Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix broke into the Indian market with a bang when the first season of ‘Sacred Games’ premiered. With some of the best and biggest names in Bollywood by its side, the streaming service didn’t take much time to expand its reach, and since then, has come up with great content like ‘Ghoul’, ‘Delhi Crime’ and ‘Leila’, to name a few. Another entry in this list is the horror-drama created by Sujoy Ghosh, ‘Typewriter’.
In the picturesque setting of Goa, ‘Typewriter’ follows the story of four kids and a dog, as they try to find the ghost that is rumoured to haunt the Bardez Villa. One of the members of the group lives in that house, which raises the stakes. Meanwhile, people have been dying mysteriously and a woman tries to uncover the memories of her traumatic past. If you haven’t yet seen the series, head over to Netflix. Here we have discussed the show in intense details and we don’t want anything spoiled for you.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Summary of the plot
While the title of the series keeps us focused on the typewriter, there is a deeper mystery that slowly reveals itself to us. The story has moved a good deal forward, all the pieces have been set in their position, the plot has thickened enough to give a slow burn to the viewers, and just when we think that nothing more could be added to this frothing mystery, a single word changes our understanding of the whole story.
Who is Fakeer? And how is he influencing people even after his death? Has he surfaced in the form of Jenny’s doppelganger? Before answering these questions, let’s first look into the story of Fakeer’s life.
Back in 1950, when he was a kid, he lived with his mother. They were poor but content with whatever they had. His mother had the power of killing people by simply willing it. She only needed to look into the eye of the person and life could end for them. Despite her social and financial condition, she never misused it. In fact, the only time she used her powers was to help people pass on peacefully. She would kill you if you requested it. She even took the moral high ground when it came to bestowing the same ability to her son. It would make him strong beyond belief and she needed to be absolutely sure that he was good enough to deserve it.
However, common people of the village fail to understand her, owing to their own selfish reasons, and attack her son. A confrontation ends fatally when she kills a man who, if not stopped, would have killed her. She tries to run away but the villagers catch up to her and set her house on fire. Before being killed by them, she transfers her powers to her son, this time telling him to not be deluded by the idea of being a good person.
The last words of his mother stay with Fakeer, and he spends the rest of his life finding a way to become stronger and ruling the world. In this quest, he leaves a trail of bodies which alerts the cops. Even when they come close enough to catch him, he succeeds in overpowering them due to his powers. In the end, his wife outs his secret (that he needs to make eye contact) and he is caught. They keep him bound and blindfolded in the jail while waiting for the execution day. But, just before that an opportunity arises in the form of Madhav Matthews. The writer wants a story and Fakeer wants a way to escape death.
While Matthews types it out, Fakeer makes a wooden miniature of himself and enchants it to act as a device that would come in handy while performing the ritual of bringing him back to life. Basically, this piece of wood would act as his material body while his soul would be someplace else. And this was just the back-up plan. His main purpose was to not allow his body to be cremated within three days of his death. He intrigued Matthews with his theory of “the soul returning to the body after 3 days” so much that the writer had his corpse brought into his home just so he could see whether it happens or not! The soul does return and he is revived for a handful of seconds. But then, Matthews kills him again using the typewriter. And that’s where Fakeer’s Plan B kicks in. His soul attaches itself to his murder weapon. Now, he just needs someone to shed some blood for him so that he can finally make a return on the Blood Moon Night.
Who was the Ghost?
When it is mentioned that the ghost can take anyone’s form, I became instantly suspicious of each and every character. I even thought that we might have a ‘Sixth Sense’ sort of situation at her hands. But the show’s plot was heading in a different direction, which is actually a welcome thing because, without it, the show would have just become more predictable. What happens here is that we just have one evil entity haunting people and killing everyone. Jenny’s doppelganger. Even when her grandfather had died, the ghost had taken her form to dupe him into believing that he was with his granddaughter. As soon as she returns home, the ghost comes back in her current form. So, if the ghost can take anyone’s shape, why is it only going around town as Jenny? Why has it latched onto only her?
The reason is that the ghost is actually a customised product. When Fakeer’s soul hitched itself to the typewriter, it needed a physical human connection to further its plan. It needed blood to start that process and Jenny became an obvious target. As a little girl, she was in awe of her grandfather and liked fiddling around with the typewriter. Only this time, the device fiddled back and bled her enough to kick-start its plans.
