Sacred Games' ending, explained by its own writer — and he gives two answers, not one
Sacred Games ended its second season on a cliffhanger Netflix never resolved. When fans asked the lead writer what happened next, he didn't pick a side.
Netflix's first Indian original ended on August 15, 2019, when season 2 of Sacred Games dropped and closed on one of the most argued-about final shots in streaming. The show, adapted from Vikram Chandra's 2006 novel, starred Saif Ali Khan as Inspector Sartaj Singh and Nawazuddin Siddiqui as gangster Ganesh Gaitonde, with Anurag Kashyap and Neeraj Ghaywan directing season 2.
The season left Mumbai's fate on a single button press. Varun Grover, the lead writer, later explained the ending to HuffPost India, and his explanation is two endings at once. Spoilers ahead.
The final scene
Sartaj and his team track down the nuclear bomb meant to wipe out Mumbai, but it's already armed and needs a passcode, and they have 11 minutes. Sartaj shoots Batya Abelman (Kalki Koechlin), the cult member who helped set the plan in motion, and leaves her wounded. Then he stays with the bomb alone.
He tries pattern after pattern and gets them wrong. With one attempt left, he enters the pattern from the page in Guruji's book that carries his late father's name, Dilbagh Singh. The screen cuts to black.
Gaitonde doesn't make it to that moment. By then he has turned on the cult's apocalypse plan, killed Guruji (Pankaj Tripathi) and run off with the cult's holy book, the Kaalgranth.
Answer one: Bombay is saved
Grover's first reading is the straightforward one. Dilbagh Singh's pattern is the right code, and Sartaj's father, a cop who had once belonged to Guruji's ashram, ends up saving the city through his son.
"Bombay is saved. Because Dilbag's pattern (which Sartaj applies) works."
— Varun Grover, lead writer, to HuffPost India
Answer two: Sartaj is the sacrifice
The second reading is darker, and it's the one Grover spends more words on. In this version, Sartaj has gone too deep into the cult to save anyone. Grover points to Sartaj saying Guruji's mantra, "Aham Brahmasmi," at the end as proof that he has converted.
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The logic comes from Guruji's own theology. Entering a new age requires sacrificing what you love most, and Guruji's dearest thing was Gaitonde. In this version, Batya lures Sartaj toward the bomb on purpose, so he goes up with the city.
"Sartaj has gone too deep into the cult to actually save the world."
— Varun Grover, to HuffPost India
Why there's no third answer
Netflix never made a season 3 to settle it. In 2023, Kashyap said a third season had been planned and shut down: "Netflix would know why," he said. Netflix hasn't officially confirmed a cancellation either way.
That leaves Grover's two answers as the only official ones, and they don't cancel each other out. In one, a father saves the city through his son. In the other, the cult wins by recruiting the cop who was hunting it. Seven years later, the screen is still black, and the writer is happy to let fans pick.
Previously we wrote: When the Phone Rings ending explained: who the kidnapper really is