There are, technically, two different Drishyam 3s now. One is Jeethu Joseph's Malayalam original with Mohanlal, which released in May. The other is Drishyam: The Conclusion, the Hindi spin-off that Abhishek Pathak has directed with Ajay Devgn, and whose trailer dropped Wednesday in Panjim, the coastal Goa town where the whole franchise is set.

This one is being sold as the end. Not a sequel, a full stop. Vijay Salgaonkar's story, which started with Drishyam in 2015 and carried on through the 2022 hit Drishyam 2, wraps here, and the makers want you to know it.

The nearly three-minute trailer opens on Tabu's character asking Saurabh Shukla's Murad Ali what Vijay will do next. His answer, roughly: only Vijay and God know that. It's a good line to open on, because it sets up exactly the kind of moral fog this franchise runs on.

What follows is Jaideep Ahlawat as Rajveer Singh Tomar, the new SP of Crime Branch, closing in with what the trailer frames as solid evidence. Prakash Raj's character shows up promising not to underestimate Vijay again. And Tabu's Meera Deshmukh, still grieving her son, makes clear this has stopped being about the law. It's about payback now.

The trailer ends on Devgn delivering a line about what an ordinary man becomes capable of once his family is threatened, uniform or no uniform. Fans have clocked it as the emotional anchor of the whole promo.

Abhishek Pathak, who's directed both the second and third Hindi instalments after Nishikant Kamat's death in 2020 forced a change of hands following the original, told Bollywood Shaadis that he doesn't write these films in order. "When you write Drishyam, you first need to crack the climax," he said, describing how he starts from the twist and builds backward from there rather than telling the story straight through.

He's also aware the bar is high. "When people came to watch Drishyam 2, they didn't expect the twists the film had," he said, adding that expectations this time are already sky-high and that the film is meant to leave audiences unsure where the story has even landed by the end.

The cast beyond Devgn, Tabu and Ahlawat includes Shriya Saran, Prakash Raj, Rajat Kapoor, Ishita Dutta, Mrunal Jadhav and Kamlesh Sawant. Pathak has written the film with Aamil Keeyan Khan and Parveez Shaikh, and it's produced by Alok Jain, Ajit Andhare, Kumar Mangat Pathak and Pathak himself.

Drishyam: The Conclusion hits theatres October 2. Whether it actually closes the book on Vijay Salgaonkar, or just says it does, is the thing audiences will be arguing about the moment the lights come back on.