Lupin Part 4 Debuts at No. 1 as Critics Back a Bigger, Uneven Return

Netflix released all eight episodes of Lupin Part 4 on 23 October 2026. Four days later, the service's weekly Top 10 report put the season at No. 1 on its non-English TV chart with 6.4 million views for the week of 19-25 October. The entry a few rows below it is the more interesting one: Part 1, first released in 2021, came back at No. 10 with 2.1 million views.

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A franchise that had been quiet for three years now holds two places in the same chart. Netflix does not say who went back to the old season or why, and its published numbers cannot answer that. But a new season that sends viewers to episode one of a five-year-old series is doing something a sequel usually does not.

The premise Netflix is willing to print

The setup is on Netflix's Tudum site, which ran a launch piece by Ruth Kinane on the day of release. Assane Diop, played by Omar Sy, has spent four years in a maximum-security prison since the end of Part 3. He is a week from release and plans to join his family in Senegal. Then technology across Paris is hacked, museums are hit by simultaneous robberies, and each one is signed "Lupin". Security footage appears to place Assane at one of the heists, where Captain Belkacem is seriously injured. He breaks out to clear his name and find whoever is copying him.

That is a different machine from the one the show built its reputation on. In the early seasons Assane set the traps, a thief with a plan and a debt to his father. Part 4 starts with him in a cell, then makes him the pursued party in a plot he did not write. Whether that inversion holds over eight episodes is the question the reviews are actually answering.

The production credits have changed shape too. George Kay created the series with François Uzan, and Sy is a co-showrunner this season, the Guardian notes. Gaumont produces with Carrousel Studios. Ludivine Sagnier returns as Claire, Antoine Gouy as Benjamin, Soufiane Guerrab as Guédira and Shirine Boutella as Belkacem. Théo Christine takes over the role of Raoul from Etan Simon, and Laïka Blanc-Francard joins the cast.

Three reviews, one direction

The Guardian's Micha Frazer-Carroll is the most detailed of the three early notices and the clearest about what changed. She calls Sy "magnetic" and describes the season as "higher-budget, higher stakes and more cinematic", with "Houdini-style thrills" and set pieces that borrow their scale from superhero films. The same review names the cost of that approach. Some moments are over-dramatised, and the season leans on the "one last job" cliché that every heist story inherits.

Decider's Joel Keller reaches the site's "STREAM IT" verdict. But Why Tho?'s LaNeysha Campbell is positive on both the heists and the season's central mystery, which is the part of a copycat plot that can go wrong fastest: a mystery only works if the audience cares who is behind it.

Three positive notices is thin evidence for a verdict, and the agreement among them is the unusual part. The three reviews differ in emphasis rather than in judgment. The Guardian wants more restraint. Decider wants the next episode. But Why Tho? wants the mystery to keep paying off. Nobody says the show has run out of road.

What a 100% score is worth here

By 24 October, Rotten Tomatoes showed 100% for the season, as Men's Journal reported alongside the chart numbers. Movieweb put the figure in a longer context: 98% for season 1, 96% for season 2, 100% for season 3, and 100% again for Part 4. Metacritic had no critic score for the new season at the time of writing, against 82, 80 and 76 for the three that came before.

Five reviews, all positive, is a real signal about the screeners Netflix sent out. It is not a measurement of the season. A single negative notice would drop the score to 83%, and the difference between those two numbers is one person's opinion. The prior seasons are a better guide to the show's standing: 98%, 96% and 100% are the marks of a series critics have consistently liked, not a series that has suddenly improved.

The Metacritic gap matters for a different reason. That site weights reviews and produces a score out of 100, which is harder to move with a small sample. Its absence means there is no second aggregate to check the first against. So the figure has no backstop, and the sample it rests on is small.

Eight episodes where there used to be five

The Guardian puts the expansion plainly: the season went from five episodes to eight, and the budget grew with it. That matches the logic of Netflix's non-English slate, which has become a growth engine for the service. No budget figure for Lupin has been published. The show was one of the early breakouts of that strategy in 2021, and it is now a returning property rather than a discovery.

More episodes changes what a heist show can do. Five episodes force a single job and a single reveal. Eight allow a false ending, a second target, and room for the supporting cast to carry an episode. They also allow slack, and slack is where a caper loses its tension. The Guardian's complaint about over-dramatised moments is the sound of a season filling time it did not previously have.

There is an outside event pressing on the material as well. The Guardian notes that the real theft at the Louvre in 2025 gave the series an unexpected salience, the kind of coincidence no marketing department can plan. From the published setup, the season does not dramatise that case directly. It uses the same city and the same profession.

The franchise numbers, and what they cannot tell you

Netflix's all-time most-popular non-English list still has the first two seasons near the top. Season 1 sits at No. 5 with 99.5 million views. Season 2 is No. 9 with 68.4 million, both figures cited by Men's Journal from Netflix's own list.

Those totals and the 6.4 million first-week figure do not measure the same thing. The all-time list counts a much longer window than a single week, and Netflix does not publish a like-for-like comparison for Part 4 yet. Setting the numbers side by side would make the new season look like a collapse when the season is days old. The honest reading is that Part 4 has made a strong start and that nobody outside Netflix knows where it ends.

The revival of Part 1 is the number that says more about the franchise than the No. 1 does. A five-year-old season picking up 2.1 million views in a week means the show has a backlog audience, people who arrived late or who are rewatching before the new one. Netflix does not publish the reasoning behind its renewals, so what that backlog is worth to the company is not public.

“higher-budget, higher stakes and more cinematic” — The Guardian, review, 23 October 2026

What the season is actually betting on

Strip away the heists and Part 4 is a story about a man starting from a cell. Assane begins the season four years into a sentence, with his release a week away and a plan to leave France. The copycat plot drags him back into the life he was trying to end, and it does so by making his own legend the weapon. Someone is committing crimes in his style and signing his name.

It is a neat way to reopen a character whose original revenge story had run its course. It also puts the show in debt to its own iconography. Assane's bowler hat and green suit are the visual signature, and a copycat means the season has to show them on someone else. The Guardian's "one last job" note is fair, and it points at the real risk: a fourth season kept alive by the first three, with no story that only the fourth could tell.

The reviews suggest the season mostly clears that bar without clearing it easily. Sy's performance is the constant across all three notices, and he now has a hand in the writing as co-showrunner. That combination can produce a season with a clearer idea of its lead than of its plot, which is roughly what a positive review with a caveat about over-dramatising looks like.

What to watch

The next chart is the first test. A No. 1 debut on the non-English list is normal for a franchise this size. Holding the spot, or dropping sharply, is the part that is not, and Netflix's next weekly report will show which happened.

Then there is the Rotten Tomatoes score, which has to survive more reviews. If it settles in the 80s, it lands alongside the prior seasons and the story is continuity. If it falls further, the early unanimity was a screeners effect. Metacritic will eventually publish a score, and that will be the cleaner test.

Part 5 does not exist yet. Sy told Collider that the team wants to see how the audience responds to the new season before deciding. That is the standard answer, and it is also the true one: Netflix has not commissioned another run, and no budget or renewal has been announced.

For now the show has done what a fourth season has to do. It opened at the top of the chart it competes in, brought an old season back with it, and gave critics enough to argue about without giving them a reason to write it off. The five reviews and the 6.4 million views are both early, and both will look different in a month.

Cover image: Omar Sy as Assane Diop in Lupin Part 4, courtesy of Netflix (photograph by Selly Sy/Netflix).