Lupin review – the French super-thief is magnetic in his blockbuster return

The French jewel heist thriller Lupin returns for a fourth season, four years after the character's surrender, as he faces a new wave of copycat crimes.

The show's creator Omar Sy returns as co-showrunner, expanding the series from five to eight episodes and leaning into its superhero-like qualities.

Lupin's central question is what happens when a mastermind becomes the victim of his own intelligence, as he is falsely accused of a new series of high-profile heists.

A real-life heist

The series' return arrives with a renewed salience, as the real-life Louvre heist of 2025, which occurred by day, drew direct comparisons to the show's fictional plotline.

The real-life robbers posed as construction workers, mirroring the character Assane Diop's use of a caretaker disguise in the show's first season.

This real-world event has amplified the show's themes of a cleverly crafted disguise to dupe even the world's most revered cultural institutions.

A mastermind's downfall

Diop is a week away from release from a maximum security prison, hoping to fulfil his fatherly promise to put his life of crime behind him and join his family in Senegal.

However, technology across Paris is hacked, and warnings of imminent heists are signed with the name "Lupin," casting suspicion on the former mastermind.

Despite being imprisoned, Diop is swiftly straitjacketed and locked in a panopticon-style glass cell, allowing surveillance and mockery by prison guards and prisoners alike.

The character's Blackness has often served as his strength, allowing him to camouflage as a janitor or delivery person for his crimes.

But when he becomes a suspect, his racialisation is his downfall; blurry security footage shows that a robber was a Black man, which is taken as unequivocal evidence that Diop is guilty.

A new mastermind

Diop is hoisted by his own petard: despite being imprisoned, the police still believe he was somehow involved in the jewel theft.

He is implicated in a crime that doesn't seem to bear his fingerprints, before it even happens, as the investigation becomes unthinkable that anyone else could have pulled it off.

The series asks complicated questions about what it means to attempt to leave things behind when you have achieved a certain level of infamy.

Other thieves become copycats, and to those investigating, it becomes unthinkable that anyone else could have pulled this off.

Yet Diop is no longer the puppet master – now, he is at the mercy of others.

A global blockbuster

The series has been scaled up from a five-episode series to eight, with Sy wanting to lean harder into the show's "superhero"-like qualities.

These include tech and set pieces which undoubtedly add a sprinkling of Marvel to the production.

Certain moments do feel over-dramatised – and it relies on that cliche of the old pro getting roped back in for one last hurrah.

But will Lupin manage to shapeshift from a French drama punching above its weight on the global market to a big-budget thrill-ride?

Watching on Netflix's default US English setting would certainly tip this Hollywood feel over the edge, so viewers should switch to French.