Sultan of Delhi Ending Explained: Did Arjun and Bangali Become Friends Again?

Sultan of Delhi Ending Explained: Milan Luthria’s OTT debut series is a Hindi gangster drama miniseries with 9 episodes that released on October 13, 2023. The Hotstar Specials series stars Tahir Raj Bhasin as Arjun, Anjumm Shharma as Bangali, Vinay Pathak as Jagan Seth, Nishant Dahiya as RP, Anupriya Goenka as Shankari, Mouni Roy as Nayantara, Harleen Sethi as Preeti and Mehreen Pirzada as Sanjana. Produced by Namit Sharma under the banner of Reliance Entertainment, the show has been co-written and co-directed by Suparn Verma.

The action thriller show is based on Arnab Ray’s book Sultan of Delhi: Ascension and finds it target location in Delhi of 1960s. With a long roster of characters showing up throughout the series, its primary action is centred around Arjun, a survivor of Partition who’s learnt all about survival, life and human nature the hard way. Making several sacrifices along the way, he finally finds ground after working for Jagan Seth in the underworld and with passing time, he even takes on his seat of power as the leader of the operation.

Not stopping there, he aims at taking over authority as Delhi’s Sultan, but the road to his destination is laid with several obstacles like mean betrayals, passion and politics and whatnot.

Sultan of Delhi Hotstar Ending Explained Contains Spoilers

Sultan of Delhi Ending Explained

Despite promising not to get drunk on his solo mission, Bangali gets held back by the chokehold of his alcoholic addiction and ends up sabotaging the mission. This shatters Arjun’s trust in his friend, who’d also recently become his business partner. Arjun had been hoping to turn all their black crimes and association with the underworld around by bringing his business model’s functions above ground. However, after his spat with Bangali, he kicks his friend out and publicly humiliates him.

RP uses this development to his advantage and emotionally manipulates Bangali, pulling him to his side of the operation as a way to sprinkle salt in Arjun’s wounds. As another mission comes into their plate, RP attempts to help Daniel secretly cross the border with an important weapons consignment of theirs. Once his associate’s flight crashes and he’s the only one left standing from the mission, RP puts his all to get Daniel to Calcutta to save face so that his name doesn’t get associated with the weapons business.

While he recruits Bangali to his side, one of his men crosses over to Arjun’s side by sharing the details of the mission. He does so because RP pushed Sanjana down the stairs, with the incident resulting in her death. In the meantime, RP also threatens Bangali (and his family) not to make any wrong moves while getting Daniel out, so he too feels cornered. Arjun, on the other hand, uses the newly shared information to disrupt RP’s plan and also get his friend back.

On meeting face-to-face, Arjun and Bangali indulge in a shootout, which ends with Arjun capturing Daniel so that he can use him later as leverage. However, during the altercation with Bangali, the two get off on the wrong foot completely. Despite that, Arjun goes ahead with his plan and uses Daniel to get his friend back. It seems that despite all the times Bangali has betrayed Arjun and his work ethic, the number of times he’d saved his life trumped the former.

RP conveys Arjun’s plan to Bangali and how he’s to be exchanged for Daniel. They meet at a railway crossing where Daniel crosses over to join RP, and then Bangali comes back to Arjun. At first, it seems as if Arjun is truly accepting his friend back onto his side as they hug it out, but in a split second as a train approaches behind them, he pushes him back, thus removing him from the equation forever.

While it’s not made clear whether Arjun changed his mind at the last minute or if he’d always intended to kill his friend, this move again adds to his previous streak of getting rid of all those people from his life, regardless of who they were, who crossed him.

In the end, RP and Shankari settle with whatever sense of victory they’ve got as she claims that it’s better that Arjun killed his friend instead of RP. However, RP’s insatiable desire to take over and conquer everything consumes him again and he drowns Shankari in the bathtub.

In the final scene, Arjun acts on his desire and goes back to Nayantara’s place and both of them act upon their repressed feelings for each other. The ending doesn’t necessarily give us straight answers, but is rather constructed in such a way that it leaves us with more questions. We know that Nayantara and Arjun had already started feeling something for each other when they first met, but at the time, Arjun stayed put due to being recently brokenhearted upon Sanjana’s marriage with RP.

Eventually, Bangali proposed marriage to Nayantara and she said yes, but even after that, every time she met Arjun, even when in the company of their respective spouses, their feelings for each other could be sensed from a distance. Arjun’s wife, Preeti, had also grasped an idea of Arjun’s feelings for Nayantara, but remained silent.

So it all just makes one wonder if killing Bangali was something they had decided upon earlier together in hiding because Nayantara was also visibly troubled by Bangali’s attitude and alcoholism, or if it was just Arjun’s response to his friend betraying him, much like how he’d killed his own father and Jagan Seth earlier.

All 9 episodes of Sultan of Delhi series are now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.

What do you think of the show’s ending? Do you believe that Arjun exacting revenge on Bangali was a premeditated act? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Also read: Sultan of Delhi Review: Milan Luthria’s OTT Debut Series Channels 60s Gangster Drama Fervour but Remains Unfulfilling