Created and directed by Raj and DK, “Farzi” follows Sunny (Shahid Kapoor), an artist who can create the best copies of well-known paintings. He is the grandson of the editor of “Kranti Magazine,” referred to as Nanu or Nanaji (Amol Palekar). His brief meetings with his girlfriend Ananya (Kavya Thapar) and the declining state of “Kranti” constantly remind him of the class inequality in India. But when “Kranti” reaches the brink of shutdown, Sunny, along with his friend Firoz (Bhuvan Arora), decides to use his art skills to print fake notes for criminals to get rich and eventually rise up the proverbial ladder and save his Nanu’s newspaper from extinction. Mansoor Dalal (Kay Kay Menon), an international counterfeiter, sees Sunny as his competition and hence brings him into the fold to print fake notes for him. On the other end of the legal spectrum, we follow Michael Vedanayagam (Vijay Sethupathi) and Megha Vyas (Raashii Khanna), who are aiming to put an end to the financial terrorism caused by fake notes. And while they are aware of Mansoor’s involvement in the whole racket, Sunny’s anonymity allows him to go undetected for a long time.
Major Spoilers Ahead
What Caused Sunny and Mansoor’s Downfall?
Sunny, Firoz, and Yasir Chacha’s counterfeit money printing business for criminals in Mumbai, runs into a problem when Megha and then Nanu learn about it. Mansoor’s violent intervention obviously comes as a blessing in disguise because he helps Sunny and Firoz scale up the business. Yasir bows out as soon as he learns that an international criminal like Mansoor is involved, but Sunny and Firoz continue to do their business. Now, there’s a shift in Sunny where he goes from being this ordinary criminal to someone who gets into a relationship with Megha so that he can plant a tracking device in her phone so as to know about the RBI and Michael’s Special Task Force’s movements. It’s a massive leap, and it seems comical at best and idiotic at worst. Anyway, as expected, Sunny and Megha fall in love with each other, and hence Sunny decides to drop the tracker in her phone, thereby making him unaware of the CCFART’s (Counterfeit Currency Fraud Analysis and Research Team) movements.
Mansoor’s issue is a little different. On the one hand, he is Michael’s archnemesis, and on the other, his boss isn’t very happy with the way he’s handling things. That’s right, despite Mansoor’s opulence, he isn’t his own boss and is constantly rapped on the knuckles by his actual boss’s representative, Saira (Kubbra Sait). This keeps him on his toes. But the one thing that makes things hell for him is a mole, which is planted when Michael nabs Bilal (Nilesh Divekar), as he constantly keeps telling the CCFART about Mansoor and Sunny’s plans. Instead of taking all this as a sign to not go ahead with the plan of bringing in somewhere around 12,000 crores of counterfeit cash into India, Mansoor doubles down. He forces Sunny and Firoz to transport the money via the oceans, and it works. However, after spending so much time, effort, and money smuggling the fake notes, they are faced with the uphill battle of actually getting them circulated. So, even though Mansoor manages to catch the mole, the pressure from Saira prevents him from seeing Michael’s curveball.
How Do Michael and Megha Plan To Nab “The Artist” and Mansoor?
Megha says that counterfeit artists’ biggest flaw is that they think they are real artists. So, they try to leave their signature on their counterfeit art, and that’s how they usually get caught. With that in mind, Megha notices the “S” left on the notes by Sunny. Of course, she doesn’t know it’s Sunny’s doing, but she manages to track the signature all the way to an MLA in Surat, Kesaribhai Doshi (Govind Pandey), who happens to be one of Sunny’s customers. Michael gets to him and forces him to make a deal with Sunny. Doshi doesn’t budge initially, but after some persuasion from Minister Gahlot (Zakir Hussain), he obliges. Although Sunny feels that there’s something wrong with this whole affair, especially because Doshi insists that Sunny and Firoz be there for the money exchange, Firoz motivates him to go ahead with the plan. Sunny’s intuition turns out to be correct, though, as they find out that the mall where the exchange is supposed to happen is littered with CCFART officers, including Michael and Megha.
While chasing down Firoz and Sunny, Michael manages to see their faces, while Megha doesn’t even get a glimpse. In an attempt to get the police and the CCFART off their tail, Sunny orders Firoz to cause a distraction by blowing the fake money from the rear end of their vehicle. People stop in their tracks to collect it because they think it’s real money. This not only slows down the law enforcement officials but also causes Sunny and Firoz’s vehicles to crash. Here, Raj and DK force us to increase our suspension of disbelief because even though the car crashes horribly, Firoz and Sunny walk out of the traffic collision unscathed—not even a scratch. Anyone else would’ve used that moment to heighten the tension by showing how close Firoz and Sunny were to being found out in a totaled Qualis full of fake money. But Raj and DK are not into tension and thrills. They just want to present things as blandly as possible and walk away because they think that the star value of Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi will obfuscate the abysmal writing and direction of “Farzi.”
