1996
Episode 10 of Breathe: Into The Shadows begins with Avi returning to the hideout as Siya and Gayatri stand waiting for him. They throw the bowl of acid they’ve concocted together at him and slip away. Unfortunately in true horror-film fashion, the slow Avi catches Gayatri despite them being in a car. Siya becomes too scared to run away and they’re both captured again. Avi heads back home and evades Abha, pretending to be asleep. Abha meanwhile, sits downstairs and watches the video of Angad on her phone and struggles to watch what happened to him. As Avi sits next to her, she notices a scratch on his hand and he shakes his head, telling her it’s all a blur. Kabir composes himself at the crime scene after throwing up (a presumed side effect from not taking his medication) and contemplates what to do next. It’s here Avi shows up and works with Kabir to examine what happened. They deduce that the killer had size 10 or 11 feet. As they continue on, they notice a picture from 1996 of Angad and Avinash together in medical school which certainly casts a doubtful eye over Avi. Given what Meghna knows about Angad’s last words, that could be enough to make Avinash the number 1 suspect going forward. As Kabir continues to mull it over with Prakash, he suddenly realizes that Avinash has infiltrated every part of their investigation. If he does have anything to do with the murders (which we know he does) then that would be particularly problematic for them. Kabir decides to pay him a visit and enters Avi’s house, talking to him about the case. Specifically, he mentions the night he rushed over around midnight and the inadequacies in his story. With tension hanging in the air, Kabir takes it upon himself to look in the basement for clues. Despite a ripped note on the pin-up board drawing suspicion, he finds nothing of note and heads back upstairs. Avi meanwhile heads to the hotel again with Shirley but this time he’s clearly J. In order to get past the receptionist and avoid trouble she calls him her boyfriend. In the room together J opens up and talks to Shirley about her “Pa” (Krishnan) and discusses how he broke their trust. We then cut back 15 months earlier and see that Avi arrived back at the boarding school to be with Krishnan on his death bed. It’s here he told Avinash the truth about J and how he’s the other side of him and pleads with Avi to let him go. However, J takes over and removes his breathing tubes after cursing him for not being a real father. As flashes of the past come flooding back, J distorts his teachings of the Ravan and decides to use that to channel his pain, which is where the episode ends. While it’s good that we received some crucial information about J and Avi’s split personality, it still poses a particularly problematic contradiction about what we were told earlier in the series. It turns out Avi does have knowledge of J after all. This brings up some issues of continuity around what J actually wants and quite why he’s doing this to Avi, which still isn’t clear. With 2 more episodes to go, hopefully we’ll get some answers surrounding this.
