General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Final Call

The Final Call is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language thriller web series directed by Vijay Lalwani for the streaming platform ZEE5, in which the captain of a Mumbai-to-Sydney passenger flight decides to end his life mid-air, endangering everyone on board while an air traffic control officer works to save them.¹ It is adapted from Priya Kumar's 2016 novel I Will Go With You: The Flight of a Lifetime, and it marked the digital debut of film actor Arjun Rampal.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Platform and run	ZEE5 original; premiered 22 February 2019, finale 22 March 2019; 8 episodes, each roughly 37 to 48 minutes⁴^•⁵
Source material	Adaptation of Priya Kumar's 2016 novel I Will Go With You: The Flight of a Lifetime²
Premise	Captain Karan Sachdev decides to end his life aboard Skyline flight 502, putting the passengers at risk; ATC officer Kiran Mirza takes charge of the rescue effort¹
Lead cast	Arjun Rampal (Captain Karan Sachdev), Sakshi Tanwar (ATC Kiran Mirza), Neeraj Kabi (V. Krishnamurthy), Javed Jaffrey (Siddharth Singhania), Anupriya Goenka (Parineeta)⁴
Reception	IMDb rating 7.1/10 from about 2,200 votes; IANS review rated it 3 stars⁶^•⁷
Status	Ended after one season; still streaming on ZEE5⁴^•⁸

Spoilers

Premise and story

The series centers on Captain Karan Sachdev, a former Indian Air Force pilot who has moved into commercial flying and who boards Skyline flight 502 carrying poison with the intention of ending his life.⁹ Soon after takeoff his co-pilot is accidentally poisoned, and Karan cuts all communication with air traffic control, raising suspicion of a hijacking.⁵ Air traffic control officer Kiran Mirza is called in, and when Karan requests an emergency landing she anticipates a hijacking and brings in the Anti-Terrorist Squad under officer Kale.¹⁰

The onboard drama is interwoven with the passengers' personal stories. Neeraj Kabi plays V. Krishnamurthy, an astrologer-scholar who boards the ill-fated flight because his horoscope tells him his death is destined there, and whose conversations about life and death with a jaded tycoon, Siddharth Singhania (Javed Jaffrey), form the show's philosophical thread.⁷^•¹⁰ Anupriya Goenka plays flight attendant Parineeta (Pari), described by reviewers as the rational center of the story, who is questioned by Kiran about events in the cabin and later helps passengers reach out to ATC with the truth.¹¹^•⁵ In the finale, Kiran, after hitting a low point that helps her understand Karan's state of mind, persuades Kale to let her negotiate with Karan directly.⁴

Production

The series was written and directed by Vijay Lalwani, with story credits shared by Priya Kumar, Rajat Shah, Lalwani, and Ramendra Vashisht, and was produced by ZEE5 with Ajay Rai as producer.¹²^•¹³ Kumar, the author of the source novel, reworked I Will Go With You into the screenplay herself and said ZEE5 was drawn to the story's spiritual message; she described it as one of the most expensive series the platform had made to that point.¹⁴

Shooting took place across multiple countries and Indian states: press coverage at launch cited London, Kashmir, Kochi, and Thailand, and Kumar later added the Andaman Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, and Mumbai to that list.¹⁵^•¹⁴ The official teaser was released on 22 January 2019 and the trailer on 17 February 2019, drawing several million views on ZEE5's YouTube channel before premiere.¹⁶^•¹⁷

Release and episode structure

The eight episodes were released in two blocks: the first four on 22 February 2019 and the last four on 22 March 2019.⁵ The episodes are titled The Pilot, Off Comm, Power of the Forces, Do You Copy?, Thundercloud, The Journeys That Matter, Change in Plans, and The Finale, with runtimes from 37 to 48 minutes.⁵ ZEE5 lists the series in eight audio languages, Hindi plus Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and English, with English subtitles.¹

Some listings disagree on the episode count: JustWatch shows Season 1 as 10 episodes, while ZEE5, TVmaze, and TheTVDB all list 8.¹⁸^•⁴ The passenger count also varies by source: ZEE5's synopsis says 250 passengers at risk, while Plex, TheTVDB, and a New Indian Express profile say 300-plus.¹^•¹³^•⁹

Reception

On IMDb the series holds a weighted rating of 7.1/10 from about 2,200 users, with an unweighted mean of 7.5; ratings by episode fall from 8.2 for episode 3 and 8.1 for episode 1 to 6.4 for episode 5, suggesting viewers rated the opening episodes more favorably than the later ones.⁶ An IANS review carried by Business Standard gave it 3 stars, praising the performances of Rampal, Kabi, and Sakshi Tanwar, whom the reviewer called a pregnant terror negotiator building a case for women in patriarchal jobs, and describing the show as an impressive adaptation that opens up its characters' inner worlds.⁷ The Indian Express's first impression found the multiple storylines engaging enough to binge-watch while criticizing repeated flashbacks that restate material shown minutes earlier.¹¹ A Glamsham review gave 3.5, singling out Kabi's astrologer for giving the thriller its philosophical turn and noting the cinematography of Yiannis Manolopoulos and the background score.¹⁹

ZEE's own annual report listed The Final Call among its critically acclaimed ZEE5 originals, and a 2019 Indian OTT industry report cited it, alongside Abhay, as an example of the platform casting popular Bollywood actors to lead its thrillers.²⁰^•²¹ The show ended after one season and remains available on ZEE5, including free with ads in India.⁴^•⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Genre web series: horror, thriller, science fiction, and mystery

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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