

“With Season 3, you think it’s going to be about Lumi’s IPO, and it becomes about Pierpoint and its attitude toward its own destruction,” Down said. “SO [in Season 4]you think it’s going to be about the online safety bill and pornography, and it all continued thematically, but it was really a starting point for a story about the payment processor. “

Down and Kay tell a story about pornography and digital privacy, but also about the role of money in government, shady business dealings and the rise of authoritarianism. It’s a dizzying journey, but Industry never lose control.

“It all seems like part of a capitalist puzzle,” Kay said. “Because these things, if you dig into them enough, there’s an overlap between them all.”

New episodes of Industry Season 4 premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.