Monica O My Darling (2022) Ending Explained – Who is the killer?

Monica O My Darling Plot Synopsis

Netflix has a new Indian murder mystery and we are hooked. More often than not, a Bollywood presentation picked up by the streaming giants is a hit more than a miss.

Monica O My Darling, devilishly named after the peppy Bollywood yesteryear chartbuster, definitely is a hit. The murder mystery format is presented in a constantly unfolding fashion by director Vasan Bala. There are so many twists and turns that it is hard to see the end coming. That ending too was quite bold, unfamiliar, and uncompromising to the tone set hitherto. Rajkumar Rao, Huma Quereshi, and newcomer Sukanjt Goel all impress in lead roles.

With so many twists and unexpected turns the story takes, we thought it wise to come up with an article to explain the ending of Monica O My Darling. Below we have tried to condense our understanding of the film. Do check it out if some questions need answers! It goes without saying, the article contains *BIG SPOILERS!* 

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Why does Gaurav kill Dev with the robot in the beginning?

Gaurav can be seen sporting a moustache in the first scenes of the film. He sits atop an operating booth browsing his phone. When Dev walks in, he informs Gaurav of the sudden development in his personal life. His girlfriend, Shalu, who wishes “Happy Diwali” in the video Gaurav is watching, accepted Dev’s marriage proposal.

Gaurav was secretly in love with Dev and wanted to be together with Shalu. Envy and anger got the better of Gaurav and he killed Dev with the robot, breaking his neck. Dev and Gaurav were in fact friends but the sudden news that Shalu and Dev were to be hitched drove Gaurav to murder him.

From what we see in the film, he might also have the suppressed psychotic elements of an unhinged man but this was the main cause of the killing.

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Why is Monica blackmailing Jayant, Arvind, and Nishi?

Monica is indeed pregnant but opportunistically caught the above three men in circumstantial situations. In India, and generally, when the man is married, the benefit of the doubt goes to the unmarried girl with whom he is alleged to have an affair. Monica simply tries to leverage that position and extort the men for money.

A moment of revelation comes for Monica’s character in the form of redemption when she tries to explain her intentions to Jayant. When he tries to kill her, thinking she killed Nishi and is now blackmailing him about the “Murderers Agreement”, she says, “The world owes it to me”.

This tangent can be understood as a subconscious indignation that she carries for society. As a secretary, she has never gotten the respect she deserves. Women and men in her position are often exploited financially, and the former, physically as well at times.

The workplace becomes a toxic place for women like Monica with the double whammy. And as it turns out, the notion is in fact true in the film’s context as well. So, this thread in the story is part of the layered thematic fabric that Bala drives home.

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What is Jayant’s backstory and how is it relevant in the scheme of the film?

This is another sort of abstract building block in the thematic web. Jayant’s story of an underdog is an important one as that is what ensures his survival in the end (or does it?). Satyanarayan truly saw him as a son, as Nishi explained.

Because Jayant came from nothing and achieved almost everything on his own, the proprietor of Unicorn Robotics had a soft corner for him. He was himself in Jayant’s shoes when he started off and made it to the top. Nishi, on the other hand, did not live up to those stringent standards of Satyanarayan and hence “failed” in his eyes. Nikki loved him and his daughter’s happiness helped Jayant too.

But the overarching theme here is a small-town boy coming to the city to rub shoulders with the big boys and succeeding for once, but losing it all following the lights that lead him onto a highway of oncoming traffic. He gets lost in the glamor of the newfound success and is driven away from his core values, despite the rather morally skewed personnel he has to navigate.

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What causes Gaurav to go on a murdering spree?

When Gaurav killed Dev with the robot, a partially inebriated Nishi walked in on him. He had come to the place to burn it to the ground, frustrated and upset with the lack of validation from his father. At first, Gaurav interprets Nishi’s closeness as a sign of friendship and comfort. But soon, his kindness turns into selfishness and he starts asking Gaurav to do vile tasks for him.

