‘Aspirants Season 3’ Series Review: TVF Finally Gets It Right

One must embrace certain rules to engage with a TVF setting. (Read this in the Fight Club voice). First, you only have the right to criticise the country if you are willing to serve it: an extension of the “don’t criticise movies until you’ve made one yourself” or “you can’t commentate on cricket without playing it” line of argument. It’s a bit more hostile than “be the change you want to see”. Second, Civil Services is the be-all-and-end-all of all careers; there is no greater honour than clearing the UPSC exams and working for the government. Third, India is a perfectly functioning democracy in which inquiries on officers happen without any ulterior motives and political prejudice; corruption is an exception, not the norm. Fourth, every department cares solely for the development of the nation; pro-establishment vibes are good vibes. Fifth, women exist in service of their male counterparts; they’re partners or lovers. And last, caste and religion don’t exist at the grassroots level; only class and opportunities do. Within these rules, and within the truth that nearly every TVF show can be called Aspirants, this series is more adept at exploring the aspirational genre called Walking the Talk. 

Season 3 of Aspirants finally does what previous seasons only threatened to do. It scrutinises its own protagonist — a sulky, entitled and idealistic aspirant named Abhilash Sharma (Naveen Kasturia) — and challenges his main-character energy. The juxtaposition of the past and the present timelines continues. In 2015, we see Abhilash, who qualified for the IRS in his fifth attempt, readying for a sixth and final attempt to improve his score and achieve his elusive IAS dream. He gets closer to his friend and fellow IPS dreamer Deepa (Tengam Celine), but the conflict in this narrative revolves around Abhilash’s face-offs with the Hindi Medium aspirants led by Pawan Kumar (Jatin Goswami). In 2025, we see the moustached Abhilash, now the DM (District Magistrate) of Rampur, battling to secure an educational town project. The new DM of Sambhal becomes his rival and, you guessed it, it’s Pawan Kumar. Abhilash is simultaneously facing an ethics inquiry after his old buddy and mentor, ALC Sandeep (Sunny Hinduja), accuses him of nepotism for offering a business tender to his best friend Guri (Shivankit Singh Parihar). It has something to do with an anonymous complaint written by Dhairya (Namita Dubey), Guri’s wife and Abhilash’s ex, even as Sandeep joins forces with Pawan Kumar to take down their common foe. 

Towards the end of Season 2, the series came close to admitting that people like Sandeep Bhaiya are the real stories. They’re prone to setbacks, have a fragile support system, and use their humanity to offset the natural bitterness of being dealt the short end of the stick. But it backed off and semi-villainised the character instead, turning the former senior into a cynical subordinate who thrives on fieldwork and does not see eye to eye with his ‘urban’ boss. Season 3 takes that necessary leap through Pawan Kumar, an equal in rank and a former aspirant for whom Abhilash becomes a psychological barrier. You can see the influence of 12th Fail on this season (Season 2 dropped two days before the Vidhu Vinod Chopra film). It’s not just through the passionate presence of Pawan Kumar, whose Hindi medium stakes are higher than the others, but through the on-off relationship between Abhilash and IPS officer Deepa. They’re about to get married in one timeline, but they’re navigating the complications of UPSC-coded attachments in another. There’s also the fact that Abhilash moves from Old Rajinder Nagar to Mukherjee Nagar to prepare for his final attempt, almost as an ode to the Vikrant Massey arc. One of the characters also mentions that he will “Restart” after another failed attempt.

What this influence does is reveal that Abhilash is more privileged than the rest: he has his friend group (‘Tripod’) who keeps forgiving him for not being a great friend, he has a family who funds 6 years of trying, he has teachers who encourage him to not give up, he has a partner who keeps reminding him that he wants to change the world and not just clear an exam. His understanding of progress is very bookish: he scolds a restaurant manager for serving booze on a dry day, and gets inspired to make India better when a kid throws a coin into an empty river below. There’s an emotional detachment about the way he operates; Naveen Kasturia has consistently portrayed Abhilash as someone who cares about his image just as much as the work he does. Even in the ‘contest’ to secure the educational town deal, he’s so dented by the inquiry that he resorts to political favours. Somewhere along the way, he loses sight of what the project could mean to the region, or why he’s doing his duty to begin with. 

It becomes a clash of egos, like a TVF hero going up against a 12th Fail hero. And even though the series nearly demonises Pawan Kumar and his relentless pursuit of Abhilash’s downfall, it confesses that Pawan is a better Civil Services officer who treats development as a personal and emotional quest. He is invested in the country more than someone like Abhilash is, because he’s seen enough and worked doubly hard to overcome a victim complex and set an example. I like that Abhilash is forced to accept his own flaws and pay the price, whereas his ‘opponent’ is the one who ends up becoming the central character of the actual underdog story. Jatin Goswami brings a moral ambiguity to most roles (the most recent being Assi), and he is terrific as the more human aspirant — not a robotic one — with cracks, trauma, envy, and an other-wordly desire to make it count. He appears as a villain at first, but slowly dons the responsibility of someone who cares for his job more than he cares about having the last word. He wears his heart on his sleeve, a welcome antidote to the mechanical righteousness of his more studied colleagues and leaders. 

The series does fall into familiar potholes, though. Like how the ‘Tripod’ gang’s problems are resolved in a hurry early on because the writing doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle all characters; SK and Guri are more or less reduced to third wheels who serve as human exposition dumps for Abhilash. Or the way Abhilash does get a speech in the 2015 timeline so that we know he isn’t exactly an unsalvageable hero; so that we know he works hard, and despite his personality defects, he would be an effective servant to a country that needs unsentimental executors like him. Or most of all, the way the series does a shoddy job of setting up the next season. It mutates into a spy-action template, where a banished character is called out of cold storage to take over a revenge mission after the divisional commissioner delivers a ghar-mein-ghus-ke-marenge-style monologue to his team. Unnecessary, at best.  

But Aspirants 3 is still the best TVF threequel in years. It’s the only series that seems to address the criticism of its previous seasons and evolve with the times. One can argue it romanticises the UPSC hustle like many of its counterparts, but there’s a sense of curiosity and method in how it goes about examining both sides of the fabled “success moment”. Clearing the exam hurdle is only the beginning, it suggests, because what happens after the end credits is where the plurality of storytelling and life lies. It’s a version of seeing a giddy love story go beyond the chase and the trademark happy end, when it’s forced to mature into the mundanity of companionship and the consequences of all those choices. The season is more alive to the world around it — even if that means pitting its sullen protagonist against a more deserving and complex candidate. I’m not too confident about the direction in which it’s heading, but for now, let’s pretend that Aspirants is only three seasons long. The franchise is complete. After all, in this day and age, it takes a lot to show that those who hope to be the change they want to see aren’t entirely selfless. Everyone needs a way out of the cards they’re dealt — and for many, patriotism is the final solution.