‘Deli Boys’ Season 3 Will Get “Dark” After That Twisted Finale Bombshell

In the final few minutes of Deli Boys Season 2, the Dars are celebrating — at least, they think they are. Somehow, against all logic and some very federally mandated laws, Mir (Asif Ali), Raj (Saagar Shaikh), and Lucky Auntie (Poorna Jagannathan) now have a flourishing casino, a golf course, and the newly elected mayor Chadwater (Andrew Rannells) in their pocket. But as they sit back and revel in their successes of money laundering, a mysterious pie and a note from the “eldest Dar” lands on their table, suddenly catapulting their family history into a shadier reality. “We’ve been dancing around this idea of their dad having this other family,” showrunner and co-executive producer Michelle Nader tells Collider. “I will say that I don’t know where it’s going, but I know that it’s going to be dark.”

It’s a perfect last swing for a sitcom that spends its laugh-out-loud six episodes making the family business bigger, messier, and a lot more emotionally loaded. But while the trio has been at the center of growing chaos from Ahmad Uncle (Brian George) taking the fall for the boys before dying to Fred Armisen’s casino mogul (and Lucky’s boyfriend) Max Sugar being the man secretly responsible for staging the deli robbery itself, that “eldest Dar” cliffhanger could completely unravel the family dynamic moving forward.

In a spoiler-filled interview with Collider about Season 2, Nader and stars Ali, Shaikh, Jagannathan, Armisen, and Rannells break down the finale’s biggest twists, the fallout of Ahmad’s death, and why Season 3 could take the Dars somewhere even bigger — potentially international.

Who Is the Eldest Dar in ‘Deli Boys’ Season 2?

Lucky may know the family secret that could break Mir and Raj all over again.

As Deli Boys wraps up its sophomore season, there have been breadcrumbs of mystery leading to that finale moment’s big reveal. All season long, we have been seeing Mir and Raj assuming things — mostly, that Ahmad Uncle is responsible for their grief and was the one who blew up the deli in Season 1. But with the “eldest Dar” reveal, there’s another whole can of worms about to be unravelled for the Hulu series. With the family now owning a golf course, having Chadwater in office for their benefit, Max in jail, and Ahmad dead, the biggest shocker is Lucky hiding secrets and knowing exactly who it is.

For Nader, the reveal was not some last-minute cliffhanger as much as the show finally finding the right way into a long-simmering family secret. She says the idea had been “living in a room” since Season 1, with the writers circling Baba (Iqbal Theba) having another family before landing on the “eldest Dar” note as the sharpest way to blow the family open.

“It’s clear based on Lucky’s face when I read the eldest Dar, that she knew,” Shaikh says. That’s the part that could hurt the boys more than the reveal itself: not just that Baba may have had another child, but that Lucky may have known and kept it from them. “Kind of like with the whole Prairie thing [Alfie Fuller] — this would be the second major betrayal.”

Ali thinks the twist could get even crueler depending on who this mystery Dar relative turns out to be. “What would really mess us up as brothers is if the eldest Dar was actually the type of kid that Lucky Auntie would have wanted to work with,” he says. Shaikh imagines that person as “capable, reliable, and eager to do the work,” with Ali adding, “And willing to be ruthless.” Basically, we might be looking at the anti-Mir and Raj — a functional Dar, which is also a terrifying concept.

But for Jagannathan, the reveal puts Lucky in a fascinatingly ugly position heading into a potential Season 3. “Clearly Lucky knows something that the boys don’t know, or probably no one knows except Baba and Lucky,” she says, before floating the possibility that Baba had “an even more criminal second family somewhere.”

Season 3 Might Be the Dars’ Biggest Problem Yet

The Dars finally have everything Baba wanted — which means keeping it may be the real problem.

Since the start of Deli Boys, Mir’s obsession with legitimacy and being taken seriously has always led his decisions. With a funny vision of the Dars becoming a version of the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, or the Hadids by the finale, they technically get everything they want. But the problem now is how to keep it. “The more you have, the more enemies you have,” Shaikh says. “So now it’s about survival.”

And after all the blood and murders surrounding them, the brothers are no longer scrambling to inherit their Baba’s empire, but rather become the empire itself. Ali sees that shift as the natural next step for Mir, especially after spending most of the season trying to prove himself worthy of Baba’s vision. “His whole goal is, ‘I’m going to follow through on exactly what Baba wants,’” he says. But after finally landing the golf course and casino, Ali thinks the interesting question becomes: “Okay, now that you have everything you ever wanted, what do you do now?”

While Mir might become Baba in the process, that character expansion also opens the door for the show to get much bigger. Nader reveals that the creative team has “always toyed with the idea of going to Pakistan,” teasing that Season 3 could potentially take the series international as the Dars’ operation grows beyond Philly.

“From a small deli, international,” she says, “I think, it’s going to bring us…” before joking that she keeps “manifesting” Sir Ben Kingsley into the series. Though she is tight-lipped about how, there is still the possibility of Chadwater being an issue for the Dar family. Rannells imagines Chadwater’s future partnership with the Dars being exactly as stable and healthy as expected — at least he hopes: “Oof, I don't imagine it’s great. Although maybe who knows? Maybe they’re all friends and really try to help each other out and work together.”

Chadwater and Max Sugar Prove Power Comes With a Price

Lucky wins the casino, Max lands in jail, and Chadwater gets a job nobody should trust him with.

For a large majority of Season 2, Deli Boys’ newest additions, Max Sugar and DA Chadwater, seemed like the type of people holding all the cards. But even with all the power they have, both men get exactly what they wanted by the end, but somehow lose it anyway. Chadwater wins the mayor’s office only to become indebted to the very family he’s been targeting all season long, while casino kingpin Max is put in prison after crossing the Dars, despite having a very open relationship with Lucky. At the end of it all, the unspoken queen inherits the casino, and with the boys now gaining a golf course, DarCo is even more powerful.

But for Jagannathan, what makes Max's betrayal sting isn't that he wanted the business. It’s that the feelings underneath the scheme were real. “I think the relationship was real,” she says. “I think both Lucky and Max have dual agendas all the time." That emotional complication is what makes the prison goodbye so bittersweet, as she puts it: “There’s a part of her that’s like, ‘Shit, this could have been the most toxic, wonderful thing in the world.’”

While Max ultimately loses everything, Armisen never saw him as someone chasing power for power’s sake. Instead, the actor saw it more like a “day-to-day, let me survive” kind of vibe. “Since I’ve got to be a crime boss, how do I do this little by little?” It’s that perspective that makes his relationship with Lucky even messier. When asked whether the feelings between them were genuine, Armisen’s answer is simple: "I think so."

Finally, by the end of everything and going into Season 3, Chadwater is in an equally complicated position. Asked what that new partnership with DarCo could look like moving forward, Rannells laughs, “Oof, I don’t imagine it’s great.” As a large understatement, Nader agrees that the Dars’ growing influence comes with new dangers, explaining that now that the family controls the casino and golf course, the stakes only get bigger. “More money always brings more problems,” she says.

Deli Boys is now streaming on Hulu. Watch the full interview with the cast above for more on the show, their favorite moments this season and lots more!