Sonal Pandya
Mumbai, 11 Dec 2021 16:26 IST
The second season of the web-series adapted by Ram Madhvani is a worthy continuation of the drama as Aarya Sareen is welcomed back into the fold after turning on her family.
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows, William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest. The quote and the play’s title both apply to the second season of the fantastic Disney+ Hotstar series Aarya.
A year and a half after the first season ended, Sushmita Sen’s Aarya Sareen is thrown right back in the fray as she returns to India to testify against her former enemies and family.
ACP Younus Khan (Vikas Kumar) practically blackmails the reluctant mother back to her homeland from Australia. Once she is back, it is too difficult to escape the cesspool of murder, drugs and crime that she thought she had left behind. Making a decision to stay and endangering the lives of herself and her children Veer (Viren Vazirani), Arundhati aka Aru (Virti Vaghani) and Adi (Pratyaksh Panwar), Aarya once again has to figure out how to stay ahead in the game and survive.
Directed by Ram Madhvani, Vinod Rawat and Kapil Sharma, the second season opens a bit sluggishly but then goes full throttle as the action and problems continue to build for the Sareen family. While Aarya battles with her brother Sangram (Ankur Bhatia) to sell off the family business and is indifferent to her ailing father Zorawar Rathore (Jayant Kripalani), she keeps looking over her shoulder as the threats to be reimbursed for their money loom from the Russian drug lords and grieving father Uday Shekhawat (Akash Khurana).
The latter seeks revenge for his slain son (Manish Chaudhari) and wants an eye for an eye. This season, Aarya even antagonises the once-sympathetic Khan who turns to unethical means to achieve results. She soon realizes that there are very few she can trust as she and her children are still processing the trauma and betrayals of the past that led to the murder of her husband Tej (Chandrachur Singh).
Aarya has to acknowledge that her family is both her strength and her weakness, and she takes some pretty drastic steps to negotiate her way out. The show befittingly uses the metaphor of the lioness and her cubs to describe the situation Aarya finds herself in. Writers Sanyuktha Chawla Shaikh and Anu Singh Choudhary keep increasing the pressure on Aarya until she has to take her rightful place.
Watching the initial episodes of the second season, one feels that show creator Madhvani and his team are just undoing storylines from the first season. But there is a method to the madness, and the writers have maintained a gripping pace that delivers on the shocks and twists in the story. Tersely shot and cut by cinematographer Sudip Sengupta and editors Khushboo Raj and Abhimanyu Chaudhary, the episodes add to the tension as we worry for characters’ fates and gasp as even villains wrestle with their consciences.
The action of the second season keeps the cast on their toes and this time Sen has ample support from a number of surprise allies. A more subdued Sen takes the reins again as she tries to deal with her children and omnipresent enemies. Veer has stepped up to be the man of the house while Aru struggles with suicidal thoughts and Adi has to face his father’s killer once again. The younger cast members take on heavier material this time.
Bhatia as the impetuous Sangram and Geetanjali Kulkarni as new entrant Sushila Shekhar, a narcotics officer, make the most of their limited time and are standouts. Aarya’s friends Maya (Maya Sarao) and Hina (Sugandha Garg) reunite for less-than-appealing circumstances. Sikandar Kher and Vishwajeet Pradhan as, respectively, right-hand men Daulat Singh and Sampath are noteworthy. While Vikas Kumar’s Khan gets the back story we were hoping for, he is relegated to the back in the second half of the season once things come to a boil for Aarya.
Based on the Dutch series Penoza, the makers have built on the international adaptation and made it their own. The eight-episode season finally gets down to business in the finale which is ominously titled ‘Isko Mere Raaste Se Hataa Do’. Culminating on the festival of Holi, the ultimate battle of good versus evil, the series shows why Aarya has always been resourceful when her back is to the wall.
Aarya (Season 2) also manages to sneak a revelation (or two) that throws the show in a whole new direction. When Aarya finally claims “I’m just a working mother”, you know she is here to stay. Bring on Season 3.
Aarya (Season 2) is now available on Disney+ Hotstar.