But before they could trot the globe, they had to get out of the office. At the end of season three, Kay and Down made the decision to effectively shut down Pierpoint, selling the British bank to Al-Mi’raj, an Egyptian sovereign wealth fund, which closes the London trading floor where much of Industry’s action took place. “Season three really felt like a kind of detonation of the show,” says Down. But burning bridges leaves plenty of room for growth—which was what the pair intended. “Our interests became more mature as we wrote the seasons,” Down continues. “It would feel dishonest to continually keep the show small as the characters’ perspectives began to grow, and as the characters accrued more power, and as the show became an interrogation of the world in which we live and was breaking away from the hermetically sealed box of the trading floor.”

This meant taking characters to places they’d never been before—like Austria and Accra. Down had a personal reason for sending Industry into Africa. “My mother’s Ghanaian and I’ve always wanted to put it onscreen,” says Down. But much in the same way Industry’s London-based series is primarily shot in Wales, they shot the Ghanaian scenes in a different African nation: South Africa. And neither Down nor Kay was able to be on location for the shoot. “Unfortunately, because of the punishing schedule that we have, we weren’t able to go,” laments Down.

Nevertheless, production forged on, with director Luke Snellin shooting the Ghanaian scenes in three days in Durban, South Africa, with what Down calls “a skeleton crew.” Turning South Africa into Ghana in a few days was no small feat. “The production designer did a great job of trying to make stuff like Ghana, because Durban doesn’t feel necessarily like Accra,” Down says. “He found really good places that felt more like it than I’d seen on TV before.”

Kwabena’s Ghanaian background was crucial to the formation of the episode. “Kwabena is a very particular British Ghanaian character with a certain class background,” says Down. But Kwabena is not Industry’s first Ghanaian series regular—that would be David Jonsson’s Gus Sackey, the gay Ghanaian British trader who quit Pierpoint at the end of season one and ultimately left the series after season two. Exploring Ghana via Kwabena provided an opportunity to explore “the whole gamut of society,” says Down. “We’re seeing corruption there. We’re seeing enterprise there. We’re seeing rich characters. We’re seeing poorer characters.”