Netflix’s Lupin ends its tantalizing first chapter with a cliff-hanger set at Normandy’s Étretat beach—an homage to fans of Maurice Leblanc’s iconic character, and specifically the 1909 Lupin book, The Hollow Needle. (Spoilers ahead for those who have not seen the episode.) In the closing moments of Chapter Five, the son of Assane, Omar Sy’s debonair thief, is abducted at a seaside festival—marking the first time in the series that Assane’s identity has real-life consequences for his family. Until this point, as Lupin shows in flashbacks, Assane has successfully kept his illicit life—and lair of disguises—secret from most people, including his longtime love interest, Claire, and his son.
Speaking to Vanity Fair on Friday, Lupin cocreator George Kay said that the next five episodes of the series will fill in more audience blanks about Assane, and how he came to be a thief and master of disguise—complete with a Bruce Wayne–like secret lair of supplies.
“The backstory is going to take you up to how he got to that point,” Kay said of the series, which cuts between present and flashbacks to Assane’s origin story. “Right now we don’t know what happened to him in the gap between him being, like, 15 and being 40. So we’re kind of retrospectively educating with this huge backstory.”
Kay said that he is currently outlining a potential season three as well—and continuing to mine Assane’s history for twists.
“There’s a lot of that that’s worked out [in season two], but not all the details,” teased Kay. As a writer, he explained, “you’re always looking to go back to backstories and plunder them for twists.” An example: “So what if that guy who’s around [Assane] when he’s 25 isn’t so loyal to him…How’s that going to change things for the character now? You want to have a backstory that you’ve thought through really well but, from a writing perspective, remains a place that you can go looking for ideas.”
But Lupin won’t lurch too far into the future in its next season. “It won’t be set in the too-distant future, because you’re constantly trying to use your backstory to jump around in time. We want to keep a continual story line in the present for Assane.”
Chapter One opened with a spectacular heist—in which Lupin infiltrated the Louvre, as both a wealthy art patron and a janitor, to steal a priceless necklace from auction. Subsequent episodes have been filmed throughout Paris’s most recognizable landmarks, and Kay teased that the new batch of action sequences—and locations—will similarly dazzle audiences.
“We continue to use the iconography of Paris all the time,” said Kay. The next season, he added, features “two or three really cool Parisian-set scenes and sequences. It’s also about the scale.” He hinted that the the new batch will match Assane’s Louvre caper in terms of pure audaciousness and historic locale. “We started with such a big thing, and I really want it to ramp back up to a big thing.”
Moving forward, Lupin’s son, Raoul, and longtime girlfriend, Claire—both currently in the dark about Lupin’s daytime whereabouts—will continue to be major points of tension for the protagonist.
“They’re fundamental to the whole being of Assane Diop. He has to work that out because that’s a permanent situation,” said Kay. “He has the mother of his child and his child—that’s never going to change. So Claire and Raoul will stay [in the series] a lot.”
Kay said that he was interested in giving Assane a messy, relatable personal life, which differentiates him from James Bond and other slick action characters who never seem to engage in realistically complex relationships.
“We’re not going to relate to the guy who can rob the Louvre without breaking a sweat unless he’s got these kind of everyday, universal problems that we all have,” Kay said, referring to Assane’s struggle to bond with his teenage son and regain the trust of his longtime girl. “That prevents us from having smug characters who think that they can just go out with beautiful women one day, another one the next…I wasn’t interested in that. I don’t like some of those characters, so I wanted to try and change that.”
Kay said that the next batch of episodes will wrap up Assane’s revenge saga with the Pellegrini family—which employed Assane’s late father and played a part in his death.
“Parts one and two are essentially Assane’s origin story on his revenge against Pellegrini—can he and will he achieve that, and how did he kind of get here?” said Kay, who consciously crafted a big episode five cliff-hanger to lure viewers back. “The story beat around that point was always being discussed. That became a real kind of good bookend for those five episodes.” With a smile, Kay added, “If people are annoyed that they don’t know what happens next, that’s a good thing. We should encourage that.”
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