Aarya Season 3 – Antim Vaar review: Sushmita Sen’s once-formidable show ends with a whimper

Sadly, it’s all downhill from the time it starts. Everything feels loose and contrived, and it looks like the actors can’t wait for it to end, forget about us. The weak spots we had managed to overlook in the pace and slickness of the earlier seasons are now glaringly to the fore: the strands which has Aarya’s children (Bajaj, Vazirani, Panwar) turning against her, each for reasons of their own, are more annoying than anything else. We just want their whininess to stop, a huge slide from the earlier seasons when they seemed like likeable, relatable young people who made us care for them.

Watch Aarya Season 3 – Antim Vaar trailer here:

As Kulkarni’s dodgy policewoman is given short shrift by a plot which feels adrift, the cop (Kumar) who has been dogging Aarya’s footsteps, is left little to work with. The other characters– Arun in her eye-catching ethnic Rajasthani outfits and her manic son (Seth), as well as Pradhan and Kher as Aarya’s conflicted loyalists, are left to flounder. The Russian mobsters are joined by Nigerian ones, all laughably trying for menace.

It is Sen, playing the titular character, who is let down the most. From the Aarya who commands the screen with her composed demeanour and her carefully put-together looks, she is down to a single breakout moment when she makes you really see her. In the rest, she comes off flat, as does this finale.

Aarya: Antim Vaar cast: Sushmita Sen, Ila Arun, Aarushi Bajaj, Viren Vazirani, Pratyaksh Panwar, Vikas Kumar, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Maya Sarao, Vishwajeet Pradhan, Sashwat Seth
Aarya: Antim Vaar director: Ram Madhvani
Aarya: Antim Vaar rating: 1.5 stars