Aahana Swrup
‘Killer Soup,’ a Hindi-language Black comedy show rich in crime, drama, and bleak humor, charts the story of an audacious con enacted by an ambitious wife and her secret lover. Swathi, married to Prabhakar “Prabhu” Shetty and in an extramarital affair with his masseur Umesh, dreams of opening a restaurant. Nevertheless, her nonexistent cooking skills and lack of husband’s support remain a boulder in her path. As such, the woman grasps the opportunity when her affair’s reveal leads to Prabhu’s untimely murder at her and Umesh’s hands.
With the ruse of an acid attack and Umesh and Prabhu’s inherent similar features, Swathi plans to cover up the latter’s death by replacing her lover with her husband. However, as things get complicated due to Prabhu’s powerful brother, Arvind, and insistent local cop, Hasan, the pair face numerous challenges in getting away with the murder and achieving their dreams. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Killer Soup Recap
In Mainjur City, Swathi leads a happy married life with Prabhu—that is— until one takes too close of a look inside their marriage. Prabhu wants his brother, Arvind, to invest in his upcoming resort business. Yet, he’s hiding a massive embezzlement fraud he committed against the other man. Furthermore, while he promises to open a restaurant for his wife, he hates her cooking and has no plans to fulfill his promise.
Inversely, Swathi sneaks around to be with her lover, Umesh, a poor masseur who resembles Prabhu. However, unbeknownst to Swathi, a private investigator, Kiran Nadar, has been tracking her every move for a few days. Therefore, once Prabhu travels for a night out with Arvind to pitch him his project, Nadar manages to get photographic proof of Swathi and Umesh’s affair.
Nevertheless, Swathi ends up catching Nadar, barely managing to snatch his camera away before the man’s unlucky driving skills result in a truck running his car over. Fleeing from the scene, Swathi meets her secret lover in her house, regretting her life decisions. Unfortunately, Prabhu decides to return home early after his pitch with Arvind ends horribly.
Although Swathi attempts to distract the man until Umesh can escape, Prabhu catches the two. Worse yet, he discovers Nadar’s camera with photographic evidence of his wife’s disloyalty, leading to a violent altercation wherein he tries to choke Swathi. As the woman and Umesh fight back, a heart attack kills Prabhu. Minutes later, someone calls Prabhu’s number, and Swathi realizes that one overeager police officer, Thupali, is investigating Nadar’s case and wishes to speak to Prabhu.
As a result, Umesh tries to convince her to skip town and run away with him. However, Swathi comes up with a different plan. The couple drive out to the woods in the dead of the night and bury Prabhu’s body. On the drive back, Swathi purchases some strong sulfuric acid. Umesh and Prabhu looked almost identical, save for the former’s skewed eye. Therefore, Swathi plans to burn half of Umesh’s face with acid, allowing him to pose as Prabhu.
Umesh, though reluctant, agrees to carry out the plan and ends up in the hospital the following night, requiring facial reconstruction surgery. In turn, Swathi makes up the story of an acid attack to explain the incident to the police and Arvind. Meanwhile, Thupali continues to look into Nadar’s death and comes closer to unraveling Swathi and Umesh’s janky crime.
However, upon arriving at Umesh’s home address for investigation, Thupali spots a woman wearing a burka fleeing from the scene. After following her, the cop witnesses Swathi digging up Prabhu’s grave and dumping in bags of evidence. One thing leads to another, and Thupali falls to his death after eagerly attempting to find a signal to share his findings with his boss, Hassan. By the time the police learn about his death, Swathi collects new trouble after someone anonymously contacts Prabhu’s mail, using details of his embezzlement as blackmail.
On the other hand, Umesh manages to fool Prabhu’s family, including Arvind and his son, Sandy. Moreover, the couple manages to trick Hassan, who suspects Umesh of attacking Prabhu, through more lies. However, things get complicated when Swathi realizes that her niece, Appu, is the blackmailer. Appu wants to run away from Arvind’s home to a French art school. For the same reason, she has been trying to extort money out of Prabhu.
Nevertheless, Appu’s plans are ruined once Swathi reveals that her husband is bankrupt. Still, Appu’s anger toward her controlling father increases after a big fight, and she tries to convince Swathi to concoct a scheme for them to extort Arvind together. The plan relies on Umesh’s acting/manipulation skills, Arvind’s illegal mushroom business dealings, and sheer luck. Yet, they somehow pull it off and come in possession of 50 billion rupees.