That upsets Gairab as he feels he is being taken advantage of. He already had a class complex against the owners and this incident just made that part of him feel worse. The respect element from the relationship was gone and that loosened some screws in Gaurav.

Nishi first asked Gaurav to install the cameras in Monica’s apartment to spy on her. He wanted to keep tabs. When Nishi asks Gaurav to kill Monica and he refuses, Nishi threatens to oust Gaurva’s secret to Shalu. Gaurav had worked incredibly hard (despite erring on the wrong side) to be with Shalu and when he sensed it could all be taken from him, he could not stop himself.

He killed Nishi on the same night Monica was to be murdered by Gaurav as Nishi envisaged. As for why he killed Arvind, Gaurav truly proves himself a maniacal killer. He explains to Jayant that at first, he wanted to kill Arvind and him because he felt they would also blackmail him.

But when he learned that they had no idea, and no one would doubt him, he felt he could get away with anything. Something divine spoke to him and gave him the confidence to go ahead with the murder spree.

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Whose baby does Monica nurture in her womb?

Now this one was a huge surprise. We know that Jayant and Monica did have an affair. If we take the versions put forth by Arvind and Nishi at the face value, then the possibility of Jayant being the father is quite high. Naidu reveals to Jayant at the final funeral that Monica indeed was pregnant. When Jayant leans in to ask who was the father, she hints towards Satyanarayan and ominous music plays in the background.

The CEO-founder was having an affair with his secretary and she had similarly got him in the traps as well. The police made a statement before in a press conference that Tamang, Satyanarayan’s right-hand man, was the father but the flashbacks prove that untrue.

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How is Jayant able to outsmart Gaurav with the robot?

The robot was made by Jayant and the film only offers a vague answer to this question. As Gaurav had taken the upper hand in the back room by knocking Jayant unconscious, he took Jayant to hand him a similar fate to Dev. He used the robot to physically were him down and then kill him in the end. But just as he is about to deliver that final blow, the robot stops working.

When Gaurav comes close to inspect, Jayant says that the robot is his creation and then uses his watch to operate it and kill Gaurav. There are no indications of how Jayant connected the robot to the watch but it is possible that he did so in the back room or when the crowd passes them in the car parking basement when Gurav planned to kill Jayant with a blade.

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Are Naidu and Satyanarayan connected?

They are not connected. However, Naidu took bribes from Satyanarayan to bury evidence and make someone else culpable in the crime. We all know that the veteran was not behind the whole conspiracy but inadvertently became a part of it. He was the father of the child Monica had and did not want it to get out in the press.

So, he bribed Naidu to declare Tamang as the father of Monica’s child in the conference and let him take the blame for everything that went down.

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Who actually killed Monica?

It was Tamang who mixed the snake venom in the wines that Satyanarayan gifted Monica. Of course, the CEO himself was the person who ordered the hit, luring Tamang with an offer to become a director on the company’s board. He was quite sure that he would have an edge over Satyanaryan if he did his dirty work. But he underestimated the lengths Satyanarayan would go to protect himself.

In the end, it can be said that Jayant also walked scot-free only because of Satyanarayan’s interest to protect him as he not only liked him better than all the others who died, but also because he was with his daughter Nikki. Satyanarayan is Monica’s killer, albeit he uses someone else’s hand.

Another part that was left unfinished was Jayant’s fate after that. He was calm after the police closed the investigation but there was a sword hanging on his head in the form of the murder pact he signed with Arvind and Nishi. Gaurav did not reveal where the original was and instead, Jayant had to go to his house in Angola to find out.

When he does find the pact, he is relieved. But as he attends a phone call, he sees a cobra snake slither out of the drawer both from the front and the back. The screen cuts to black and we cannot get a straight answer. He might have even survived the cobras as they lined up against each other and cobras generally do not tolerate another of their species in the same area.

Jayant had avoided death with the cobra once before in the film and other is nothing preventing him from doing it again.

 

Read More: Monica O My Darling Movie Review

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