Asur Season 2 Review: What’s It About:
Taking ahead the hunt for a mastermind playing with myths and technology by killing and brainwashing people, Asur 2 progresses in the story with the pain that the characters have suffered both metaphorically and literally. With time, now the playground widens, and Shubh now uses technology to make his plans work as he plays out the Kali vs. Kalki tale from the mythology.
Right between the pandemic, and when the audience was ready to get immersed in the most significant wave of content, Voot entered the market with a show that wasn’t promoted the way it should have been, and the only way it grew leaps was by word of mouth. The sheer brilliance in writing that transcended not just genres but even patterns by which storytelling is done, made Asur a show that was unique and a bulletproof experiment from all directions.
Asur Season 2, that now shifts base to Jio Cinema, also sees a shuffle in writers. While Abhijeet Khuman continues to write with Gaurav Shukla, Niren Bhatt, and Pranay Patwardhan are replaced by Suraj Gianani. So when Asur 2 begins with the introduction of its plot that is now not just about the quest for a serial killer who is killing people, but a mastermind who is about to blow up the entire country in more than one way, you see the change in the voice. The canvas is bigger than just a team of CBI officers fighting against a killer. Now this works both in a good way and a bad.
We first list down the good. Asur as an idea is a meaty one and also risky because it blends real in mythology and serves a story that not just resembles the stories from the times of Gods and their vision, but also kind of makes the audience the judge to decide what side of the spectrum they chose. It is a lucrative story where now it is not just police officers running behind a shadow, but realising that the shadow has created little pockets of him, and they are running the show with him. In season 2, we see the mythology of the Kali and Kalki tale, technology, and noir all coming together to give us an interesting watch.
Credit where it’s due, Shukla and his team know how to introduce complexities to a story and take their time to them untangle the tangled bits. They indulge the audience so much into the happenings of the protagonists, that the audience never knows enough about the antagonist until he has killed one more victim. This helps in building the villain well. Add to it the fact that they chose an unusual actor to play the part in a way that the idea of him is supposed to be dread and not his face. His face has always been naive.
Talking about Asur without giving out spoilers is getting tougher. So I stop.