Lupin Part 4 Is on Netflix, and Assane Is Back in Prison With a Copycat Robbing Museums

Photo: Céline Harrand from Dublin, Ireland, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lupin Part 4 reached Netflix on October 23, eight episodes, after a three-year wait. Omar Sy is back as Assane Diop, the gentleman thief who learned his craft from the Arsene Lupin novels, and the season picks up four years after Part 3 with Assane in prison.

Photo: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The twist is a copycat. Someone begins staging museum robberies using Lupin's methods, and that leads Assane to escape in order to clear his name. It is a very Lupin idea, a thief forced to chase someone who is better at being him, and the show has always been at its best when it plays with identity.

Photo: Siebbi, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ludivine Sagnier, Antoine Gouy and Soufiane Guerrab return, and Sy has moved from producer to co-showrunner for this season, the kind of promotion that suggests the show is still very much his. Netflix has not announced a fifth part.

Photo: unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I am a little wary of the premise, because a show about an unbeatable thief can run out of ways to lose. Putting the hero in a cell and giving him a rival is a clever answer, since it takes away his resources and forces him to be resourceful in the old way.

Photo: Jörg Braukmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Paris always looks terrific in this series, in the way it only does when the people making it love the city. Are you a Lupin fan from the start, or is this your return?