For two films, Inspector Gaitonde was the officer the audience loved to hate. In Drishyam The Conclusion, the same man is getting laughs. Dialogue writer and co-screenwriter Aamil Keeyan Khan says the change was less a rewrite than a shift in point of view.
An “unlucky” cop, not a villain
In an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Khan called Gaitonde his favourite character in the franchise. “I never saw him as a villain,” he said. “He’s just an unlucky man.”
The exception, he added, is the first film’s scene where Gaitonde beats the children, which remains disturbing. But otherwise, Khan reads him as a cop who is actually right about Vijay Salgaonkar and is trying to do his job. “I empathize with Gaitonde’s predicament,” he said.
Breathing room for an investigative first half
The first half of the film is procedural: police officers work out what they need to legally corner Vijay. Khan said those stretches are intense, and the writers needed release. That is why Gaitonde gets lines such as “Madira peeke so gaye” and “Thodi si cheeni chahiye.”
The comedy was a “clear call,” Khan said, not a random mood swing. It grows from the character’s own logic:
- Point-of-view shift: Gaitonde is still a detective; the writing asks us to see him as unlucky rather than evil.
- Contrast: His lighter beats sit inside an otherwise tense investigation.
- Franchise memory: The old menace gives the new jokes their charge, so the laughter feels earned.
Gaitonde steps out of the film
The character also works between scenes. Khan confirmed he wrote the in-cinema spots in which Gaitonde asks the audience to switch off their phones, and the interval announcement urging patrons to buy snacks. The marketing team had the idea; director Abhishek Pathak recommended Khan for the job, telling him, “Tu hi likh. Tere andar Gaitonde ki aatma basti hai!”
Asked about a spin-off, Khan smiled and said, “Lips are sealed!” He added that he is happy Gaitonde is “redeemed” and no longer hated, and that the character is a good detective even if his ethics are complicated.
Why the reframing matters
Franchises often add a new comedian when a sequel needs levity. Drishyam The Conclusion does something more economical. It takes a returning antagonist the audience already knows, keeps his motivation intact and lets the comedy come from his predicament. For viewers who have followed the Salgaonkar case since 2015, the laughs land because the earlier threat is still in the room.
Source: bollywoodHungama.com
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