Does Assane die in Lupin Part 4? He's faked his death twice before — this time fans aren't so sure
The last time Assane Diop was declared dead, he climbed out of his own coffin at Père-Lachaise.
Lupin Part 4 arrived on Netflix on October 23, eight episodes from creators George Kay and François Uzan, with Omar Sy as Assane, a thief who models himself on Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin. This part opens with Assane in prison. A copycat is robbing museums in Lupin's name, and Assane breaks out to find out who. The finale ends with him shot, and the screen goes black before the show says whether he survives.
The first time: Part 3
Assane staged his first death to get the press off his family. Reporters were hounding his former partner, Claire, and their son, Raoul, and a dead Lupin was a story they'd stop chasing.
He built it like a heist:
- He fell from the rooftops of Place Vendôme onto a hidden airbag, with a vial of his own blood to make it look fatal.
- Benjamin and Philippe Courbet took his "body" away in an ambulance.
- A doctor at the morgue was manipulated into confirming the death.
- He escaped from the casket during his own funeral at Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
It only half worked. Assane meant to tell Claire and Raoul he was alive, but his mother was kidnapped before he could. Claire got suspicious when the doctor who examined his body turned out to be missing from the hospital's records. Raoul never believed he was dead.
The second time: earlier in Part 4
He did it again in episode 6, and this time it was a group effort. Facing Guillaume de Charmerace and the kidnappers, Assane told Adèle and Benjamin the plan was to "make the kidnappers think they were dead." They wore metal plates under their shirts. When Guillaume shot them, they fell into the water, and the kidnappers believed it. Benjamin then used a private elevator to recover the crown.
The third time
The finale doesn't give Assane a plan. Raoul has switched sides and is walking to a helicopter with Hubert Pellegrini, the man who framed Assane's father. Police captain Sofia Belkacem, whom Raoul pushed off a balcony earlier in the season, aims at Raoul and fires. Assane steps in front of his son, and the bullet hits him in the chest.
Set against the two earlier deaths, the details are different:
- No preparation — both earlier deaths were planned. This one happens in a second, to save Raoul.
- No plate — unlike episode 6, he isn't wearing anything to stop a bullet.
- No audience to fool — the people around him are his own: Claire, Benjamin, Adèle and Juliette, who gather around him as the season ends.
The last image of the season is Assane on the ground, bleeding.
Both earlier deaths needed witnesses. This one happens in front of his family.
The recaps can't agree either. The Cinemaholic argued that, as the main character, "he is not going to die just yet." What's on Netflix wouldn't commit: "anything is possible in Lupin world."
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What the show has said
Nothing about Assane's fate, and nothing official about more episodes. Netflix hasn't renewed Lupin for a Part 5. Writer Florent Meyer told a Netflix book festival panel in Paris, five days before Part 4's release, that the team was already working on the next season.
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Sy has made his own position clear, in an interview with the French magazine Première.
If it were up to him, Sy said in French, "I'd play him for the rest of my life."