Still, Swathi’s ploy ends in a confrontation between them and Arvind. During the same, Appu accidentally shoots her father as a result of intense family drama. While the man is hospitalized, Hassan gets closer in his investigation, driven by the grief of losing Thupali. However, his boss’ beckoning to the hospital ends up helping Hassan, who discovers that Swathi and Umesh used to be co-workers at the hospital, which conflicts with the former’s initial story about not knowing the man.
Yet, just as Hassan is close to solving the mystery, Arvind meets his end, shifting the course of power within the Shetty family. The death arrives at a great time for Swathi, who gets a step closer to achieving her dream of opening a restaurant now that Appu has all of Arvind’s wealth and power.
Killer Soup Ending: Does Swathi Get Her Restaurant?
Since her initial accidental homicide of her husband and every other crime that followed, Swathi has really only had one motive. Before marrying Prabhu, Swati dreamt of having a loving marriage and a big family. However, the couple only ever had one son, Sandy, who was sent away to boarding school at a young age. Therefore, Swathi abandoned her past dream and adopted a new one: opening a restaurant.
Even though Swathi is a bad cook, she tries to learn tricks from the skilled, if greedy, cooking teacher, Mehrunisa. For the same reason, the woman remains reluctant to run away with Umesh when the couple first realizes they have been caught in their affair. If Swathi leaves Prabhu and his wealth, she won’t have anything to her name. Furthermore, Umesh, the masseur, can hardly give her the life of success or luxury she wants.
As such, Swathi comes up with the plan to replace Umesh in Prabhu’s stead so that she can still cash in on her late husband’s promised business deals. Nonetheless, her plans get ruined once she learns that Prabhu lied about the deal. Moreover, with Hassan on her tail for the elusive Umesh, whom he believes to be behind the acid attack and blackmailing, Swathi finds herself in a tight spot.
Thus, in for a penny, Swathi decides to go in for a pound as well. Consequently, she carries about a plan to extort Arvind with the help of Appu and Umesh/Prabhu. Although the same backfires with Arvind’s death, things play out in her favor once Appu inherits the man’s wealth. By then, Appu has let go of some of her resentment toward her father as well and realizes she wants to take control of his business instead of running away to France.
Furthermore, Appu wants to gift her beloved Aunt, who has often helped her in her adventures, by gifting Swathi her dream restaurant. Yet, new trouble lingers on the horizon for the woman: Kirtima, Prabhu’s previous mistress. Like everyone else, Kirtima believes Umesh is Prabhu. Nevertheless, she can tell something is off about the man.
Therefore, Kirtima, who covertly filmed the real altercation between Arvind and his family, wherein he spoke about Swathi and others’ blackmail, attempts to use the same to strike a deal with Swathi. The woman wants Swathi to divorce Prabhu so that she can have the man for herself.
However, divorcing Prabhu isn’t an option for Swathi since it would lead to the revelation of her and Umesh’s crime. As a result, Swathi decides to deal with the problem in a more homicidal way. Although Kirtima dies by slipping off a building by her own fault, Swathi ensures that her death comes across as a suicide in her house.
By doing so, Swathi also manages to pin the secretive Manisha Koirala identity on Kirtima. Hassan suspects Manisha Koirala, Swathi’s alias, to be behind the recently discovered crimes. Worse yet, he was getting closer to connecting the name and her connection to Umesh, to Swathi. Thus, by framing Kirtima for the same, Swathi effectively kills two birds with one stone.
In the end, with nothing else in her way. Swathi clears her pathway to accepting Appu’s gift and begins working on her restaurant, Diament de Mainjur. Appointing Mehrunisa as her head chef since the woman helped her frame Kirtima, Swathi achieves her life’s dream.
Does Hassan Uncover Swathi’s Master Plan?
Despite the numerous blunders in her way, Swathi’s plan manages to succeed. Yet, Hassan and his dogged attempts to catch the woman remain the one persistent stone in her shoe. Ever since Thupali’s death, Hassan has been obsessed with catching the elusive Manisha Koirala, who seems to be at the center of the crimes. The cop found Prabhu’s dead body in the forest. However, since the man was alive for all intents and purposes, he assumed the body to be Umesh’s.
