PremiumEmpuraan ending explained: How Khureshi Ab’raam, Shen triad clash sets up Mohanlal, Rick Yune’s L3 Azrael
Empuraan ending explained: How does the final few minutes of Mohanlal and Prithviraj Sukumaran’s film set up the concluding chapter of the Lucifer trilogy, tentatively titled L3: Azrael?
Last Updated: 04.59 PM, Apr 04, 2025
SPOILER ALERT! This article contains detailed explanations of L2: Empuraan’s ending. Avoid reading further if you haven’t seen the Mohanlal and Prithviraj Sukumaran-starrer yet.
If there’s one thing that has immensely contributed to the hype that L2: Empuraan had pre-release was how its director Prithviraj Sukumaran managed to close out the first instalment of the Lucifer franchise in 2019. The movie’s closing minutes, apart from showcasing the other side of Mohanlal’s Stephen Nedumpally and introducing him as Khureshi Ab’raam had sent the audience into raptures.
L2 Empuraan ending explained: How does the Mohanlal-Prithviraj film end?
Empuraan, as promised, tells more of Khureshi Ab’raam’s side of things, though the ending itself pertains to closing the revenge arc of Prithviraj’s Zayed Masood. After Zayed exacts his vengeance, by killing the political kingpin Balraj at the same location where his parents and family were brutally murdered, the focus shifts to Jathin Ramdas (Tovino Thomas), who is held captive in an undisclosed location by Khureshi’s men.
Right after he is freed and finds himself in an offshore oil rig in the middle of nowhere, Khureshi asks Jathin to make the right choice – to go home and throw his weight behind his sister Priyadarshini’s (Manju Warrier) political efforts to be the leader of the State or continue in his sinful ways and meet a fate from which there will be no coming back. A resigned glance belies the choice (or the lack of) in front of Jathin as he gets into the chopper that is there to take him home.
At this moment, Khureshi is contacted by his mole from MI5, Boris Oliver (Jerome Flynn) and we see that the latter has a gun pointed on his head by Shenlong Shen (Rick Yune), who expresses his unhappiness at Khureshi for exterminating double agent Robert McCarthy (Alexx O’Nell) and his close aide Kabuga (Eriq Ebounaney). He decides to kill one mole for another and shoots Boris and then take one brother for another, by exploding the chopper with Jathin.
Who is Shenlong Shen and the God Axis?
This is the only moment, apart from the very first introduction scene in Lucifer, that we see Khureshi aka Stephen Nedumpally with a look of fear or emotion. The line about Kabuga’s death also harks back to the first scene of Empuraan, where Murali Gopy narrates the existence of two rival factions – the Khureshi Ab’raam nexus and the God Axis, consisting of the African Kabuga clan and the Chinese Shen Triad, which is led by Shenlong. While Khureshi Ab'raam nexus controls the gold and diamond trade of the world, the latter trades in drugs, arms and ammunitions.
The final scene of Empuraan is about Shenlong instructing his aides to find out about Khureshi’ past, taking the audience to 1981 in Bombay, where a young Stephen is introduced, while he is engaged in a bloody battle with thugs.
What to expect in L3: Azrael
This again sets up the storytelling format of the third movie in the Lucifer franchise, which will reportedly be titled Azrael, as revealed by the film’s music director Deepak Dev in one of his interviews. It should also be noted the Lucifer had ended with the song Empuraan, rendered by Usha Uthup, which later was announced as the title of the second instalment.
L3: Azrael, as it is tentatively called now even though the screen credits showed L3: The Beginning, would shuttle between Stephen’s past, more importantly the 26 years of his life after he left Kerala at the age of 15, and the present, where the Khureshi Ab’raam nexus is waging a battle with the God Axis, which is also spreading its wings in India. This was referenced in Lucifer during the conversation between Stephen and Father Nedumpally(Fazil), when he had asked the former to tell him where he was those years and Stephen replied if the priest had ever asked God where Jesus was after he went missing for 18 years from Galilee.
The concluding chapter hints at discussing how the events in the dying minutes of Empuraan shake up Khureshi, the political landscape of Kerala and the world order.