Top Boy season 5: Release date, cast, trailer and latest news

What fans may be upset to learn, however, is that this season of Top Boy will be the last, with star Ashley Walters recently saying that he wasn’t interested in Top Boy going on forever, adding that he wanted it to “end on a high”.

In the season’s first official trailer, we got a glimpse of all the impending doom and drama set to come, with Jamie's younger brother Stef (Araloyin Oshunremi) promising vengeance after the murder of his older brother.

The trailer also gave fans their first glimpse of Barry Keoghan (The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Banshees of Inisherin) and Brian Gleeson's (Bad Sisters, Peaky Blinders) new supposed antagonist characters, Jonny and Tadgh respectively.

For those of us who not only love Top Boy’s story but also its score, Netflix have released Brian Eno’s recordings from the soundtrack to the show. This will be the first time any of this material from the entire five seasons has been made available publicly, and it has been released digitally for any Top Boy soundtrack lovers to listen to now.

So read on for everything you need to know about Top Boy season 5, its release date, who’s in the cast and what events could unfold between Sully, Dushane, Stef and Jaq (Jasmine Jobson).

Will there be a Top Boy season 5?

Yes. Netflix confirmed that Top Boy will receive a fifth season shortly after the fourth run debuted.

The streaming giant announced on Thursday 31st March 2022 that the series will return for its fifth and final season.

The season will be the third produced by Netflix and is branded as 'season 3' on the streaming service.

Speaking previously about the fifth season, lead actors Walters and Robinson – who also serve as executive producers – said in a joint statement that they were "very excited about what’s next" for this new series.

"For those that have followed the journey from the start, you will know how much this show means to everyone on our team and we wholeheartedly know how much it means to you," the statement read. "These characters have been a part of our lives for over a decade now and without everyone’s support we couldn’t have come this far."

They continued: "Whilst the journeys of Dushane and Sully have remained at the core of the show, the new characters that have entered the world of Top Boy have become a key part of the show’s legacy, representing each new storyline in a raw, authentic way.

"With all this being said, and staying true to our original goal, every story must have an ending - and so season three will be our finale. A chance to come full circle and end the journey in the right way."

When is the Top Boy season 5 release date?

Top Boy season 5 (labelled as season 3 on Netflix) returned on Thursday 7th September 2023.

The new season will comprise of six episodes in total, with Myriam Raja and William Stefan Smith returning to direct. BAFTA-nominated Raja has directed episodes one through four, while BAFTA-winning Stefan Smith has directed the final two episodes.

Filming began last summer and was thankfully not hit by the COVID restrictions that had affected the previous run.

Who will appear in the cast of Top Boy season 5?

The cast of Top Boy season 5 is as follows.

• Ashley Walters as Dushane
• Kane Robinson as Sully
• Jasmine Jobson as Jaq
• Simbiatu Ajikawo ('Little Simz') as Shelley
• Saffron Hocking as Lauryn
• Araloyin Oshunremi as Stefan
• Joshua Blissett as Kieron
• Adwoa Aboah as Becks
• Dudley O'Shaughnessy as Si
• Natalie Athanasiou 'NoLay' as Mandy
• Brian Gleeson as Tadgh
• Barry Keoghan as Jonny
• Savanah Graham as Erin
• Shaun Dingwall as Jeffrey
• Felicia Mukasa as Tash

Following the shocking season 4 cliffhanger, it seems we've seen the last of Micheal Ward as Jamie – a major player across the previous two seasons – and it remains to be seen how Jamie's brothers Aaron and Stefan – played by Hope Ikpoku Jnr and Araloyin Oshunremi – will factor into season 5.

While it doesn't appear as though Aaron will be making an appearance in the fifth and final season of the show, from the looks of the trailer, it does seem as though young Stef may try and track down Sully himself – or step into his brother's shoes.

