For Faudafans from around the world, the suspense is over, or rather, it’s about to begin: Netflix announced Monday it will show the fifth season of the acclaimed Israeli series around the world beginning on September 8.
The fifth season of this series about an Israeli counterterrorism unit aired in Israel on Yes starting in May. But with the September 8 Netflix release, viewers in 190 countries will be able to see the new episodes, which are in Arabic, Hebrew, French, and English, with subtitles in their native languages.
The series, co-created by Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz and starring Raz, debuted in 2015 in Israel. It was picked up by Netflix and became a worldwide sensation, hitting the coveted Netflix top 10 charts all over, including in Arab countries. In Lebanon, the fourth season hit the number one spot in January 2023.
It also reached the Netflix top 10 in Jordan, Qatar, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in early 2023. Reportedly, Fauda is something of a guilty pleasure for Palestinian audiences in the West Bank and even in Gaza, who enjoy seeing the many Palestinian characters.
Fauda’s creators had much of the fifth season written by the fall of 2023, but scrapped these scripts following the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, which led to the outbreak of war. Raz and Issacharof have said in interviews that they needed to incorporate the new reality into the series.
In the fifth season, two episodes are devoted to the massacre, and feature violence so graphic that they were shown with warnings in Israel that advised audiences that they could skip the episodes, which came in the middle of the season, if they were afraid that they might be too upsetting.
Yes also took the unusual step of making the episodes available for free online, for those who felt they needed to see them.
Speaking to Deadline, Issacharoff said, “This is a TV show, not reality. But we thought that there is still a story here to be told. We wanted to ask very tough questions to people all over the world, not only in Israel. Is the revenge worth it? Is continuing this very endless cycle of bloodshed worth it? Where is it taking you? I think these are the questions that are at the heart of this season.”
In addition to Raz, the fifth season stars the original cast members, Doron Ben-David and Yaakov Zada-Daniel, who are joined by French star Melanie Laurent, who played the heroine of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Much of the early season five episodes are set in Marseille.
Fauda is still available on Yes VOD in Israel.