Thus, once he makes the connection between Swathi and Umesh, Hassan realizes the woman must be working against her husband. Yet, he can’t understand why Prabhu would insist on protecting his wife even after he learns about her connection to Umesh. Moreover, after realizing that the dead body in the forest, misidentified to be Umesh, died before Prabhu’s acid attack, Hassan realizes the man must have carried out the attack himself.
Therefore, Prabhu’s confession becomes the last piece of the puzzle that Hassan needs to put Swathi away for good. Nevertheless, Umesh, posing as Prabhu, never had any intention to confess. Even though the man is troubled by Kirtima’s recent death and his partner’s nonchalance toward these rising crimes, Umesh has no intentions of jumping ship.
That is until Umesh inadvertently learns that Swathi framed Kirtima to be Monisha Koirala. In their affair’s early days, Umesh wrote several love letters to the woman, addressed as Monisha. As such, the realization that Swathi threw them away without a second care to save her own skin makes him realize that the woman’s affection towards him had always been conditional.
Nonetheless, Umesh decides not to confront Swathi about it. Instead, he continues to play the part of a compliant partner until Swathi realizes he knows about her involvement in Kirtima’s murder. As a result, on the night of her restaurant’s opening night, Swathi finds herself confronting her partner to test if his loyalty is dwindling. Swathi uses Mehrunisa’s special magic mushrooms to flavor her soup as a safety precaution and subdue Umesh’s inhabitants.
However, the plan backfires on Swathi, as Umesh, in his high state, takes the restaurant’s center stage and reveals the truth about his identity to everyone. Worse yet, Hassan, though now retired, and other police officers are also present at the event. The cop has also gathered more evidence in the past weeks that led him to the same realization.
Therefore, backed into a corner, Swathi has no way out. Yet, as she manages to get her hands on a gun, Swathi attempts to make everyone understand that she never meant for any of this to happen. Despite being at the center of every death so far, Swathi had well and truly not committed a single murder. Instead, misfortune seems to follow her around every corner.
Ultimately, Hassan and the others are prepared to arrest Swathi. However, Umesh, who has consumed an excessive amount of mushroom powder, unintentionally shifts the focus from Swathi by projectile vomiting blood in his dire state. In the following chaos, Swathi manages to slip away from the crowd.
What Happens To Swathi and Umesh? Do They Die?
By the show’s end, Umesh’s predicament seems final. The mushrooms, Mehrunisa’s secret ingredient to fixing Swathi’s dreadful Paya Soup, can be immensely poisonous to humans. Therefore, she recommends only using a sprinkle for taste and advises Swathi to refrain from adding a large amount.
However, Umesh consumes an entire container of the seasoning after the initial hit of the first overdosed bite. Therefore, the man confesses to the entire truth behind his and Swathi’s schemes, including his real identity. Yet, honesty remains the least concerning of the mushrooms’ side effects.
Eventually, once Umesh’s condition worsens enough, he violently throws up his bloodied insides. Even though Hassan and the others rush him to a car to drive him to a hospital, the man would likely never survive the ride.
Likewise, while Umesh travels to the hospital, Hassan goes after Swathi, who has sneaked out to a cliff’s edge. With the truth out in the open, Swathi knows there’s no way she can escape from her demise. For the same reason, she decides to embrace her death over living a life paying for her attempted murder charges. Despite Hassan’s attempts to talk her out of her decision, Swathi jumps down the cliff and submerges into the deep waters.
Yet, before the show ends, the audience watches a peculiar series of events unfold. After drowning in the running river, Swathi wakes back to consciousness and swims back to the surface. Similarly, Umesh, who was bleeding out in the back of the cops’ car, has mysteriously vanished from the vehicle.
In the end, the couple meet up in a bus, where the two are the only passengers. The bus drives down an empty patch of road, with Thupali sat atop the roof. Although the scene may lead some viewers to believe Swathi and Umesh have escaped their demises and run away together, it is actually a confirmation of the exact opposite. Throughout the show, Umesh often tries to convince Swathi to run away with him via a bus ride out of town.
Nevertheless, Swathi never agrees with Umesh’s idea and continues dragging him and herself further into trouble. Therefore, now that the couple has met their respective grueling ends, they meet each other on the bus out of town for their deaths. Consequently, the bus doesn’t have any other passengers, and Thupali, an established dead man, is the only person sharing the screen with them. Ultimately, Swathi and Umesh die at the show’s end.
Read More: Killer Soup: Is the Netflix Show Based on Reality?
