The Seven Deadly Sins Season 5 - What We Know So Far

Following its acquisition of Knights of Sidonia, Netflix leapt head first into the exclusive anime game, purchasing the English streaming rights to one of the most popular series in Japan: The Seven Deadly Sins. The show is adapted from the popular manga of the same name, which runs in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine. It follows a band of disgraced knights known as the Seven Deadly Sins on an action-packed fantasy adventure through the World of Britannia, a familiar faux-medieval European setting.

Netflix released the anime's entire 24-episode first season on November 1, 2015 with subtitles as well as an English dub track. Three additional seasons followed hot on the heels of their Japanese release, and subscribers are now on the edges of their seats waiting for the next chapter of the story.

Ever since its initial run, The Seven Deadly Sins has been a consistent performer for Netflix. The first four seasons of the anime all drew major eyeballs, and the most recent season dipped in and out of the streamer's various daily top ten rankings after its release. Since the Japanese production companies responsible for the series have already confirmed that season 5 is in the works, U.S. fans are wondering when a new set of episodes is going to make it over to this side of the Pacific. Here's everything we know so far.

TV Tokyo, which airs the series in Japan, announced that Studio DEEN (a new production shop this season) was hard at work on a fourth story arc earlier this year. This "fourth arc" corresponds to a fifth season on Netflix due to differences in the way the streamer carves up the tranches of episodes they receive from Japan. Initially, TV Tokyo announced that new episodes would begin airing in October 2020, but those plans were disrupted by the pandemic (via Newsweek). The October release date would have meant that English-speaking fans could expect the new material to hit Netflix as early as July 2021 — an unlikely scenario now.

TV Tokyo is now trumpeting a Japanese release date of January 2021. Historically speaking, Netflix starts streaming the English episodes about five months after their initial run in Japan. Assuming the latest arc contains the series-standard 24 episodes — and assuming they air weekly beginning the first week of January 2021 — Netflix subscribers will likely get their first look some time in the fall of 2021.

It's unclear whether Netflix will break up the new arc into separate seasons as they have done in the past, though it seems pretty likely. 24 episodes may once have been a standard season-size on American TV, but no longer.

Since the Japanese distributor breaks the episodes of The Seven Deadly Sins into arcs instead of seasons (really, a more sensible way to go about things), each set of episodes comes with a subtitle. Season 5 — or arc 4, depending how you're counting — will be subtitled "Dragon's Judgement" in Japan (via Monsters and Critics). Early on, this subtitle was erroneously translated by some outlets as "Anger's Judgement," though the former has since been confirmed as the correct translation.

Since the episodes are still several months away from their Japanese release, we can only guess at the new story's plot. At the end of season 4, Meliodas revealed his demonic true form as the "leader of the Ten Commandments," a twist that seems likely to have major repercussions for the next arc. At least we can look forward to higher quality animation from Studio DEEN after several critics complained that A-1's shoddy work on the last arc interfered with their ability to enjoy the show.

Per reporting from Anime News Network, the new arc of The Seven Deadly Sins will see the return of all the main Japanese voice actors from the previous season. If Netflix follows suit and brings back the whole gang of English voice actors, we should get to hear the return of Yûki Kaji and Bryce Papenbrook as Meliodas, Misaki Kuno and Cristina Valenzuela as fan favorite Hawk, Sora Amamiya and Erika Harlacher as Elizabeth, Aoi Yûki and Erica Mendez as Diane, Jun Fukuyama and Max Mittelman as King, Mamoru Miyano and Robbie Daymond as Glithunder, and many more.

And what would a new season of The Seven Deadly Sins be without the Sins themselves. Meliodas' whole squad is likely to feature heavily in the new story, as is the youngest princess of Liones, Elizabeth. While it wouldn't be unheard of for an anime to switch gears between arcs and focus on a new cast of characters, that kind of major overhaul isn't part of The Seven Deadly Sins' creative DNA. The manga keeps the focus on Meliodas and Elizabeth, and the anime is likely to, as well.

We'll just have to wait until January to find out more!