'Daldal' Ending Explained & Finale Recap: Are Anita And Sajid Dead?

Daldal’s ending was centered around the final confrontation between Rita, Sajid, and Anita. Rita was the DCP of Mumbai Police who had been assigned to look into a string of serial killings which were being committed by Sajid and Anita. Anita was the daughter of an encounter specialist, Jay Acharya, and a prostitute named Viviane. Jay was assassinated and Viviane died by suicide when the police and child-care services arrived at her doorstep to take Anita away from her. She was put up at the orphanage called Children of the Saviour where she was sexually assaulted by its in-charge, Fernando. Anita befriended Sajid and both of them banded together and killed Fernando. Sajid took the fall for the murder, and was jailed, while Anita was fostered by Jay’s brother, Uday, and Jay’s mother, referred to as Ajji by Anita. By the time they reunited, Sajid had become a drug addict and seeing him with Anita prompted her uncle to go ballistic on the dude. Sajid went to the Geeta Rehabilitation Center and tried to get better under its owner Prabhat’s influence. 

However, since Anita had developed a tendency of killing people, she deviated Sajid from his road to recovery and manipulated him into killing Prabhat. It was only after Sajid tried to die by suicide to escape from Anita’s clutches that the police were able to nab him. And while her boss, Sanjay, and her rival-colleague, Vikram, wanted to frame Sajid and call it a day, Rita wasn’t convinced that he was the only perpetrator because there were inconsistencies in the information about the hand that was used to perform each of the murders. Eventually, when Anita killed Indu, Rita’s partner, everyone had to accept that Rita’s hunch was right and it was wrong to suspend Rita just for being uncooperative. However, before Rita could convince her superiors to search for Sajid’s partner-in-crime, Anita went to Yukti Sadan Children’s Home, held the girls and its staff hostage, and forced Rita to bring Sajid over there. If she didn’t, there’d be bloodshed and death. What did Rita do? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

Before reaching Yukti Sadan, Rita called up Sanjay and asked him to bring over the mothers of the girls who were at that home. Rita had rescued those kids from Pilawadi when they were being trafficked by a criminal called Dada and she had kept them at Yukti Sadan, away from their respective mothers, until the investigation into the parents’ role in the trafficking was solved. Anita’s whole shtick was to target the do-gooders of society, do a profile on them for NewsIN90, kill them, and do a full report of their death for that news channel. Since Anita had been sexually abused by an apparent do-gooder like Fernando, she had formed the opinion that any person that the world perceived to be a boon for society was secretly a villain. Naturally, Rita became her next target. But instead of going after her directly, Anita tried to rile up the kids by telling them that Rita will never let them go back to their parents, and got them to protest against Rita. That didn’t work because Rita calmed them down and promised them that they’ll reunite with their parents soon. Hence, during the closing moments of Daldal, Anita went back to Yukti Sadan to prove to those girls that Rita was a liar and that she was a fake messiah, much like all the messiahs she had killed. 

Just to be clear, three of Anita’s kills were righteous: Fernando, Chandu (a former gangster), and Uday (because he was an abusive guy). The rest were pretty much innocent, especially Prabhat and Indu. And based on what we had seen throughout the show, she was wrong about Rita as well. Yeah, she had a prickly demeanor and she partook in some extrajudicial violence but she was in law enforcement to make the world a better place; not to get a promotion or earn a lot of money. Even though she was suspended, all she cared about were those children who she had promised a reunion with their respective family members. She told Sanjay that his department was free to take all the credit for rescuing those kids a second time, but she needed him to send all those mothers to Yukti Sadan and also get Jatin, one of the officers in the department, to deliver Sajid to her. While she was negotiating with Sanjay, Anita ended up killing Konkona. If there was any doubt about the fact that Anita had fully gone into the dark side, I think that murder should have made things very clear for everyone.

