Twelve minutes into the first episode, the most unflappable thief on television is strapped into a straitjacket and sealed inside a glass cell at the center of a maximum-security prison, where guards and inmates are free to watch him around the clock. Assane Diop (Omar Sy) was supposed to be days from walking out, ready to keep a promise to his son about meeting their family in Senegal. Instead, every screen in Paris has just been hacked by someone signing the name “Lupin” and announcing two simultaneous robberies. Netflix released all eight episodes of “Lupin” Part 4 on Friday, October 23rd, three years after Part 3 and four years, in story time, after Assane surrendered to protect the people he loves. The first reviews keep returning to that image of a master of escape on display behind glass.
The Guardian called Sy’s performance “magnetic as always” and Collider gave the premiere 8 out of 10, while ScreenRant scored it 7 out of 10 and Absolute Geeks gave it 4.5 out of 5. Collider based its score on the first episode alone. Flickonclick landed at 4 out of 5, and The Sunday Guardian settled on 3.5 out of 5 under a headline that says the high-stakes game “Sometimes Loses Its Original Charm”. Télérama, writing in French, was the most negative of the reviews and judged that the series is now running on empty. The argument is less about the central idea of a thief framed by the legend he built, which the reviews mostly admire, than about whether eight episodes of blockbuster scale can carry it. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for all eight episodes of “Lupin” Part 4, including the finale.
The argument is less about the central idea of a thief framed by the legend he built, which the reviews mostly admire, than about whether eight episodes of blockbuster scale can carry it.”
The first episode wastes no time on setup. Youssef Guédira (Soufiane Guerrab) and Sofia Belkacem (Shirine Boutella), the police officers who have chased Assane before, are posted at two museums in two French cities, one of them the Natural History Museum in Paris, to guard the targets named in the announcement. According to ScreenRant, those are the Grand Sapphire of Louis XIV and a painting of the 1792 theft of the French Crown Jewels. At eight o’clock, the lights cut, Assane appears to vanish from his glass box, and both pieces are stolen. Sofia is seriously injured after going off a building in the chase, and moments later, Assane is back in the cell, as baffled as the guards.
Locked in, and with nothing but time, Assane works the puzzle from the inside, and The Review Geek’s recap walks through how the copycat pulled off both heists. It does him no good, because a camera seems to place him at the scene and the stolen painting turns up in his cell, so Assane breaks out of prison to clear his name. Collider and ScreenRant both note that the opening hour rules out Hubert Pellegrini (Hervé Pierre), the old enemy who is serving his time in Malaysia. Collider adds that it also rules out his daughter Juliette (Clotilde Hesme). In The Review Geek’s recap, the hour ends with a drone finding Assane on a dark street and the copycat daring him to a face-off between two Lupins.
Around the central plot, then, sits a household that has moved on without him. Raoul, Assane’s son, is now played by Théo Christine, an older actor replacing Etan Simon, who had played the boy since Part 1. Sy told Radio Times that the change came “because time has passed and we wanted him to be older and bring something more to this character”. The first episode, meanwhile, also pairs off Claire (Ludivine Sagnier), Raoul’s mother and Assane’s ex, with Assane’s best friend Benjamin Férel (Antoine Gouy), a turn Sy explained to the same outlet with “We wanted some changes”. He added that Assane had betrayed Benjamin in Part 3 and should face the consequences. Laïka Blanc-Francard, the other newcomer Netflix announced, was listed without a character, and the official cast list still names none.
From there, The Review Geek’s episode guide sketches the middle of the season. In the second hour, a furious Guédira vows to take Lupin down, while Assane comes face to face with his copycat, whose high-risk offer lures him into a heist at the Eiffel Tower. That is the sequence the September trailer teased with a night climb through the ironwork, and Télérama notes that the pursuits run along the girders of the tower and then continue on a motorbike through the Paris metro. In the third hour, Assane keeps proclaiming his innocence, while Raoul lands in a set of troubles of his own that force his father to join forces with unexpected allies. The strain between father and son, in other words, starts to look like the real engine of the season.
