Does Sidharth Malhotra Die in The Vvaan Force of the Forrest? Ending Explained
Spoiler warning: everything below gives away the ending.
Every time a trailer shows a lone guy walking into a dark forest with a burning log, my brain files it under ‘he’s not making it out.’ Folk horror has trained us for that. So when The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest started trending, the first question in every Reddit thread and YouTube comment section was the same: does Sidharth Malhotra die?
He doesn’t. And the way he lives is the most interesting part of the film.
Who Rishi Is and Why He Deserves Trouble
Sidharth plays Rishi, a slick, city-bred rationalist who has cut every tie to his roots. He goes back to his ancestral village in Bihar with one goal: sell the land and get out. He treats the whole place like a bad signal zone.
The village has a rule, though, and everyone follows it. Nobody enters the forest after sunset. The woods belong to the goddess Vandevi, and breaking that boundary wakes something you don’t want awake. The story draws on the real folklore around the Maa Van Devi Temple near Bihta.
Rishi hears the warning from the elders (Sunil Grover, Shweta Tiwari and Anup Soni are all in that circle) and does what every arrogant protagonist in a mythological thriller does. He walks in after dark. His intrusion unleashes dark supernatural entities and wakes a furious divine force, and now the whole village is on the chopping block.
The Part Where You Think He’s Done For
The third act is where the death rumors come from, and honestly, I get it. Rishi’s logic and his phone-flashlight worldview are useless against what he’s up against. He gets hit hard while protecting the villagers and the character played by Tamannaah Bhatia. For a few minutes the film really sells you on a sacrifice ending.
Then it flips. Rishi gets visions of past-life warriors and learns his bloodline traces back to the guardians who swore to protect the Maa Van Devi shrine centuries ago. The city skeptic stops fighting as an outsider and starts fighting as Vvan, the living weapon of the forest. He pushes back the dark entities, seals the rift, and the sacred woods heal the wounds he took. He walks out as the protector of the land.
That’s a smart choice. Killing him would have been the expected move. Making him the forest’s chosen guardian turns the ‘arrogant guy learns respect’ arc into something that feels earned instead of punished.
Why Everyone Expected a Tragic Ending
The death theories weren’t coming from nowhere. Three things fed them:
- The trailers. The teaser was pure dread, and that burning-log silhouette screams survival horror.
- Genre habits. Mythological folk stories love a hero who gives his life to calm a deity and restore balance, so people assumed The Vvaan would follow the blueprint.
- The prequel comic. The Legend of Vvan showed earlier guardians dying to protect the woods, and plenty of fans blurred that history with Rishi’s fate.
What Fans Expected vs. What the Film Delivers
| Fan theory | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| Rishi sacrifices himself to the goddess | He survives and becomes her champion |
| The film is a bleak folk-horror downer | It’s a high-energy fantasy entertainer |
| Past guardians’ deaths foreshadow his | Their history is the source of his power |
| A one-and-done story | The ending is built to launch a franchise |
Why the Survival Makes Sense
Director Deepak Kumar Mishra, the Panchayat guy, teamed up with Arunabh Kumar and made this for a wide audience rather than as an art-house nightmare. The CBFC cleared it with a U/A 16+ certificate and no cuts. That alone tells you the film leans toward thrills, heroics and humor over graphic tragedy.
There’s also a business angle. Balaji Telefilms and TVF Motion Pictures aren’t sitting on a mythology-flavored universe just to bury their lead in reel three. A living Rishi, newly bonded to the forest, leaves plenty of room for sequels and deeper dives into Indian myth.
My Take
I love that the film lets its hero earn a second life through faith instead of killing him for his sins. Mocking the old stories gets Rishi into trouble, and respecting them is what saves him. It’s a simple idea, but the forest setting and the guardian-warrior reveal give it real weight. And with the sequel setup, I’m already curious what he faces next.
