The Big Picture
- Lupin Part 3 follows Assane as he navigates a thrilling and twist-filled heist to retrieve a rare black pearl, encountering unexpected obstacles along the way.
- Assane is reunited with his long-lost mother in a heartwarming moment that showcases his charm and complex character.
- Part 3 explores Assane's past with Keller and the final sequence reveals Assane's decision to turn himself in, but a surprising twist offers potential for a thrilling Part 4 of Lupin.
There are two kinds of families in this world: the one you're born into, and the one that you end up surrounding yourself with when you get older. In the seven-episode Part 3 of Netflix's French drama Lupin, this is the dilemma at the center of Assane Diop's (Omar Sy) life. It's a bingeworthy thrill ride filled with unexpected twists and turns throughout. It's also a beautifully shot show that uses Paris as its primary backdrop. Assane is a master of disguise, a con artist, and a gentleman cat burglar who has grown up knowing nothing else but how to steal and get away with it without hurting anyone, but the insurance companies of the priceless artwork, jewels, and various other valuables. In Part 3, he sets his sights on a rare black pearl that was retrieved during the French-Tahitian War of 1815. But along the way, things don't go exactly as planned, and it's a pleasure to be along for the ride as a viewer. The show has a wild finish that pulls all the storylines and character arcs together. Let's break down what went down with Assane at the end of Lupin as he tries to sort out the conflict that arises when the family from his past runs into the family of his present.
Assane Is Orphaned and Living On the Streets in 'Lupin'
The year is 1998, and France has advanced to the soccer World Cup Finals to play powerhouse Brazil. Assane is a seventeen-year-old kid who is alone in the world. His only friend, Bruno (Noe Wodecki), lets him stay with him and his sister who are also orphans but have an arrangement with a local man named Jean-Luc Keller (Salif Cisse) who runs a boxing gym in the neighborhood and takes in young people with nowhere else to go. In exchange, the youngsters do his bidding from time to time including breaking and entering, robbery, and eventually murder. The whole thing has a very Dickensian Oliver Twist vibe going on, and to say that Keller is taking advantage of these kid's vulnerability and lack of options would be quite an understatement. Nonetheless, Assane and Bruno learn to work the con game on the streets of Marseille and become very astute and accomplished thieves. Eventually, Keller goes too far and while the three of them are trying to speed away from a chasing police officer on a motorcycle, he makes Bruno shoot and kill the cop. They end up crashing anyway...
Assane Is Finally Reunited With His Mother
In Episode 6, Assane finally meets his mother Mariama (Naky Sy Savane) for whom he has been jumping through all these hoops the entire season to keep alive. The two embrace, and it's a touching reunion as she has spent the last several years in an African jail, He takes her to his secret lair where he introduces her to his amazingly understanding wife Claire (Ludivine Sagnier) and his teenage son Raoul (Etan Simon) and the four are finally able to come together and embrace in a warm moment that makes you completely forget that Assane is a career criminal. Omar Sy is simply that charming and forget Idris Elba as the next James Bond, maybe we should be giving the dashing Sy a closer look!
Assane and Keller Finally Meet at the Arc de Triomphe
In what amounts to a final showdown between Assane and the older Keller (Steve Trientcheu), the two meet one another atop the Arc De Triomphe in Paris. Once the two make eye contact, you can feel the tension emanating from the screen. Assane and Keller are both seeing red. Keller takes a swing at Assane, but the young man who learned to box from him back in 1998 swiftly eludes his punch. Assane tells him he knows he has the black pearl and he wants it. He also tells him that he's informed the cops, specifically Youssef Guedira (Soufiane Guerrab) and Lt. Sofia Belkacem (Shirine Boutella), and they are en route as you hear sirens wailing in the distance. The next scene is a flashback to 1998 after they crashed the car during the police chase that reveals a young Assane putting a gun into the hand of a semi-conscious Keller, implicating him for murder, before he and Bruno flee. Keller is arrested and sent to jail. This is why he has returned to make Assane's life hell by kidnapping his mother and trying to kill his wife and son.
Assane demands the black pearl from Keller and offers him a choice saying, "The pearl or your freedom?" Keller reluctantly places the pearl in Assane's hand and runs for the exit only to be met by a handful of officers including Guedira and Belkacem. They cuff him and Guedira frantically searches for Assane among the crowd of sightseers. He turns to his left to see Assane standing still as he slowly extends his arms as if to say, "You got me. Put the handcuffs on." Guedira has slowly come to admire Assane and begrudgingly applies the cuffs before escorting down to an awaiting squad car. But between cuffing Keller and finding Assane, the always clever thief secretly hides the pearl inside the petal of an orange (his favorite color) rose and hands it to an unwitting young woman bystander claiming he was stood up for a date and would hate to waste a beautiful flower.
When she and her friend are forced by police to evacuate the Arc de Triomphe by police, they make their way down to a tunnel where they are met by Assane's old childhood friend Bruno (Pierre Lotin). He gives them a bullshit story about how he is the person who stood Assane up, and he feels so incredibly guilty about it that maybe the orange rose she is carrying will make it up to him and secures the black pearl. A nice way to bookend the story of the two orphans from Marseille.
The Final Sequence Explained
In the last sequence of Lupin, we see that Bruno and Manon (Sandra Parfait) sell the black pearl for an enormous amount of money and buy back the old boxing gym in Marseille where they all grew up and call it "Lupin". Next, the audience is taken back to 1998, and we see a terrified Assane on the phone with Claire amid all the hustle and bustle of the World Cup Final after he has escaped the police and the scene of the crash. He asks her if she would be willing to pick up and leave the whole mess with Keller behind and run with him somewhere far away. The next shot is of a young Claire atop a train station waiting for him.
The camera pulls out and pans to capture a current Claire, Raoul, and Marianna atop the same rooftop twenty-three years later waiting for Assane to leave and start a new, life away from all the madness in Paris. But as Assane explains through narration, he has decided to turn himself in to the police, so the three people he loves most can get a fresh start, and he can atone for all his crimes over the years. But he has two conditions, he wants his longtime partner in crime and friend Ben Ferel (Antoine Gouy) released from prison, and he wants his prison cell to contain all the Arsene Lupin novels on the bookshelf. Just as Assane settles in to read, the guard delivers a photo of a young Assane and a note from "his neighbor". It turns out that he is in the cell next to despicable and diabolical Hubert Pellegrini (Hervé Pierre) and he is now communicating with Assane again! The man who set up his father for a heist in Part 2. A delicious twist that sets up all kinds of possibilities for a Part 4 of Lupin.
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