The identity of the copycat is the part of the story that the early reviews mostly leave alone. The ending explainers from FandomWire and The Cinemaholic both identify the thief wearing Lupin’s name as Adèle, the daughter of Assane and Juliette. She was sent to an orphanage in England as a baby, and The Cinemaholic adds that Juliette was told the child was stillborn. According to FandomWire, Adèle later went looking for her biological family, using a technologically sophisticated impersonation of Lupin to make herself impossible for Assane to ignore. The Review Geek’s guide fits that account, since the fourth episode has police preparing to take Adèle back to London.
What Adèle wants, it turns out, is a treasure. FandomWire says that she and Juliette draw Assane into a plan to steal the French Crown Jewels from a group of wealthy guardians who intend to keep them, and that Pellegrini belongs to that group. The Review Geek’s guide follows the trail through the later hours, with Adèle and Assane vowing to go after the Guardians of the Treasure and setting their sights on Les Invalides in the fifth hour. In the sixth, Assane wakes to an ominous figure from his past while someone named Esteban tracks down Raoul’s new place of work, and in the seventh someone named Korvin is hot on their trail. The eighth hour is billed as an attempt to lure the treasure out of a fortress while outrunning the police, the Guardians and the chaos the gang has caused. The opening heist went after a painting of the 1792 theft of the Crown Jewels, and The Cinemaholic confirms that those jewels are the treasure the season goes on to chase.
The finale turns the family drama into the main event. Both explainers describe Raoul as resentful after years of promises Assane could not keep, and stung by watching his father bond with a daughter he had only just found. He secretly allies himself with Pellegrini, helps fake a kidnapping to force Assane to hand over the Crown Jewels, and leaves with Pellegrini by helicopter after confronting his father. Assane is shot protecting Raoul. FandomWire describes police firing at the helicopter, while The Cinemaholic says the shot comes from Sofia, who threatens to fire if Raoul does not surrender. Claire, Benjamin, Adèle and Juliette rush to Assane’s side, and the season ends without saying whether he survives.
Where the critics split, as ever, is on whether any of this is earned. Sy now shares the showrunner job with Louis Leterrier, and Absolute Geeks calls the glass-cell opening “the anti-heist opening” and praises a theme of fame as a trap. It wants the show to trust its “puzzle-box instincts” over blockbuster noise, and it compares the tone to “Mission: Impossible with a library card”. FandomWire’s review likes the idea of “Assane’s reputation becoming his worst alibi” but says “the technology sometimes does too much of the plotting”, and ScreenRant worries that the deepfake material “runs the risk of detracting from the series”. Collider praises “a welcome return to Part 1’s action-driven storytelling” yet says the show “doesn’t bridge the gap between seasons very well”. The Guardian points to the “cliche of the old pro getting roped back in for one last hurrah”. The Sunday Guardian says the eight-episode format occasionally makes the story feel “more stretched out than necessary”, while Flickonclick says the season “trades quiet cleverness for scale”.
Télérama is the review that goes furthest, and the one that stings most. Its critic says that Netflix opened its wallet and the chases follow one another with the same stubbornness as before, but that surprise cannot be manufactured with stunts and that each trap is spotted before it closes. The melodrama, the review adds, drowns the conversations under violins, and the series ends up more locked into its formula than its hero is behind bars. The Guardian and Absolute Geeks both advise switching Netflix from its default English audio to French, and Absolute Geeks adds that the English dub makes the Hollywood-leaning moments feel even louder.
Part of the interest, of course, is the real world. In 2025, thieves dressed as construction workers took eight pieces of the French Crown Jewels from the Louvre in daylight, a crime that many felt mimicked the Louvre heist in Part 1. Sy told Collider that his first reaction was, “Wow, I hope that we’re not responsible and that we didn’t inspire them that much.” The show returns with that history behind it, which might be why a story about a legend that outgrows its maker lands more sharply now than it would have three years ago.
Netflix has not ordered a fifth part, and TV Insider and Comic Basics both note that it has not marketed this one as the last. If it is the end, the cliffhanger is an odd way to go out. If it is not, the more interesting question is what a Lupin with a daughter, a resentful son and a Pellegrini still in the wind has left to steal.
What Do You Think? Does putting Assane in a cell make “Lupin” stronger by forcing him to solve someone else’s puzzle, or does it strand the one thing people watch the show for? Was the copycat’s identity worth the wait, and does Raoul’s choice at the end feel earned or forced? And with a bigger budget and a showrunner role for Omar Sy, is “Lupin” still the same quietly clever heist series, or has the blockbuster version won?
See you on the next binge!
