Lupin Part 4 ending explained: why the finale has fans fighting about what Part 5 can even be
Lupin Part 4 ends with three people who could each claim the name Lupin, and one of them is bleeding on the ground.
The fourth part of the Netflix series arrived on October 23, all eight episodes at once. George Kay and François Uzan created the show, and Omar Sy plays Assane Diop, a thief who models himself on Maurice Leblanc's gentleman burglar Arsène Lupin. Part 4 picks up four years after Part 3. Assane is in prison, planning to join his family in Senegal once he's out, when a string of museum robberies starts happening in Lupin's name. During one of them, police captain Sofia Belkacem is badly hurt. Assane breaks out to find the impostor and clear himself.
The last heist
The finale's job is run through something called the Varenne Procedure. Varenne is a security firm that moves its wealthy clients' assets in an emergency, and Assane's plan is to give it one. He and Benjamin, posing as river police, close one dam on the Seine and open another to flood the place where the treasure is kept.
The convoy that moves it doesn't get far. Assane stops it near the Arc de Triomphe, leads the police on a chase and slips away near the Panthéon. Korvin, supposedly riding with the treasure, turns out to be Juliette Pellegrini in disguise. Adèle has already intercepted the real one with a drone, and Assane's team takes the treasure.
The betrayal
Then Hubert Pellegrini, the man who framed Assane's father, comes back. He kidnaps Adèle and Raoul, Assane's son, and sends Assane a riddle: meet him where Arsène 1st took its first flight. Guédira connects it to a plane theft in the park at Saint-Cloud.
When Assane gets there, the kidnapping falls apart. Raoul had contacted Hubert in jail and helped get him out, and he's now on Hubert's side. Raoul had also admitted, earlier in the finale, that he was the one at the museum when Belkacem was hurt: he panicked when she spotted him and pushed her off a balcony.
At the meeting, Adèle has a bomb strapped to her back. Raoul makes his father choose between her and him. The countdown reaches zero, and nothing happens. Raoul walks to a helicopter with Hubert. Belkacem aims at Raoul and fires, Assane steps in front of him, and the bullet hits Assane in the chest. Raoul and Hubert fly away.
Three Lupins
By the end, the name Lupin belongs to more than one person:
- Assane — shot, surrounded by Claire, Benjamin, Adèle and Juliette when the season cuts off.
- Adèle — the copycat. She is Assane and Juliette's daughter, sent by Hubert to an orphanage in England, who posed as Lupin to get her father's attention.
- Raoul — the son who grew up on Assane's stories, now in a helicopter with the man Assane spent the series trying to bring down.
Assane got the name from a Maurice Leblanc novel his father gave him. Raoul got it from Assane, and Adèle copied it.
Part 4 spent eight episodes building Assane's successors. In the last scene, it put one on each side.
Why the reaction split
Critics liked it. Part 4 holds 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from its first five reviews. The audience score on the same page is 20%, from more than 50 ratings, though that's a small and early sample.
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The viewer complaints are mostly about the heists, which many found bigger and less clever than the planned, patient cons of the first season. A scene in an Eiffel Tower lift was singled out. Raoul's turn is the other weak spot, and it bothered critics too. Pixel Twelve's review put it bluntly: "Trusting Pellegrini has not been made equally convincing."
The argument about Part 5 comes from the ending's shape. Each of the three Lupins points to a different show: one that brings Assane back, one built around Adèle, or one that turns father and son into enemies. The finale doesn't choose.
Is there a Part 5?
Netflix hasn't renewed it. Writer Florent Meyer told a Netflix book festival panel in Paris, in French, five days before Part 4's release, that the team was already "working on the season that will follow the one you're going to discover."
Sy has said the decision isn't his. "But the real question isn't me. It's the audience," he told the French magazine Première.
A day after its premiere, Part 4 was the most-watched series on Netflix worldwide, according to FlixPatrol's daily charts.
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