With the girls locked up in the dorm, Anita headed for the exchange with Rita whilst holding the only surviving staff of the establishment hostage. While Rita got Anita to free that member of the Yukti Sadan’s staff and Sajid as well, she herself got held hostage by Anita. To be fair, Rita begged Anita to let go of the children because they had no role in this hokey rivalry between them. But when Rita realized that Anita wasn’t going to let go of the children, because she was that desperate to prove to those girls that Rita won’t fulfil her promise of reuniting them with their parents, she began playing mind-games with Anita. And by “mind games,” I mean Rita began using Anita’s gender dysmorphia and insecurities against her, which, to be honest, was a bit of a low blow. I mean, I understand that Rita had to do something to not only shake up Anita but also bide the time until the mothers reached Yukti Sadan. Yet was it really necessary to go there? Maybe; because Anita had crossed a line by killing innocent people. After Indu’s death, I suppose the gloves had come off and Rita refused to empathize with Anita just because she had a traumatic childhood. And to be honest, I think Rita is right because Anita had way too many opportunities to turn her life around. Instead she chose to sink into the titular bog by turning into a monster. 

So, maybe Rita thought that if Anita herself felt that she was beyond redemption, it was better to send her over the edge instead of giving her a second chance. Sajid had figured out that Anita had become a monster a long time ago. Hence, in those crucial moments, while Anita was busy wrapping her around the fact that Rita had brought the mothers of the rescued Pilawadi kids to Yukti Sadan, Sajid freed Rita so that justice could prevail. Furthermore, Sajid forced Anita to kill him because he just couldn’t live with himself anymore and he probably felt that his death would somehow free Anita too. As mentioned before, Sajid and Anita teaming up to kill Fernando was righteous. Almost everything that happened after that turned them into a toxic couple that was unable to live with each other and live without each other. They were destroying one another while also razing everything that came in the vicinity. Sajid coped with it by consuming drugs but in those final moments, he realized that death was the only way out for him. 

While Anita processed Sajid’s death, Rita got the children out of the building and to their parents. In Daldal’s ending, when Rita tried to arrest Anita, she set off an explosion with the help of the LPG cylinder in the kitchen, much like how Isabel, Rita’s mother, died by suicide. Isabel was a troubled individual because she had been betrayed by her husband and she wasn’t getting anywhere professionally. She used to unload all her frustration on little Rita and one day, when Isabel couldn’t take it anymore, she chose to end it all and take Rita along with her into the proverbial abyss. Rita survived but Isabel didn’t; she saw her mother burning to a crisp but she was too helpless to do anything. In the present day, Rita was knocked down by the explosion and she saw Anita in flames. However, this time, she chose to act and she supposedly saved Anita. I mean, the chances of surviving those third-degree burns are extremely low but Rita probably felt that Anita had suffered enough and walked back on her initial decision to let her succumb to her miseries. Symbolically, fire is seen as a cleansing agent, and maybe Rita thought that those flames had purged the demons that were causing Anita to act so violently. Therefore, she made sure that Anita got a second chance at life, with the burns serving as a reminder of her heinous actions. There’s a decent possibility that Anita will squander this opportunity by becoming even more villainous in order to ruin Rita’s life, but Rita will cross that bridge when it arrives. 

In the meantime, Rita attended Indu’s funeral. Then she went back to her ancestral house and chose to rekindle her relationship with Aditya. Why? Well, I suppose she got some kind of closure regarding her mommy issues through this whole Anita-Sajid case. She always saw the specter of Isabel telling her that everything that she had achieved was a result of policy and politics, not her hard work and dedication to the job. Maybe when Aditya entered her life, he served as a distraction for her. She was stuck in this cycle of self-hatred and being anxious about the state of her city. Aditya gave her some respite from all that. However, when their relationship started to become really serious, she felt that her marriage with Aditya would echo her parents’ marriage, and she’d end up self-immolating before her child after Aditya would leave her. After “saving” Anita, who was more or less as troubled as Isabel, Rita most likely felt that she was the architect of her own fate and she should embrace Aditya’s love instead of letting the fear that stemmed from her mother’s marital life dictate her decisions. Whether or not Rita will regret this Aditya-shaped step or pat herself on the back for marrying him is something that remains to be seen. Well, at least that’s what I think about the show. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to let me know in the comments section below.