‘Farzi’ Ending Explained: What Causes Sunny To Go After Mansoor? Will Michael and Megha Catch Sunny in Season 2?
Michael uses the whole fiasco caused by the chase to reveal Mansoor’s identity to the public. This makes Mansoor a liability to his employers and puts him in Saira’s bad books. That’s a roundabout way of saying that Saira simply tells Mansoor to get the hell out of his lair because she can’t provide any protection to him. At the same time, Mansoor fears that if Sunny and Firoz are nabbed by the police, they are going to blurt out all the information on the counterfeit money-making business. So, Mansoor orders Jamal (Saurav Chakrabarti) to kill Sunny and Firoz. When Jamal tries to execute them, Sunny and Firoz bring in Anees (Saqib Ayub) and his gang to get them out of the pickle and out of Mumbai too. Sadly, that’s when the two friends learn that, in an attempt to ensure that Sunny and Firoz don’t print money again, Mansoor burned down the “Kranti Magazine” printing press. Yasir reveals that Nanu was in there when the building went down, thereby causing Sunny to completely lose his cool.
During the final moments of “Farzi” Season 1, Sunny sends Firoz off to the railway station while he himself goes on a killing spree in Mansoor’s storage space, which ends with him burning down all the fake money there. Firoz boards the train and leaves. Megha awaits the results of the program, which is trying to clear up footage from the CCTV camera. The image is that of Sunny’s, but the series doesn’t reveal if the artificial reconstruction of the assailant actually represents Sunny’s facial features. Michael’s subplot involves his divorce from his wife Rekha (Regina Cassandra) and getting custody of his son Vyom (Divyam Shukla). After disagreeing with Rekha throughout the show’s tedious 8-hour runtime, Michael eventually signs the divorce papers. And we see him all alone in his apartment, smoking, crying, and drinking. Therefore, in case Season 2 of “Farzi” happens, I guess we are going to see Sunny go up against Mansoor. I don’t know how because he has clearly lost everything. Despite Yasir’s philosophical disagreements with Sunny, I think he’ll be yearning for vengeance, and he might join Sunny on his revenge mission.
We do see Firoz boarding the train going out of Mumbai. But I think “Farzi” Season 2 is going to reveal that he got off because he has promised not to leave Sunny under any circumstances. That means he is going to use his connections with Anees to strengthen Sunny’s position. Despite the triumphant music during the facial reconstruction scene, I don’t think Megha is going to learn that Sunny is the artist. I think the showrunners are going to stretch it out a little bit more before letting the ball drop on the happy couple. And I think that Michael’s going to be the one to make that revelation. Since Megha and Sunny’s selfie is out there somewhere, it’s possible that after yet another internal investigation for moles and trackers, Michael is going to find out that Sunny is the “artist.” As for Mansoor, I think he’s going to die unceremoniously. He got all the scenery-chewing moments, and Kay Kay Menon acted the hell out of them. However, he’s probably going to meet his end in “Farzi” Season 2, thereby opening the spot for the villain of the franchise to be Sunny, Saira, or Saira’s anonymous boss.
Then there’s the elephant in the room: the “Family Man” crossover. Yes, we get cameos from Puneet (Aritro Rudraneil Banerjee), Ajit (Vijay Vikram Singh), Chellam Sir (Uday Mahesh), and the voice of Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee). Michael and Srikant are apparently old friends. So, either Season 2 of “Farzi” is going to feature more characters from “The Family Man” or Season 3 of “The Family Man” is going to feature characters from “Farzi,” with all of them going on a joint mission. That might be exciting for a lot of you, but I don’t like Raj and DK’s love for law enforcement agencies. They do try to make them as unrealistic and comical as possible. But at the end of the day, they’re still glorifying the arms of the government which regularly break the rules to frame innocent people. From the trailers, “Farzi” seemed to be a show about questioning the system and the rules that are made to oppress the middle class. However, it ended up making Sunny an irredeemable villain so that we could get behind Michael and every illegal method he was going to implement. If you’re up for that, then this Raj and DK Special Task Force Universe (not the official name) is just the thing for you.
