Lupin Season 4 review: Omar Sy charms his way through rather familiar con-drama

Netflix has a global hit on its hands. It also has a revolt. Lupin Part 4 debuted on 23 October to 6.4 million views and 38.1 million hours watched in its first week, ranking number one in 55 countries on the Netflix charts. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, the critic score sits at a pristine 100%. The audience score, meanwhile, has cratered to 19%. That gap is the real mystery of Lupin Season 4 — not whodunit, but why so many viewers feel the magic has drained out of a show that once felt like the most effortless thing on television.

The season itself sits somewhere between those two extremes. It is not the disaster the audience score implies, nor the flawless victory the critic tally suggests. It is a handsomely mounted, frequently charming, occasionally frustrating piece of comfort television that leans harder than ever into its soap-opera instincts and asks Omar Sy to carry more weight than any one performer should have to.

The setup is a clever reversal of the show’s usual engine. Four years after Assane Diop surrendered to the authorities at the end of Part 3, he is still behind bars, behaving himself, counting down the days until release. His plan is simple: reunite with Claire (Ludivine Sagnier), reconnect with his son Raoul (now played by Théo Christine), and finally take the boy to Senegal as promised. No more disguises, no more heists, no more games. Then a series of simultaneous museum robberies rocks Paris, and the criminal signs the crimes with the name Lupin. Assane is in prison, but the evidence points squarely at him. His reputation, once his greatest asset, becomes his biggest liability.

It is a smart premise, and for a while it works. The season’s early episodes move briskly, and the show’s commitment to practical spectacle remains intact. A sequence involving the Eiffel Tower and a ruby delivers the kind of big-screen flourish the series has always aspired to. Théo Christine brings a genuine emotional charge as the older Raoul, turning a character who was once a kidnapping plot device into something resembling the show’s conscience. Sy, as always, is the reason to keep watching. His charm is so complete, so seemingly effortless, that he can make even the clunkiest exposition feel like a confidence trick worth falling for.

But the plotting has grown loose. Lupin has always asked viewers to accept a certain amount of luck and coincidence, but Part 4 stretches that contract. “Some plans demand an extraordinary amount of luck, precision and conveniently timed interventions,” as India Today’s review put it, and the season leans on that crutch more often than it should. The show’s new copycat antagonist is a promising idea, but the conspiracy that unfolds around him — complete with secret lineages, sudden resurrections, and a treasure hunt that pulls in former foes — feels ripped from a daytime soap rather than a globe-trotting caper. The result is a season that feels bigger but not always richer, more elaborate but less nimble than the early installments that made Lupin a crossover phenomenon.

Part of that shift is structural, and it comes from the top. Omar Sy did not simply return to the role for Part 4; he made greater creative control a condition of his comeback. “There were quite a few moments in previous seasons when I felt frustrated because things I wanted didn’t necessarily end up on screen,” Sy told Variety ahead of the launch. “So my condition for continuing was that I would have a little more say in the decisions. They gave me that role, and it allowed me to change things”. Sy shares showrunner duties with Louis Leterrier and co-produces through his Carrousel Studios banner, and the season reflects his stated desire to push the show further from Maurice Leblanc’s source novels and deeper into a tech-infused, superhero-adjacent universe. Netflix backed the ambition with a bigger budget. The result is a season that looks more expensive and moves more aggressively, but occasionally loses the intimate, character-first rhythm that made Assane’s earliest cons so satisfying.

The audience backlash is not entirely about quality. Some of it is about change. The show’s fanbase fell in love with a nimble, emotionally grounded thriller about a father and a son and a stolen inheritance. Part 4 is a different animal: broader, louder, more interested in set pieces than in the quiet beats that once gave the heists their meaning. “A terrible season. What a shame,” one Rotten Tomatoes user wrote. Another complained of “a show that has no ideas left”. Those verdicts are harsh, but they point to a real creative tension. The series is trying to expand its world while preserving what made it work, and the balance is off.

What complicates any final judgment is the sheer scale of the Lupin machine. The first two seasons rank among Netflix’s most-watched non-English series ever, and the franchise has contributed more than €90 million to the French economy. Sy has since signed a multi-year feature film deal with Netflix, with his production company developing original films in which he will star and executive produce. Netflix has every incentive to keep the Lupin train running, and Sy has every incentive to keep refining a character that has made him a global star. A fifth part has not been confirmed, but nothing about the show’s performance or Sy’s expanded role suggests this is the end.

The question is whether the next chapter can recover the precision that made the first two so electric. Part 4 is not a failure. It is a comfortable, watchable, frequently charming season of television, and Sy remains one of the most magnetic presences on any streaming service. But comfort is not the same as excitement, and charm can only paper over so many convenient coincidences. Lupin built its reputation on the thrill of watching a master improviser turn impossible odds into elegant victories. Season 4 too often feels like the show itself is improvising, hoping that Sy’s smile will be enough to carry it through. For many critics, it was. For a growing number of viewers, it was not.

Also Read: Lupin Season 4 Release Window, Returning Cast, and Story Details

VVIPTimes will keep tracking whether Netflix greenlights a fifth part and whether Sy’s expanded creative role can restore the narrative discipline that once made Lupin feel like a true one-of-a-kind heist.