Student of the Year: After Dark Streams Today on JioHotstar: Shanaya Kapoor’s Double Role Turns St. Teresa’s Into a Crime Scene

Student of the Year: After Dark begins streaming today, Friday, November 13, on JioHotstar, and it takes one of Hindi cinema’s glossiest franchises somewhere it has never been: a murder scene. The series stars Shanaya Kapoor in a double role, marking both her OTT debut and her first time playing two characters.

Kapoor plays Aayesha Malik, the popular queen bee of St. Teresa’s Heritage School, who is found dead, and her twin sister Aditi, who refuses to believe the death was an accident. Determined to uncover the truth, Aditi enters St. Teresa’s and takes part in the Student of the Year competition, where her sister’s friends and rivals all become potential suspects. Every friendship carries a backstory, every rivalry a motive, and the contest itself becomes part of the investigation.

The series is directed by Reema Maya and produced by Dharmatic Entertainment, with Karan Johar, Adar Poonawalla and Apoorva Mehta producing. Alongside Kapoor, the cast includes Abhinav Singh, Divik Sharma, Manya Grover, Deeya Damani, Adi Malik, Sheeba Chaddha and Vivek Gomber. The trailer, unveiled on October 27, opens on the discovery of Aayesha’s body and sets the tone immediately: this is St. Teresa’s with the glamour intact but the innocence gone.

Filmverse take: the reimagining is a calculated risk that makes more sense than it first looks. The Student of the Year brand still carries instant recognition, but its campus-romance formula had run its course; turning the competition itself into a murder investigation lets the franchise keep its aspirational gloss while borrowing the suspense grammar that streaming audiences actually binge. For Shanaya Kapoor, the double role is a genuine test rather than a safe launch — she has to carry both the victim and the detective, and the show lives or dies on whether viewers buy both. The early trailer chatter has drawn comparisons with Riverdale, Elite and even Squid Game, which tells you the ambition; what will decide it is whether the mystery holds up past the first episode. Either way, JioHotstar has timed it well, landing a franchise title on a Friday when the streaming slate is crowded and attention is up for grabs.

Source: Bollywood Hungama.