Forget Jon Snow, Kit Harington Gives His Best Performance In An Overlooked HBO Series

This article contains spoilers for "Industry" season 4 episode 2, "The Commander and the Grey Lady."

In 2011, "Game of Thrones," based on George R.R. Martin's best-selling fantasy novel series "A Song of Ice and Fire," made a splash on HBO, and in the process, it introduced a whole bunch of young actors to the entire world. Among them was Kit Harington, who was cast in his early 20s and became a superstar thanks to the role of Jon Snow, a presumed bastard of the Northern noble Eddard "Ned" Stark who joins the Night's Watch in season 1. Now, Harington is starring in a very different HBO show — the best one you're not watching, actually — and proving that he's an enormously talented actor apart from the often dour role of Jon Snow.

On "Industry," the finance bro show created by reformed finance bros Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, Harington plays Sir Henry Muck, a character first introduced in the show's third season (which aired in 2024) who links up with our favorite group of toxic finance bros (and gals) as the CEO of an environmentally friendly standup called Lumi. To call Henry erratic and mercurial is an understatement; throughout his debut on "Industry," Henry verbally torments his link to Pierpoint, Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey), and acts like an absolute idiot before closing out the season engaged to Robert's dream girl Yasmin Kara-Hanani (a spectacular Marisa Abela) as the two realize they need to link their wealthy bloodlines to stave off personal ruin. Lawtey's Robert is no longer on "Industry," but thanks to Yasmin, Henry is a bigger character in season 4 — and it's great to see Harington show off his considerable range.

When Jon Snow joins the aforementioned Night's Watch — an organization that guards the realm of Westeros from horrors found in the far North, lives at Castle Black, and is made up of mostly criminals and unwanted noble bastards sentenced to serve there — in season 1 of "Game of Thrones," he rises through the ranks and manages to make inroads with the Northern wildlings. He later leaves the organization after dealing with interpersonal drama: His men mutiny against him and kill him, and he's brought back to life by the Red Priestess Melisandre (Carice van Houten).

Remember how I said Jon was a presumed bastard? Well, as we learn along with him in "Game of Thrones," he's actually an heir to the Targaryen dynasty thanks to his father, Rhaegar Targaryen, the elder brother of Jon's new paramour, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). This doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because the show loved throwing plotlines into the garbage as it wrapped up, but my point is this: A lot happens to Jon on "Game of Thrones," and he mostly scowls and mutters through it. That's not a knock on Harington himself; he does what he can with what he's given, and Jon's tryst with the wildling Ygritte (Rose Leslie, who became Harington's real-life wife) is a real highlight. Still, he never got to display his full and frankly delightful range on "Game of Thrones," so thank god for his role on "Industry."

Let's return to Kit Harington's turn on "Industry," which, in the second episode of the show's highly anticipated fourth season, gives the actor a spectacular playground in the form of the oppressive Muck family manor. Ensconsed in the house with his wife Yasmin, their servants, occasional student tour groups (at which Henry directs unwelcome profanities), and the ghost of his late father, Henry prepares to celebrate his 40th birthday, bearing the knowledge that his father died by suicide at 40. Despite Yasmin's best efforts to perform her one apparent function as Henry's wife, which is to throw an enormous, over-the-top Versailles-themed party, Henry ends up hiding away in his suite with a bunch of drugs and alcohol to avoid the festivities outright. This gives viewers an absolute barnburner of a scene between Yasmin and Henry in which an argument between the couple, filmed in one apparently unbroken take, shows us the deepest cracks of their strategic, borderline arranged marriage. (It also serves as a fine Emmy reel for both Harington and Marisa Abela, who deliver two of the best performances of 2026 in the first month of the new year.)

Even before the striking reveal that Henry's latecomer friend "the Commander" (Jack Farthing) is simply the hallucinated ghost of his father, Harington capably and wonderfully drives the entirety of "The Commander and the Grey Lady," letting equally talented performers like Abela bounce off of his manic energy as he goes on a nocturnal journey that ends in bloodshed and a sexual encounter with Yasmin at sunrise. Harington is a phenomenal actor, and if you didn't believe that when he played Jon Snow, you know it now thanks to "Industry."