Delhi Crime season 3 review: The franchise expands its world and grows but loses its edge!

Compared to its previous seasons, Tanuj Chopra's Delhi Crime Season 3 falls short, reminding us that bigger isn’t always better. But it still holds together well enough to get its message across!

In a post-pandemic, post-truth era, knowledge has become power but finding true, factual knowledge feels harder than ever. Voices that question the dominant narrative are silenced, news can’t always be trusted, and even asking the right questions seems like a burden. In such times, understanding what truly ails us often falls to someone else, sometimes even to fiction. Because what better way to make us care again than through a story that makes us feel? Delhi Crime does just this, and does it so well. From its very first season, it wasn’t just about being a realistic investigative thriller; it was a mirror to society, showing us what the crimes themselves reveal about the world we live in. Season 3 continues that tradition, maybe not with the towering impact of the first two seasons, but with enough to hold its own!

Inspired by the true story of 2012 Baby Falak, a two-year-old girl brought to AIIMS with severe injuries that later exposed a chilling nexus of abuse and child trafficking, Delhi Crime 3 digs into a nexus of traffickers so deep it’s almost unbelievable. It’s a story where a mother, separated from her three children, is passed from man to man, while her children face the same horrific fate at the hands of traffickers. Just as the show itself has gone global since Season 1, this season’s timeline and geography expand too. We open in Assam, where the ever-charismatic DIG Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah) is now posted, leading a mission against local rebels. But when she stumbles upon a truck full of trafficked girls, the case pulls her back to Delhi connecting directly to the “Baby Noor” case being investigated by Neeti (Rasika Dugal), where a two-year-old girl was found abandoned in AIIMS. And just like that, the old team reunites. Familiar faces with the same grit formed a task force to dismantle an entire trafficking network spanning Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Mumbai, and even crossing international borders.

Also Read: While it's intriguing as hell, Delhi Crime season 2 is a master class on how stereotypes work their roots in society

Delhi Crime began with the story of Nirbhaya, one we had heard many times before. Yet Season 1 found a fresh angle by telling it through the lens of the police, not just to show the crime but to expose the society that created such men. By Season 2, the show became more than a crime drama; by using a smokescreen to highlight our bias, it turned into a metaphor for women themselves, those who live on invisible lines and carry the weight of tragedy every single day. It’s almost ironic that Delhi, once called the ‘rape capital of the country’, became a mirror in fiction, showing the fear women live with daily, surviving through constant use and abuse. So, if Season 2 explored how an oppressor can be a victim too, turning her into a criminal not by birth but by choice, Season 3 takes that idea further. As this time, we see less of the investigative details and more of what Badi Didi (Huma Qureshi) does. The two parallel storylines, one building up the criminal and her network, and the other following the police as they race to uncover it, form the six episodes.

This new layer of knowledge from the start changes the tone of the entire show at large. If earlier seasons were about how investigation led to understanding about where the criminals came from and why they did what they did, this time, the investigation simply becomes one part of the narrative. Then the season leans into full-blown drama, with Badi Didi emerging as a menacing villain meant to evoke eerie fear, while opposite her stands Vartika Chaturvedi, our everyday madam sir, whose strength lies not just in her sharp instincts but in her empathy. Maybe it’s because the issue of child trafficking is something we’ve lived with long enough just like the show’s characters themselves, Delhi Crime 3 begins to follow a more predictable template than a rebellious voice. The cat-and-mouse chase becomes the center of attention, rather than what truly lies beneath. 

It’s disappointing, especially for a show that once shone by exploring the personal lives of both officers and criminals using empathy as a bridge between justice and humanity. After all Neeti and Vartika, being female officers, get impacted by what they witness happening to women. Here, those emotional depths are replaced by dramatic close-ups and wide-eyed reactions that try a little too hard to make their point - that those most crushed by the system often end up becoming its oppressors. As a result, Neeti, Vartika, and even Badi Didi come off more performative, while the mystery’s every beat starts to feel predictable. Still, not all is lost. As a dramatic investigative thriller, the show holds its ground, its anticipated tension pays off, and the dependable cast shoulders the weight of an otherwise formulaic story.

Violence against women has always been used as a way to comment on male power and abuse, after all, who better than women to represent the invisible and the marginalized? Yet this time, Delhi Crime season 3 feels less like a lived reality and more performative wokeness, almost like a sermon rather than a hard-earned lesson. Hence, maybe bigger isn’t always better, especially when it comes to franchise storytelling. Still, given its timing, when social media is busy debating the r word and who gets to reclaim it, this season’s focus on young girls trafficked into sex work might land as a reminder of your privilege. And maybe that’s enough, even if the show’s once revolutionary voice has now softened into something more run-of-the-mill.

Delhi Crime season 3 is currently streaming on Netflix!

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