With Jenny’s blood, the ghost gave birth to a new entity, something that would be a physical embodiment of his evil, through which he could collect enough souls (i.e., kill people) to bring himself back in the game. Since Jenny’s blood has been used for it, the entity took her face and evolved as she grew up. She became the connection between Fakeer’s soul and the material world and was the key to keep things going.
This is why, after her grandfather’s death, when she left the house, leaving the typewriter behind, the connection was broken. The device was moved from its place and was abandoned for the next couple of decades. It was stripped of its powers, which is why the ghost couldn’t function either. It lay dormant for all those years and no one in town had to lose their lives. But the moment Jenny steps back into the house, the connection is activated. Moreover, her daughter sets it back at its rightful place. The longer Jenny stays there, the stronger the connection gets and the deadlier the entity becomes. The more it kills, the stronger the soul in the typewriter becomes.
In the end, Jenny realises that the ghost is a copy of herself and that they share strengths and weaknesses. She uses this connection to distract the ghost while the kids try to destroy the typewriter. The ghost is also a means of emotional and mental distress, focused on weakening Jenny’s resolve to live, which would further prompt her to sacrifice herself. According to the ritual, on the night of the Blood Moon, an innocent person needs to sacrifice himself/herself so Fakeer can rise again. Jenny is that innocent person, and the purpose of her own personal ghost is to make her life so miserable that she is ready to kill herself. If not that, then the villains can always hold her children at gunpoint and make her slash her own throat, for that matter!
Who was the Maths Teacher?
One of the key components of bringing about Fakeer’s words to life is a mysterious character that we are introduced to in the pilot episode itself. A Packers’ employee is bribed to get the typewriter out of the house and bring it to him. When the man fails to do so and also demands money in return, the mysterious man kills him so effortlessly that it looks like an accident. He gives serious serial killer vibes and we know that this is someone who we should be wary of.
Apart from being singularly interested in the typewriter, we also discover that he is the new Maths teacher at the school, and goes by the name of Amit Roy. This puts him in dangerously close proximity to the children and we wonder what happened to the previous teacher, or the one whose place this psycho killer took! Moreover, his interest in the typewriter is not just so he can exploit its powers, unlike Doctor Spirit, who had no idea what he was dealing with.
At first, he seems to have an obsession with the thing, but then we see the reverence he has for the miniature model of Fakeer. He seems driven and dedicated as if it is the only thing he wants in life. What is his motive, we ask? He repeatedly mentions that Fakeer will reward him for this. How exactly? Will Fakeer give him similar powers? Is this the kind of thing where he will get to be by Fakeer’s side when he takes over the world? While we do get a hint in the second episode, it is in the last scene that the matter is truly cleared.
Amit Roy, or whatever his real name is, is Fakeer’s son. He loved his father and saw him getting captured by the police who used him and his mother as bait to lure out his father. Then Fakeer was hanged and Amit didn’t get the chance to perform final rites. He didn’t even get to see his dead body. In fact, he and his mother were rudely shown out of the rich man’s house who, Amit couldn’t fathom why, had kept his father’s body in the first place. He spent his years wondering about everything, until the book, ‘The Ghost of Sultanpore’, came along. Now, he discovered his father’s true plan and decided to see it through. He gathered all the information he could on the matter and kept tabs on the Bardez Villa. He grew up to be a sinister man, turning out to be a borderline serial killer. But in the end, he was just a boy who wanted his father back, no matter what the cost.
The Ending
‘Typewriter’ takes the viewers on a thrilling ride. But the real punch comes at the end. In the final episode, Jenny confronts her demons, literally, while the children and Inspector Anand try to handle the typewriter and Amit Roy. They put the thing in Amit’s car and send it off a cliff. A maddened Amit throws himself after it and as the car bursts in flames, it looks like the evil has finally left the world. They return to Bardez Villa where we find Jenny alive.
