When the first “Magic Mike” arrived in 2012, the story was irresistible: With his movie career heading into overdrive, Tatum was starring in a film based on his own pre-Hollywood experiences as a dancer in a male revue.

Even then, the specter of monetary worries still lingers. Now he gets a way out, and the kind of happy ending for which many long. Mike saw the one thing he worked for crumble. Sure, it’s a lot of rom-com escapism, but it also has real-world resonance. What started as a (mostly) realistic portrait of stripper life in the wake of the Great Recession has evolved into a fantasy for the days of Covid-related financial strife, in which Mike is rescued from his economic travails by a rich almost-divorcée (Salma Hayek Pinault) who sees his talent and whisks him away to London to direct a show. With “Last Dance,” opening Friday, Tatum, the director Steven Soderbergh, the writer Reid Carolin and their collaborators have created a trilogy that’s sneakily about the last decade or so in American instability. “Magic Mike” has always been about money, and not just the dollar bills that are slipped into G-strings. But just beneath all the joy of gyrating hips lurks economic anxiety.

The “Magic Mike” movies are about impeccable abs, female pleasure, male friendship and the power of a great lap dance. Now Mike is working for a catering service, serving drinks to wealthy people who donate to causes they don’t even care to learn about. The Covid-19 pandemic destroyed his custom furniture business, his raison d’être beyond stripping in the first two movies. The first thing you learn about Mike Lane, played by Channing Tatum and otherwise known as Magic Mike, in the new movie “ Magic Mike’s Last Dance” is that his dream has died.

Who made the song all i do is win