Sloughing off the old, ruthless self is not easily done. For Harper, it’s a painful process fueled by a season’s worth of professional wins, personal losses, and hard truths. The Season 4 premiere found her swishing into a posh office, only to discover that her short-only fund was created solely for optics by its blue-blooded backer, Otto Mostyn (Roger Barclay), who is now thwarting Harper at every turn. “You hired me on merit,” she protests. “I hired you as a face,” he corrects her, to bring his business a “progressive sheen.” In other words, she says: “You wanted to hire a puppet in blackface so you could continue being a crook.” Harper has never gone in for affirmative action, preferring to believe that finance is a meritocracy where her intelligence and tenacity put her on an equal plane with her white and wealthy counterparts. But we can see it dawning on her that some people will always see her first and foremost as a Black woman—one who becomes dispensable when, as Otto puts it, “that woke sh-t no longer moves the needle.”