The next day, she burns the wooden miniature Fakeer and watches a creepy skeleton come out of it. Her husband returns from Mumbai and they discuss their previous day in passing. Just as he enters the house, we are given a twist. Jenny suddenly disappears! One moment she is there, and in the next, she is gone. And then, we see her husband hiding a secret of his own. He has returned from the trip with a shirt soaked in blood. (Talk about dirty laundry with this one!) And as if this wasn’t enough, we discover that both the typewriter and Amit survived the crash and the fire. The typewriter is only half-ruined and Amit sacrifices himself to make it whole again. But that’s not the most shocking thing. He kills himself the same way that Fakeer, or the ghost, would kill other people!
A lot of twist and turns there! While there is definitely more to the story, all of which I’m sure will be explored in the next season, let’s try and make sense of what we just saw. Starting with Jenny’s husband, Peter. Throughout the season, he remains separated from the main plot. He never sees the ghost and never even indulges in figuring out any mysteries. He has a subplot of his own where it is revealed that while in Mumbai, he got into a shady deal and also slept with the wife of the man with whom he was in business.
The scheme tanked and he lost a lot of money. Worried that the partner might want reparations, he moved the family to Goa under the pretence that he had received a new job offer. However, his past didn’t let go of him and the woman he had had an affair with returned to demand the money for her husband, as well as herself. While others are trying to fight a ghost and an impending apocalypse, Peter is busy handling the mistress. To take care of the situation, he leaves for Mumbai. In one scene, we see him at a hotel, from which we can make the assumption that he is meeting the other woman. And then, on his return, there is that bloody shirt. Safe to say, someone died that night. The shirt looks like the same Peter was wearing while he was in the hotel, and if he really did meet that woman, it is possible that he ended up killing her.
Next, about Amit. How did he survive the crash? Well, it wouldn’t be a Bollywood series if he didn’t! And frankly, we were neither surprised at his sacrifice, nor at the nod that he is actually Fakeer’s son. What did bother us was the way he killed himself. From all that we know about his family history, we can deduce that he might have received a portion of the powers from his father. Fakeer’s mother might have taken her time to transfer the powers to her son, but Fakeer doesn’t seem to agree with her method of parenting. For all we know, he could have taught a trick or two to his son. We know Amit isn’t as powerful as his father was because he has always killed people the normal way. It is only himself that he kills like that. So, he might have been in training, but his father was killed before that could be completed.
And now about Jenny! What happened there? The easiest explanation is that she fell down the ledge she was holding on to and died like her mother had. The one that we saw after was her spirit, the good ghost hanging around to take care of her loved ones. But then, what happened to her corpse? Did she dispose of it, or is it still lying there, waiting for someone to discover it? Another way to see this thing is that the typewriter had created a ghost doppelganger for her. When the typewriter was seemingly destroyed, the ghost disappeared as well. But, in the morning, Amit revived the thing. Does that mean that the ghost is back too? And could it be that this time, the ghost and the human aren’t separate entities? Are they both residing in the same body?
Typewriter Season 2: What to Expect?
‘Typewriter’ has left the season on massive cliff-hangers. With the second season, we expect the stories to build up around these things. What truly happened to Jenny would be one of the important parts of the plot. Then there is Peter’s own thing going on. How will it impact his family life and will he cross over into the frenzy of ghost hunting, or will he continue to solve the problems of his past?
We also expect the math teacher to return. Even though he is dead, we know that the typewriter must have created his doppelganger too. I am not considering the possibility of Fakeer’s proper return yet because the ritual was never completed. The sacrifice didn’t happen on the Blood Moon Night and also, an “innocent” was needed for the sacrifice. We are pretty sure that Amit does not fall in that category. We might also get to see more of Fakeer’s backstory, and also of Amit’s. Another thing that might become a pivotal point in the next season is the story of Samira’s mother. We know that she died when Sam was little, but something seems off here. Also, we got a hint of affection between Jenny and the inspector. Could it bloom into a romance in the next season? After Peter’s murderous outing, we can expect trouble in paradise!
Above all, we will have the gang back in action. Bunty’s parents have agreed to not send him to boarding school and Nikhil has patched up with the group. Buddy, as always, is in his own zone. And seems like, Moses, too, has joined the group now. With the return of the typewriter, the Ghost Club will have to once again come together to save the world.
Read More in Explainers: Sacred Games | Secret Obsession
