Disney+Hotstar’s Aarya S3 Part 2 review: Sushmita Sen’s ferocious matriarch bows out on a high in Antim Vaar

In possibly the most intense sequence from the third and final season of Disney+Hotstar’s Aarya, the matriarch finally makes it to a meeting with a representative of the children’s welfare department. Her youngest son, much like her older one, has acted out as a reaction to all the trauma and unprocessed grief the family has been put through. She has proven herself as a mafia wizard, but what about the mother in her? Aarya has kept her children safe, but it’s at this trial of her motherhood that she finally looks lost and defeated. Across its three seasons, she has dodged bullets, switched murderous sides and practically eluded the grasp of certain extinction. Her methods, though, have increasingly become questionable. Aarya, as one character in the show claims, has successfully become the ‘don’ she pretended she wasn’t. Life and deeds come full circle. After an underwhelming first half of the season, the show finds its groove and bows out as one of streaming’s most stylish brews of deftness and drama.

In Antim Vaar, Sen’s Aarya Sareen, a seductive mix of grit and compassion, continues to navigate the threat of Russian druglords, competitive peers (played deliciously by Ila Arun) and the watchful eye of Khan (the excellent Vikas Kumar). The return of a popular character in the second half of the season, tips the jar with revelations and confrontations. The chickens, so to speak, come home to roost as the strongwoman’s Machiavellian abilities to wriggle out of tight situations ultimately get the better of her. Though the show, so brilliantly designed and paced by Ram Madhvani, has dealt with cartels, mafias and cross-border businesses, Aarya has always harked back to the intimate huddle within the Sareen household. For everything the matriarch has held up as a matter of profession, relationships, trust and expectations have crumbled under her roof. It is at once the story of a victory, written with the lacerating fingers of tragedy.

In its third and last season, the show has tried rather wastefully to invent new enemies. In Antim Vaar, even an African cartel joins the whirlwind. It kind of echoes the conviction Madhvani has married to a style that rarely needs to showcase scale in order to achieve authenticity. Aarya continues to operate like a chatty, hyper-stylised story that takes place across rooms, palaces and cramped spaces that actually help accentuate the intensity of its performances, of its gossip or even its threats of violence. It’s just the right mix of desi ingenuity and western mannerisms. In fact, the series sort of fumbles when it tries to leap into wishfully choreographed scenes of anger, outbursts or even action. It’s at its devastating best when it hangs over the shoulders of its characters, intimately observing how they rise and fall. To which effect, the show’s young actors - particularly Viren Vazirani - more than pull their weight. In this last season, they become the fulcrum of a show that can at times get lost in the banter between warring factions of the underworld.