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Paatal Lok season 2 review: This season elevates the art of making the invisible visible

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Sakshi Sharma
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Paatal Lok season 2 review

Paatal Lok season 2 carries on the legacy of season one well while being wider, bigger, inclusive and even more laced with commentary than before! 

I remember a conversation from my college days when a friend recounted how, during admissions, a fellow student and a stranger asked her, “Why did you come from Nagaland to India to study?” Back then we laughed at his ignorance but if we were asked to pinpoint Nagaland on a map of north-east India many of us would have a hard time placing it. This disconnect between the north-east and the rest of India is what Paatal Lok Season 2 addresses—shedding light on the Naga people and their culture, albeit through its original flavour of a murder investigation unearthing the web of revelations! 

In Hathi Ram’s hell hole, not much has changed for him since the last season even if things have changed for Jaideep Ahlawat, who continues to command attention with his “tired but fierce" portrayal of the inspector. Hathi Ram Choudhary remains at the Outer Jamna Paar police station, dealing with the “cockroaches” of the paatal lok (neglected lowers of the society). While his once-junior, Imran Ansari (played with an evolved sincerity by Ishwak Singh), has been promoted to IPS, and their former superior, Virk (Anurag Arora), has moved on to the Narcotics department. Through this combination of people going their separate ways reflective of the storyline weaving its way through different but interconnected plots. As a missing husband’s case leads Choudhary to Ansari and they find themselves investigating the murder of Thom, a prominent Naga leader who came to Delhi for development and peace talks that will change Nagaland's future. As usual, what begins as a political murder mystery soon spirals into a nexus involving national level politics, business, drugs, rebels, secret agendas, and familial trauma—revealing as much about the country as the conflict-ridden ‘No Mans Land’.

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This season, like the previous one, also follows the same path of utilising the investigating drama to unveil the hidden commentary of a fractured society that breeds moralistic rot. While season one felt like a local cricket match, using the mythology of paatal as a metaphor, season two steps up to the scale of a World Cup as it is more intricate and densely packed, making it challenging to follow at times, yet undeniably engaging and rewarding. The stakes have gone higher, wider and much bigger since it explores the country's delicate diplomatic ties with the north-east! Hence Hathi Ram and Imran coming together isn’t just about bharat milap but also about two different worlds of swarg and paatal colliding as if to bring a sharper contrast of the ‘have’ and ‘have-nots’. Imran largely handles investigating the privileged while Choudhary deals with the non privileged while roaming around in alleys, bus, markets, and befriending a jugadu local man.

Given that Nagaland is an unexplored space especially when it comes to commercial storytelling, the show makes effective use of this and makes the setting the plot. The stark differences of separate sects is also visible here when the two police officers meet SP Meghna (a formidable Tillotama Shome who nails the accent) highlighting the cultural and geographical divide of north-east and mainland India in an ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ line. This is further explored when they go deeper into the hells of Nagaland as they follow their long list of suspects: the drug dealer, three people who took responsibility for the killing and main leads aka people containing the 'R' factor - Reuben, Rose, and Raghu Paswan who reflect the complicated realities of rebellion, marginalization, and survival as one is the rebel son standing against everything his father stood for while the others are the downtroddens of the society who found refuge in each other. 

The brilliance of the show lies in its organic storytelling, avoiding assumptions where the narrative builds naturally as if the investigation is unfolding alongside ongoing lives, making it a lived-in rather than contrived. Which is why Hathi Ram is no hero cop who knows everything. In fact he’s simply just someone who can’t let go of the small details—a torn note, an unusual spike in acidic levels, a pineapple—which ultimately lead him to the truth. Even it all makes him end up in dangerous situations where mostly he stumbles, gets beaten up, and often seems outmatched, his dogged persistence makes him a character we root for. His invisibility to the world gives rise to his knack for finding a needle in a haystack! Hence the season is riddled with hidden details and seemingly inconsequential clues come together in thrilling ways, even if they are just needles in haystack. Even the title of each episode feels like hiding in a clue!

More than anything, though the season occasionally succumbs to binge-worthy clichés and follows a somewhat familiar detective formula, season 2 unfolds as a slow-burn cultural examination that is why the predictable twists and inevitable deaths, it still manages to surprise and leave us feeling emotionally shaken. The old team is back with creator Sudip Sharma, director and DOP Avinash Arun with some new writers yet it still leaves me feeling a bit sceptical about whether this season will have the same pop cultural impact as the previous one which was surely more grittingly dark. Nevertheless Jaideep Ahlawat’s effortless embodiment of Hathi Ram, a character tailor made for him, is worth watching.

This series, once again, effectively reiterates its point of how the so-called privileged crush the marginalized, leaving them to resort to desperate measures. In turn, Hathi Ram emerges as the moral compass against an indifferent system, offering the unseen some semblance of justice and hope. But the larger question remains - how long will characters like Hathi Ram fight till they give up? For now, I'm just grateful that 2025's streaming lineup, with both Black Warrant and this one, gives me hope that we could return to the OTT era which has been all about telling stories that couldn’t be told anywhere else, just like how Hathi Ram in Paatal Lok makes the invisible visible!

Paatal Lok season 2 is currently streaming on Prime Video! 

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