The Greatest of All Time’s ending was largely centered around the rivalry between Gandhi (not that one!) and Sanjay/Jeevan, which was a result of Menon’s terrorist activities, Gandhi’s reckless anti-terrorism activities, and the venom that Menon had pumped into Jeevan to make him hate his own biological father, i.e., Gandhi. Here’s the basic gist of the plot of the Venkat Prabhu film: Menon, a wanted terrorist, was traveling via train through Kenya with a vial of uranium. Gandhi and his Special Anti-Terrorist Unit were supposed to extract both the uranium and Menon and make him pay for his crimes against humanity. But the mission went south and caused the train to derail, thereby killing Menon’s whole family. Gandhi and his team were unaware he was traveling with his family, and they didn’t care to investigate the wreckage they had left in their wake. They learned from Kalyan that Menon was dead and called it a day. But Menon was alive, and, in order to take revenge on Gandhi, he colluded with Kalyan to abduct Gandhi’s son, Jeevan, and turn him into a living weapon who would grow up and kill Gandhi. This led to a moral conundrum for Gandhi, because how could he kill the son right after reuniting with him? Now, the grown-up Jeevan kept saying throughout the third act of the film that he wasn’t Jeevan; he was actually Sanjay, which was the name given to him by Menon. It seemed like, over the years, he had repeatedly told himself that he was Menon’s son, Sanjay, and not Gandhi’s son, Jeevan, to completely erase any emotional links to his biological family. However, the twist at the end indicated that maybe Sanjay was telling the truth and he wasn’t actually Jeevan.
Spoiler Alert
Was Jeevan actually Sanjay?
As far as I know, it’s true that Kalyan helped Menon abduct Jeevan because he felt sorry for being one of the reasons for his family’s death during the mission in Kenya. After that, Menon, via a child trafficker, subjected Jeevan to endless amounts of torture until he forgot everything about the life he had shared with Gandhi and Anu (Jeevan’s mother). Then Menon swooped in, pretending to be Jeevan’s savior, and became his father figure and named him Sanjay, so that his association with his past was completely severed. When Sanjay became a teenager, Menon revealed the fact that Gandhi was the reason behind his family’s death. He did lie about randomly picking Jeevan to become his adopted son and turning him into the instrument of Gandhi’s destruction, because the truth of the matter was that there was nothing random about Menon adopting Jeevan. However, by that time, the truth didn’t really matter, because Jeevan’s transformation into Sanjay was complete, and he empathized with Menon more than he cared for his biological father, Gandhi. With all that said, there’s a big time jump between the moment we saw teenage Sanjay and the moment where we met adult Sanjay. And, as mentioned before, the adult version of Sanjay was incredibly aggressive about asserting the fact that he was not Gandhi’s son. But based on the final revelation during the mid-credits of The Greatest of All Time, maybe Sanjay was telling the truth. Yes, the film went into full-on sci-fi mode by revealing that Sanjay was merely a clone, and there were two other men who looked like Gandhi who were preparing the next phase of their mission. Apparently, the guy wearing the orange suit was the real Jeevan, and he had become a cloning specialist and was making clones from the DNA of another guy who looked like Gandhi. So, at this point, it’s difficult to say if the real Jeevan even exists or if all the guys who look like Gandhi are just a copy of a copy of Gandhi or Jeevan.
What Happened to Menon and Kalyan?
While the ending of The Greatest of All Time showed us what happened to Sanjay, or the version of Sanjay that we were following throughout the movie, it didn’t exactly reveal the fates of Menon and Kalyan. Back in the day, Menon and Kalyan planned to malign Gandhi’s name before killing him. So, even though Sanjay was the one who killed Ajay and Naseer, the blame was put on Gandhi, as Sanjay claimed that he had conducted the assassinations on Gandhi’s orders. But then Sanjay and Kalyan committed a big mistake by using Srinidhi, Sunil’s daughter, to free Menon from the port authority and then killing her to protect Sanjay and Kalyan’s true allegiance. During this whole negotiation process, Gandhi figured out that Kalyan was colluding with the enemy. Since Kalyan was the one who had dealt the final blow to Srinidhi, Gandhi used Sanjay to fake Sunil’s death. Then Gandhi got himself captured by Sanjay, who took him to Menon in an abandoned warehouse, where the international terrorist laid out his whole masterplan about blowing up the Chepauk Stadium before Gandhi.
While Sanjay got busy planting the explosives around the stadium, Gandhi captured Menon so that he could have some kind of leverage over Sanjay. When Kalyan came searching for Menon in the aforementioned warehouse, Sunil confronted him and beat him up brutally. Kalyan seemingly accepted his fate as Sunil pointed a gun at him. Then the film cut to a shot of the Chennai Super Kings losing a wicket to the Mumbai Indians. But does that mean Sunil killed Kalyan? There’s no way to say for sure. If I have to guess, I’ll say that Sunil did kill Kalyan, because the man was beyond redemption. Sunil was very heartbroken after Srinidhi’s death, and he wanted revenge. Hence, until and unless Sunil’s rationality suddenly kicked in, I have a feeling that Kalyan died offscreen. As for Menon, while getting to the detonator for the bombs in the Chepauk Stadium, Gandhi left the terrorist in a random bathroom stall and asked the actor Sivakarthikeyan to keep a watch on him. However, the movie didn’t care to address what happened to him after that. Did Menon thwart Sivakarthikeyan and escape? Did Gandhi recapture him and take him to the Special Anti-Terrorist headquarters so that he could be tried for his crimes? Or did Sivakarthikeyan kill Menon to save everyone the trouble of dealing with him? I guess we’ll never know.
What To Expect From The Sequel?
The official, or unofficial, title of the sequel to The Greatest of All Time is The GOAT Vs. OG, i.e., The Greatest of All Time Vs. Original Gangster, which will probably feature some version of Jeevan going up against Gandhi. But, since The GOAT isn’t a sci-fi movie for the most part, the sequel has to answer how the cloning machine came into existence. I mean, there’s a big logical jump between pitting the protagonist against his son and pitting the protagonist against the clones of his son (who is probably in cryostasis). So, Venkat Prabhu has to find a way to justify this change in genre. Menon never came off as a sci-fi villain. Yes, he was stealing uranium and dealing in explosives. However, cloning is something completely different. So, I hope that The GOAT vs. OG will show the origins of this plan of throwing multiple clones of Jeevan in Gandhi’s direction, thereby putting him in an endless loop where he’ll have to confront and kill various versions of his son. Other than that, I guess the sequel will tell us what happened to Menon and Kalyan and whether they’ll be joining hands with the cloning expert version of Jeevan. Both Mohan and Prabhu Deva are too big to be killed offscreen. That’s why I have a feeling they’ll reprise their respective characters in the sequel. In addition to all that, given the abysmal way in which the female characters were treated in The GOAT, I hope that The GOAT Vs. OG imbues the women in its story with some substance. For starters, Venkat Prabhu can turn Jeevitha into a significant character. She has been in the middle of the conflict between Gandhi and her brother’s clone. Maybe she’ll work with her father to take down the army of clones that her brother (or a version of her brother) is creating. At least that’ll inject some estrogen into this circus of testosterone. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of The Greatest of All Time. If you have any opinions or theories about the film that you want to share with us, head on to the comments section and let us know.
