Special Ops season 2 review: Even a well-in-form Kay Kay Menon can’t save this middling spy series from itself!

Special Ops 1 was at least thrilling enough to keep you hooked. This second season doesn’t even try and ends up being the perfect entry into a show that’s running on autopilot. 

Himmat Singh and his team of spies, each with their own quirks, made their debut in 2020 with just enough charm to spark hope that they could grow into a full-blown spy franchise. And why not? The man behind it all was Neeraj Pandey, a filmmaker who, since his debut with A Wednesday, has shown a knack for telling stories that combine sharp political commentary with a deeply personal touch. But from 2020 to 2025, while the intention was to expand Special Ops into something bigger, Season 2 only proves that going grander isn’t always the right move especially when it comes at the cost of losing what once made the show special.

As the first season and Special Ops 1.5 have already established, Himmat Singh (Kay Kay Menon) is a R&AW officer whose brilliance lies not on the field but behind the desk, reading between the lines of global political tensions, where those in power exploit vulnerabilities to push the world to the brink of war without dirtying their own hands. While Season 1 focused on tracking a criminal from the past and revisiting what was missed, this season shifts its focus to the future, one that Singh must protect the nation from. So inevitably the threat this time is rooted in AI-generated crime, not orchestrated by a foreign enemy but by someone within the country’s own borders. Hence the season kicks off with two parallel incidents, one where Vinod Shekhawat, another R&AW officer, is murdered in Delhi while AI scientist Dr. Piyush Bhargava is kidnapped from a tech fest in Budapest. As expected, Singh quickly deduces that the two events are connected. And so the mission to rescue Dr. Bhargava and take revenge for Shekhawat’s death falls on him and his trusted team, played by Karan Tacker, Saiyami Kher, Muzammil Ibrahim, Shikha Talsania, and Vinay Pathak from their adversary Sudheer (Tahir Raj Bhasin), a deranged criminal and a collector of all things rare, from cars to classical musicians, whose allegiance lies not with a country but with cash.

Also Read: #BeyondTheLens: Why are Indian films that are appreciated outside unable to shine here? Industry experts discuss!

To be fair, Season 1 of the show wasn’t an exceptionally thrilling spy series either but it was a solid introduction to what could have grown into a franchise like Mission Impossible, something we’ve rarely had in India. That’s why Neeraj Pandey’s take on turning the 2001 Parliament attack or 26/11 by Pakistani terrorists into the backdrop of a spy series offered a fresh approach, binding fact with fiction where undercover agents try to catch terrorist hiding in plain sight. And just like The Family Man, here, personal, professional and political all go together as our hero, Himmat Singh, is more of a family man intelligence officer than a field agent. A dedicated officer who is under investigation for financial fraud even as he hunts down a terrorist who continues to strike India.

The Special Ops trademark always lay in its tactical, well-choreographed action sequences that were slick but grounded, never over the top, something that we came to expect. Season 2 has all of that - familiar cast, slick action pieces and more as the scale goes more ambitious, from a dam doubling as a hideout to travelling across real locations like Vienna, Budapest, the Dominican Republic, Delhi, and Nepal. And refreshingly it avoids green-screen-heavy visuals in favour of real-world backdrops where different groups of criminals are hired to kidnap or kill, reinforcing the idea that in a globalised world, all it takes is the right transaction to make anything happen, even selling top-secret information on the dark web.

This is where Pandey’s strength comes through as his commentary on a world run by finance, where loyalty means nothing, gets highlighted. Hence a villian like Sudheer, who sells data, the most valuable currency today, feels real, whether it's China seeking data on India or the West asking for it. He’s portrayed as a true businessman of the world. And since this season’s focus is on financial transactions, another subplot about a man who has stolen massive amounts of people’s money from a bank and is now on the run, feels like a clear nod to Nirav Modi. But despite it all and a solid performance by Kay Kay Menon, who has so fully internalized Himmat Singh that there’s hardly any distinction left, the show fails to build any real connect. Which is why actors like Karan Tacker, Saiyami Kher, Tahir Raj Bhasin, and other talented names end up feeling wasted.

I get it, these are agents racing against time, trying to prevent a cyber attack that could cripple the country. But by not throurghly developing the tense emotional threads the season itself hints at, whether it's Singh’s daughter discovering he’s not her biological father, Farooq’s flirtatious edge, or Sudheer’s obsession with collecting not just objects but even people, the show leaves you dangling. Much like one of its own locations where a diamond-shaped space suspended between two mountains acts as a front for a hideout. It’s a clear sign that going big isn’t always better. The tactical action sequences frequently popping up every five minutes starts to feel overwhelming and the tech jargon and intelligence breakthroughs feel thrown around to maintain the illusion of a gripping investigation than to genuinely pull you in.

Special Ops season 2 leaves you high and dry where the issue isn’t the premise. This series isn't convincingly built up. With this season, Special Ops ends up securing a special spot as a second-screen spy series, something you finish watching just because you started it, not because it had anything new or compelling to offer! 

Special Ops season 2 is currently streaming on JioHotstar! 

For more reviews, follow us on @socialketchupbinge.