Clutch is India’s first-ever Esports web series and focuses on Arun and his ragtag team of gamers as they come together and take the gaming world by storm.
Summary
Arun (Vishal Vashishtha) was an avid gamer in his younger days. Along with his friend Shekhar (Abeer Meherish) and their team ‘Pwnishers’, they manage to make it to the finals of the world gaming championships thanks to some extraordinary performances from Arun.
However, Arun cannot follow up on his dream due to pressure from his father (Rishi Deshpande), who doesn’t believe that gaming can be considered a stable career option and insists that Arun go for the corporate interview he had arranged.
Years later, Arun is stuck at this dead-end IT job without too much joy in his life. He strikes up a friendship online with Adil (Tirth Joisher) as they game together often. One day, while scrolling through his social media feed, he comes across Shekhar’s post. Shekhar has taken the Pwnishers brand to the next level and built an entire company thanks to the investors that followed their success.
Shekhar gets in touch with Arun and invites him to a party celebrating their anniversary, insisting on his attendance since none of this would have been possible without Arun in the first place. Arun begrudgingly shows up at the party and gets a glimpse of the wonderful life he missed out on.
After spending a good amount of time with his friend, Arun heads home with a serious conflict running around his head. At home, his father makes a joke about Shekhar’s career after learning about it but Arun shoots back saying that Shekhar is doing so much better than he is and actually enjoys his work.
During their gaming sessions, Adil pesters Arun about entering the World gaming league that is fast approaching. Arun is sceptical and doesn’t give it too much importance but after his meeting with Shekhar and his growing contempt at his current job, he finally decides to take the leap of faith and quit to start his own Esports team.
With Adil’s help, he begins the recruitment for his team. After several interviews, he settles on Prachi (Ahsaas Channa), a badminton player recovering from a serious injury. Jeetu (Saurabh Ghadge) is a delivery boy with good skill but who is extremely low on confidence. And the final member is Raunak (Prateek Pachauri) a former member of Pwnishers who has a notorious reputation of losing his cool and is struggling to get back into the game because of it.
With the team finalized a week before the tournament, Arun sends in their registration under the name ‘Team Clutch’. They begin meeting at Arun’s house to practice and get used to playing together as a team. They struggle considerably in the beginning with Arun pointing out all of their mistakes and coaching them on how to improve their game.
He’s also on the lookout for investors for the team but isn’t able to find anyone who’s willing to cough up the dough for a team that’s not even established. In an effort to build team chemistry, Arun takes them all to paintball range as a practice but after countless failures, Arun loses his cool and takes it out on the rest of them.
His harsh words convince the rest of them to really focus on what’s important and get their game up a few notches. They show the first signs of gelling well together giving them some hope before the tournament. Seeing his son work so hard and showing some passion after so long in his life, Arun’s father has a change of heart as well.
The day of the tournament arrives, and after getting through to the initial rounds, Team Clutch makes it to the final 8. Over there, Raunak comes up against Prateek (Aishwarya Sharma), who eggs him on and tries to get under his skin.
His tactics work and Raunak constantly rushes into the battle impulsively, doing his team’s chances a lot of harm. In the end, they just about make it into the final 4 with the help of some slick play by Adil and Jeetu. Arun goes up to Raunak and scolds him for his immaturity, exclaiming that it was a mistake to take him into the team, causing Raunak to leave at that very moment.
Will Arun and his team get Raunak back or find a replacement? What happens with Team Clutch, will they be able to overcome the odds and fulfil their dreams?
The ending of Clutch explained in detail (Episode 5: Rise of the Underdogs):
Getting the band back together
Raunak ignores the team and blocks all communication with them. They show up at his house to convince him to join back. He has packed up all of his stuff and plans to head back home and get a regular 9-5 job. Arun tells him that he shouldn’t even consider leaving.
He admits that it was his mistake for saying things that he didn’t mean, simply because he couldn’t handle the pressure he was facing because he had left his job and stuck all of his eggs in this basket. He wasn’t even able to get any sponsors onboard yet and all that was really building up his anxiety.
Raunak himself is apprehensive because he hasn’t been able to control his anger and his antics have been dragging the team down. The others assure him that it’s still not too late and that it’s not an impossible situation. He can use his anger in the right way to his advantage. They finally manage to convince him to join back and get ready for the finals.
Getting ready to create history
The team arrives at the hotel for the finals, and over there Prateek is back to his old tricks but Raunak isn’t phased by it this time. He and Arun decide to use Prateek’s arrogance against him in the match. That night, the team isn’t able to fall asleep so they decide to get together and share a few moments before what is possibly the biggest day of their lives so far.
They talk about how they have become a family, after all, they have been through so much and will continue to remain a family no matter what happens in the final.
Jeetu says that he plans to send his brother off to a good engineering college and also get himself a good gaming laptop with his share of the prize money if they were to win. Adil says that once he wins, everyone from his school will want to be his friend and he’ll revel in the fame.
Coming up clutch
Arun does his research and tells the team to take up an aggressive approach for the finals, something they haven’t really done until now. The advice does seem to work, with team clutch taking an early lead in the matches. Their performances drop off towards the end and the final scores show a tie between Team Clutch and Pwnishers.
The tiebreaker is played on Valorant on the PC and Arun joins in as the 5th team member. He gives them a pep talk and tells them to just relax and play and enjoy themselves regardless of the final result. It’s neck to neck right until the end with team clutch playing for match point.
Raunak draws in Prateek with a perfectly set trap but then loses his own life soon after, leaving Prachi in a 3 vs 1 encounter. She stays true to her team name and manages to survive and win the entire thing for them. After winning the tournament, the team are shown benefitting from their success, with Jeetu staying true to his word on his intentions regarding the prize money.
They are shown checking out office space to set up their own headquarters, with the narration from Arun stating that this the just the beginning for Team Clutch.
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