The Pellegrini family.
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In General
- Big Fancy House: They live in a mansion (a surprisingly large one, given that it's located in the middle of Parisnote ).
- But Not Too Foreign: Judging by their surname, they're probably of Italian origin. A Freeze-Frame Bonus reveals that the founder of the Pellegrini business group several generations back was called "Enzo", strengthening the Italian connection.
- Decomposite Character: Hubert and Juliette seem to be based on different aspects of Josephine Balsamo, one of the major antagonists to the original Arsène Lupin character.
- Nouveau Riche: The Pellegrinis achieved their wealth through business endeavors rather than having older aristocratic ties.
- Out of Focus: The Pellegrinis not very prominent in Part 3. In fact, up until the final reveal that Hubert is Assane's neighboring inmate, the only time any of them are seen is when Juliette turns up as one of the spectators at Assane's funeral—and even then she's incredibly easy to miss unless you're actively looking for her. However, the season's Cliffhanger ending suggests that Hubert and Juliette will return to a more prominent role going forward.
- Wealthy Philanthropist: Hubert and Juliette start a foundation intended to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds (although what this foundation would actually do for them isn't entirely clear). Zigzagged in that while Juliette's motivations are genuine, Hubert's definitely aren't—in fact his true intention is to direct most of the foundation's donations into a personal bank account in a tax haven.
- You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: Hubert is extremely fond of making these kinds of vague threats whenever he's in a tight spot, and Juliette has inherited the tendency from him, albeit to a lesser extent.
Hubert
Hubert Pellegrini
Played by: Hervé Pierre
A wealthy entrepreneur who has very few qualms about carrying out immoral actions. He's also the former employer of Assane's father Babakar, whose imprisonment—and, ultimately, murder—he orchestrated.
- Arms Dealer: Uses the proceeds of the necklace's insurance to purchase weapons he then sells to a group of terrorists, allowing them to destroy the French embassy and kill nearly a dozen people.
- Bad Boss: Hubert framed his own employee for theft as part of an insurance scam and then had him bumped off in prison to silence him when he tried to fight the charges. He also had his assassin Leonard killed for failing to kill Assane.
- Big Bad: Hubert is the primary source of Assane's struggles, having framed and then had his father murdered to collect insurance money on his necklace.
- The Bus Came Back: The final scene of Part 3 sees Assane getting thrown in prison after voluntarily handing himself over to the police in an attempt to give Claire and Raoul a chance to start a new life free from danger and media harassment. Guess who's in the cell next door?
- Cold Ham: Despite his frigid nature, he speaks with quite a dramatic flair.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Hubert cares more than anything about making money, and will not hesitate to resort to corruption and bribery to do so.
- Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: He'll always lean towards more disreputable, risky forms of profit, rather than going for safer, more legal schemes. It proves to be his Fatal Flaw, when Assane weaponizes it for his final Batman Gambit. Hubert completely ignores his Boring, but Practical agent's advice in favor of a shady, unsubstantiated stockbroker... who Assane planted to sabotage him.
- Disproportionate Retribution: His response when someone crosses him is typically to have the offender murdered.
- Even Evil Has Standards: When held at knifepoint by Assane in the last episode, Hubert swears that he didn't intend for anything bad to happen to Raoul, because children's lives are sacred to himnote . For once it's actually believable, as Hubert specifically ordered Léonard not to harm the kid.
- Evil Plan: He's pretty much made of this trope, from framing Babakar to stealing from his own daughter's foundation.
- Evil Sounds Deep: He speaks with a very low, gravelly voice.
- French Jerk: It's a French show, and Hubert is the main villain...
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Hubert can often be seen indulging in expensive cigars whilst smiling wickedly and corresponding with Dumont on their villainous dealings.
- Insurance Fraud: His company was bleeding money so he arranged for the fake theft of the necklace to collect the insurance money and framed Babakar for the crime.
- Hate Sink: Hubert is a Jerkass of the highest order: a racist, cruel, abusive man with a string of dead bodies he created to cover up his own misdeeds. In the show's critique of the French upper class, he works as an amalgamation for a group with no interest in anyone outside of their social circle and as a result has learned to despise anyone not of his own race, culture or standing, using all of these to justify any crime he commits. In addition, while he seems nice to his daughter Juliette, he is shown to be manipulative and controlling of her, as well as being willing to embezzle money from her charities.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: He evokes Vincent Bolloré, a French billionaire who owns a business empire in the former French colonies of Africa, as well as a media conglomerate in France controversial for pushing far-right views.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Hubert may be villainous, but he's also a short, squat, nonathletic man who never engages in acts of violence himself. Most of his ability to get his way stems the fact that he can call upon favors from friends in high places (this is how he brings Dumont onside), or by using his henchmen to terrorize—and, if that doesn't work, murder—his enemies.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Hubert is a viciously racist man. Even aside from his awful treatment of Babakar, he also demands Juliette avoid interacting with Assane because he isn't white.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: As well as Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! and Screw the Rules, I Make Them!. Hubert regularly uses his wealth and associations to get his way. This is most clearly seen during his first arrest, when he's let go at the instructions of the Minister of the Interior.Hubert: All of this is a game, Inspector. A game with rules. And I'm the one who makes them.
- Smug Snake: He's incredibly confident in his own abilities, which eventually leads to his downfall.
- Straw Hypocrite: Hubert talks a big game about the importance of equality and sharing culture while privately being racist as hell and possessing no interest in diversity beyond what touting it does for his image. He also plays up his Patriotic Fervor during his press conferences and interviews, but in reality he doesn't care about the welfare of France at all.
