Netflix has published a trailer for the upcoming final season of Top Boy, due for release on September 7.
This will be season 3 of the Netflix reboot, season 5 of Top Boy if you include the original series from a decade or more ago.
No. Loose. Ends... The Final Chapter. September 7 pic.twitter.com/7mEZdH0GSi
— Top Boy (@topboynetflix) August 14, 2023August 14, 2023
The trailer is grimly portentous, suggesting Top Boy is unlikely to end with everyone hugging it out. Would you expect anything less?
The lead actors return for season five (or season 3, to use Netflix’s approach), including Ashley Walters, Little Simz and Kane Brett Robinson, better known as Kano.
However, at present we don’t yet know how many episodes season 5 will have, making how the “no loose ends” tagline the trailer was accompanied by all the more mysterious.
Netlflix’s two previous seasons have had 10 and eight episodes a piece.
The trailer does give us a glimpse of a couple of Top Boy's new stars, though. Oscar winner Barry Keoghan has a brief showing in the teaser, while Brian Gleeson also joins the cast.
Unusually, neither actor has the show listed on their IMDb pages yet, emblematic of how little pre-release hype we’ve seen for Top Boy’s last season so far.
We’re unlikely to see all that much more for it either, as the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes rule out the actors heading out to promo the new season.
In 2022 rumours circulated that there was tension in the production following disagreements about how the story should tie up. The Sun even claimed lead Kano had left the set at one point after some classic “creative differences.”
The production delay was short-lived, though, as demonstrated by final season’s rapidly incoming release.
We’re lucky to be getting the season at all, given the relatively humble audience figures Netflix’s second season achieved. According to Netflix’s Tudum website, it racked-up just 21 million viewing hours in its first chart week, 30 million in its second.
Bridgerton season 2 released that same week, to 193 million viewed hours. Perhaps it’s harder to nix a show when you have a legit superstar as a producer.
Drake has been an executive producer on Top Boy since Netflix took it on in 2019, having been a huge fan of the first two seasons, first broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4.