Kadeem Ramsay won't be returning as Kit, either, with Jamie having executed his treacherous No.2 just prior to his own demise, while Ats's mother Amma (Jolade Obasola) was apparently deported from the UK early in the fourth season, so again seems unlikely to resurface.

As for other characters in the series, it's probable we could see Lisa Dwan return as Lizzie – though now she's in Dushane's crosshairs, she might not be sticking around for long – especially as we know her husband Jeffrey will be present in season 5.

Since the Channel 4 days, Top Boy fans have remained eager to find out what happened to Ra'Nell (Malcolm Kamulete), who featured heavily in the show's first two seasons but didn't return for the Netflix relaunch.

While he's most recently led the cast of BBC's Champion, it doesn't sound as though he'll be making a comeback to Top Boy any time soon, with Ashley Walters telling RadioTimes.com that there are no plans for Ra'Nell to factor back into the story.

As for new characters this season, Keoghan and Gleeson have joined the season 5 cast and are set to shake things up as their Irish gang crosses paths with Sully.

Although not a new character, a returning familiar face is Erin, Dris and Mandy's daughter, who has taken a liking to Stef and gets increasingly close to him as his life changes course.

Is Top Boy season 5 the final season?

Yes. As previously stated, Top Boy season 5 will be the final season of the series.

There have been no comments on sequels, spin-offs or continuations, so at the moment it appears that this will well and truly be the end of the line.

The main tagline for the season promises that there will be "no loose ends" which is a meaty statement to make for any drama, but especially Top Boy. So the real question is, who will survive?

Is there a trailer for Top Boy season 5?

Yes – the official trailer landed on Monday 14th August 2023, sharing a proper first look at the action to come and the loyalties that will be tested along the way.

As well as Stef poignantly putting his brother Jamie's chain on, there's no shortage of drama elsewhere - with Sully proclaiming that he and Dushane are "linked".

Check it out below.

The first teaser trailer was released in April 2023, showing a tearful Sully explaining: "If we are not monsters, we're food... and I can never be food."

You can watch it below:

What could happen in Top Boy season 5?

The fourth season of Top Boy left a number of story threads dangling which could be followed up in this fifth and final outing.

The official synopsis for season 5 reads: "Sully’s actions at the end of the last series have rewritten his business rules with Dushane. As new shared problems arise, everything they've built comes under threat from forces outside and within their empire.

"Can they coexist by the rules of the road they’ve lived by their whole lives in a world that is changing before them? Or can there only be one Top Boy?"

Most obviously, any new season would have to explore the aftermath of Sully's murder of Jamie. With Dushane having told Sully that he was grooming Jamie to be his successor, will Sully's actions reignite aggressions between the two old friends?

And how will Jamie's brothers react to the brutal slaying? If the trailer's are anything to go by, it certainly seems as though Stef wants revenge and studious Aaron may not be as present as he once was.

Though the show's latest antagonist, Liverpool gangster Curtis (Howard Charles), didn't make it out of the fourth season alive, the rest of his gang – including Curtis's vicious sister – escaped, with Sully warning them never to return to London.

Will they heed this advice, or will they be back to seek retribution on Lauryn (Saffron Hocking), who seems to have had her child, and her sister Jaq (Jasmine Jobson)?

Finally, a running thread throughout the latest season that never quite paid off involved Dushane's health, with the drug kingpin suffering what appeared to be panic attacks. This seems certain to be explored more if Top Boy returns – and we can't imagine Sully's actions will have done wonders for Dushane's stress levels...

Read our full explainer on the Top Boy season 4 ending and how it sets up an explosive fifth season.

Read more about Top Boy:

• Where is Top Boy filmed? Location guide for Netflix’s season 4
• Top Boy recap: What happened in Summerhouse and the Netflix revival
• Top Boy's Ashley Walters reveals if Ra'Nell will ever return to the series

Top Boy season 5 will be released on Netflix on 7th September 2023, with previous seasons available to stream now on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight.

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