- The Unfettered: Sees absolutely no problems in committing illegal or immoral acts for profit. The man ordered a loyal servant to be framed and killed just to claim insurance money, hooked up with armed terrorists to fetch a good price for weapons he owned, and regularly orders the violent men who work under him to be released from prison to keep his organization above the law.
- Villain with Good Publicity: In addition to the police, Hubert has the French media in his pocket. His wife Anne even claims that nothing that is printed about Hubert can be trusted, since he owns half the papers. Via these outlets, he's careful to present himself as a benevolent entrepreneur who has the best interests of France in mind. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
- Workaholic: We pretty much only ever see him on the job in one way or another (unless he's engaging in some villainous plotting).
Anne
Anne Pellegrini
Played by: Nicole Garcia
Hubert's wife. She took a liking to Assane when Babakar was employed as Hubert's chauffeur.
- The Atoner: Anne feels terrible about what happened to Babakar and secretly pays for Assane to be sent to an elite boarding school.
- Awful Wedded Life: Her marriage to Hubert is implied to have been characterized by neglect. In the present day she doesn't possess much lost love for him, and the two have been living apart for some time.
- Bystander Syndrome: She's aware of basically all of Hubert's extremely illegal and immoral activities, but for the most part she chooses to do nothing about it aside from warning Juliette that he has many skeletons in his closet. Eventually averted when, as a result of Assane's machinations, Juliette convinces her to denounce Hubert to the police, with her testimony resulting in his initial arrest.
- Demoted to Extra: She's a major part of the first two episodes, albeit mainly in flashback form, but essentially disappears from the show afterwards except for a couple of scenes in Chapter 8. And unlike Hubert and Juliette, she doesn't make any cameo appearances in Part 3.
- Extreme Doormat: Anne is shown to have a lot of trouble standing up to Hubert (or, well, anyone). Most of her decisions over the course of the series are seemingly based on her desire not to upset the apple cart. Eventually, though, she manages to separate herself from Hubert's toxic influence.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: A non-romantic example. Anne didn't report Hubert to the police in the 1990s because she was concerned that Juliette would be scarred by her father being sent to prison.
- Mellow Fellow: In contrast to her husband and daughter, Anne is depicted as being an extremely phlegmatic and unambitious person who lacks strong opinions on anything in particular and seems largely content to spend her twilight years chilling out in a suite at a posh hotel.
- Proper Lady: She's polite and poised, befitting her social status.
- Super Gullible: It's not too hard for people to trick Anne into doing their bidding.
Juliette
Juliette Pellegrini
Click here to see her as a teenager
Played by: Clotilde Hesme (adult), Léa Bonneau (teenager)
The daughter of Hubert and Anne, Juliette has known Assane since they were both young, and maintains latent romantic feelings for him.
- The Beautiful Elite: She's a tall, raven-haired, fashionably slender heiress who is seen dressed in an array of expensive but tasteful outfits.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Although her affections for Assane are undoubtedly genuine, Juliette's overall attitude towards him does not seem to have matured significantly beyond the level of a teenage crush. This is most obvious in her resentful jealousy towards Claire, about whom she makes catty comments at every opportunity, and whom she even admits to having stalked on social media.
- Conflicting Loyalty: She struggles to decide whether to believe Assane or her father regarding Babakar's imprisonment. She eventually goes with her father, but is later convinced otherwise by Assane and her mother.
- Daddy's Girl: Juliette is shown to be quite close to Hubert, and has collaborated with him on several business ventures. This is also invoked by Anne when she explains why she didn't want to report Hubert to the police in the 1990s.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: When Juliette was a teenager, Hubert explicitly forbade her from seeing Assane due to his skin color. However, she continued to maintain an on-again, off-again relationship with him for around a decade.
- Face–Heel Turn: The ending to Part 3 suggests that she might have gone back over to her father's side, but it's very ambiguous.
- Femme Fatale: Comes across as a teenaged version of this during her 1995 flashback introduction, in which she's depicted lounging by her family's swimming pool, smoking a cigarette and listening to "Sensualité" by the Belgian pop singer Axelle Red. Ultimately averted as Juliette is depicted as being good-natured and fun-loving, if a little spoiled and vain.
- Good Is Boring: Juliette seems to believe this.Juliette: (to Assane) You're not a good guy at all. That's what I like.
- Hairstyle Inertia: In the present day she has her hair cut in essentially the same messy bob style that she wore as a teenager.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Downplayed. She seems to have been bit of a party animal in her youth, if not necessarily a hard-drinking one, but she's straightened out by the series present day.
- I Am Not My Father: Says this to Assane when attempting to get him to trust her.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite some moments of questionable behavior, particularly in her younger days—e.g. being Assane's willing mistress and joining him in stealing from restaurants despite being sole heiress to one of the largest fortunes in France—Juliette's heart is in the right place. She helps fund a charity for disadvantaged children with visible joy and pride, completely unaware that her dad is planning on using the donations to embezzle money into a personal account in the Caymans.
- Rich Bitch: While she isn't remotely as bad as her father, she's not really adverse to using her family's money and connections to throw her weight around.
- The Rival: Views herself as this to Claire for Assane's affections. Since Claire either doesn't know or doesn't care about Assane's history with Juliette, the rivalry is very one-sided.
- Socialite: Juliette is the outgoing public face of her father's company, and mixes frequently with the upper echelons of French society.
- Thrill Seeker: She seems to like nothing better than an adrenaline rush; Assane gets into her good graces by taking her on a nighttime motorcycle ride through Paris.
- Unwitting Pawn: Juliette takes after her mother in the Super Gullible department, and over the course of the series her trusting nature is cynically abused by her father as well as Assane, who actively seduces her in one of his myriad of schemes to weaken Hubert.
