The Night Manger Part 1, consisting of four episodes, released back in March and left viewers on the edge with its plot twists and unanswered questions. As Part 2 releases this Friday on June 30, here’s a refresher of what we know so far and what remains to be answered. (Also Read: The Night Manager creator Sandeep Modi reveals how Tom Hiddleston reacted to show, wanted to talk to Aditya Roy Kapur)
The Night Manager is the Indian adaptation of the British thriller series of the same name, that itself is based on a book by John le Carre, and aired on BBC One in 2016. The Hindi version is created by Sandeep Modi, and stars Aditya Roy Kapur, Anil Kapoor, Sobhita Dhulipala, Tillotama Shome and Saswata Chatterjee among others. It’s available on Disney+ Hotstar.
The plot so far
Shaan Sengupta (Aditya) is a night manager at a Dhaka hotel. He tries to rescue a 14-year-old girl married to the majority stakeholder of the hotel, Freddie Rehman, through communication with RAW officer Lipika Rao (Tillotama), only for her phone to get bugged. The girl is consequently killed by the men of Shelly Rungta (Anil), the gang lord who’s been colluding with Freddie. This leaves Shaan in a deep trauma. He quits his job and moves to a hotel in Shimla.
Two years later, when Shelly, his wife Kaveri (Sobhita) and his men visit Shaan’s hotel, Shaan spies on them and sends confidential information to Lipika. She visits the hotel soon after and urges Shaan to go into a deep cover as Shelly’s right-hand man in order to expose his dark secrets. Lipika helps Shaan orchestrate a notorious track record so that he ends up reaching out to Shelly as an international fugitive. He even saves his daughter from a fake kidnapping, allowing Shelly to take him to his secret hideout.
After Lipika helps eliminate Shelly’s current right-hand man BJ (Saswata), Shaan is able to infiltrate the gang by gaining Shelly’s trust and wooing Kaveri behind closed doors. Shelly appoints Shaan as his new right-hand man, making him one step closer to his mission of taking Shelly out from the inside.
Questions that remain unanswered
There are majorly three questions that remain to be answered, and the trailer of Part 2 leaves no stones unturned in addressing them.
The biggest of them all: Will Shelly be able to see through Shaan’s conspiracy? In the trailer, Shelly is heard saying, “Humare ghar mein deemak lag gaye hain. Unhe samay se hatana padega nahi toh poore ghar ko aag lagani padegi” (There are termites in our home. We’ll have to get rid of them soon or we’ll be forced to put the whole house on fire”). At the end of the trailer, Shelly even asks Shaan as directly, “There’s a mole among us. Is it you, Shaan?”
The second question: How will the dynamics between Shaan, Shelly and Kaveri play out? We saw in Part 1 that Kaveri seems to be drifting towards Shaan sexually. The two are seen making love in the trailer of Part 2. Kaveri even says, “Usko shaq hone laga hai” (He’s started to feel suspicious), referring to Shelly’s knowledge about Kaveri and Shaan’s secret affair.
And the third question: Who is Shaan? What’s his past? In Part 1, we often see glimpses of Shaan’s visions from a traumatic past, yet we don’t get to go deeper into them. In Part 2 trailer, when Lipika tells him, “Wo tumhe zinda nahi chhodega” (Shelly would kill you), Shaan replies, “Pehle bhi kaun sa zinda tha” (I wasn’t alive before this anyway), referring to his traumatic past yet again. Part 2 would hopefully reveal what that past is and throw more light on what the protagonist, the night manager, is really made of.