Omar Sy finally runs Lupin — and he's turning Netflix's heist hit into a superhero show
Lupin conquered the world with a wig, a fake moustache and a man nobody noticed in the Louvre. Part 4 swaps them for a sci-fi prison, gadgets and a coat that works like a cape.
Omar Sy is a co-showrunner of Lupin for the first time, and he has told Variety why he asked for the job. Part 4 arrives on Netflix on 23 October 2026, three years after Part 3. Sy shares the job with director Louis Leterrier, and the pair co-produce through their company, Carrousel Studios. On the first three parts Sy was an "artistic producer": in every conversation, but without the final word. A bigger say was his condition for coming back.
"There were quite a few moments in previous seasons when I felt frustrated because things I wanted didn't necessarily end up on screen."
— Omar Sy to Variety
Fair enough. He is the face of Netflix's biggest French hit, and Netflix agreed. The interesting part is what he did with the keys.
From gentleman thief to caped crusader
The new part picks up four years after Part 3. Assane Diop is behind bars, and a mysterious copycat is pulling off elaborate heists in his name. Netflix handed over more money ("Netflix would be very upset if we said otherwise," Sy joked), and the money went on leaving the books behind. "We're moving a little further away from Maurice Leblanc," he said. In practice that means a stylised, almost sci-fi prison, new technology and a villain who traps Assane with gadgets.
Asked whether Lupin versus Lupin feels like a Marvel film, Sy had a cheeky answer ready: Leblanc pitted Lupin against another Lupin, and against Sherlock Holmes, long before any cinematic universe.
"I think it's Marvel that copied Maurice Leblanc!"
As jokes go, the dates are on his side: the first Lupin story was published in 1905. But Sy then said, quite seriously, that he and Leterrier "really conceived this character as a superhero" from day one. That is why the coat works like a cape, and why Assane keeps posing on Paris rooftops as a silhouette against the skyline.
What actually made Lupin a hit
Lupin became a global phenomenon in January 2021: a French-language series that Netflix projected would reach 70 million households in its first four weeks, ahead of Bridgerton and The Queen's Gambit. It did not get there by being Marvel. It got there by being gloriously daft. In episode one Assane walks into the Louvre as a cleaner and out with Marie Antoinette's necklace, and nobody notices the tallest man in the building.
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The top comment in an r/television thread about the series puts it better than any critic:
"It's just a silly heist show, that's all... I like that it's stupid like that. Also, his disguises are funny as hell."
That is the formula Sy is now tinkering with. A wig, a fake moustache and a man three steps ahead of the police cost very little and look like nothing else on the telly. Futuristic prisons and gadget-wielding villains cost a fortune and look like half of streaming, at a moment when superhero fatigue is the industry's favourite complaint. The same thread has a fan who says Part 2 had already lost them. A show that started wobbling after one series hardly needs more spectacle.
The bet on 23 October
Sy says the challenge was keeping what made Lupin a hit while making Part 4 fresh enough for newcomers. He has also brought in rising French actor Théo Christine for a father-son storyline. Meanwhile he is finishing Bradley Cooper's Ocean's prequel with Margot Robbie, and on that he would say nothing at all.
So Netflix gets its European superhero, or it gets a heist show that forgot its best trick was looking cheap. Either way, the plot has already written the review: this series is about a copycat stealing Lupin's name to do a flashier version of the job.
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