If Prabhas took a shot every time someone uttered the word ‘Bahubali’ in Mirzapur 3, he would be dead-drunk till 2898 AD.
Jokes apart, Mirzapur is a show for the ages. Rarely has an Indian series managed to make such an enviable place for itself in the public consciousness, garner a fandom as strong as it is staunch, generate memes and theories in equal measure and made the arrival of every season a celebration that warrants (and deserves) millions of watch parties globally.
Breaking out in 2018, this guns-gangsters-gore fest left a mark even in a space and time where crime dramas set in the Indian hinterland retail at a dime a dozen. The shock ending of Season One — playing out like the climax of a Shakespearean tragedy but with far more blood and screams of ‘behenc***d’ — spurred a fever-pitch frenzy for the arrival of the second season in 2020. The intriguing cliffhanger of Season 2 kicked off a wait for the third outing that has lasted four years but feels far longer.
The good news is that Season 3 lives up to the hype and delivers on most counts. It deepens the drama. It strengthens its storytelling. It enhances the arc of some characters, completes the journey of a few others and introduces some compelling players into the mix. Most importantly, the third season, even while retaining the core of the powerfully produced and equally powerfully enacted drama, corroborates the fact that Mirzapur is more than just a blood-laden crime fest. It is raw, authentic, powerful — and more so this season — poignant storytelling at its best.
“Ab hum challenger nahin, contender hain,” Gajagamini Gupta aka Golu, played by Shweta Tripathi Sharma, tells Guddu Pandit (Ali Fazal) early on in the latest season, setting the tone for the 10 mammoth episodes, all of which are available to stream now on Prime Video.
Golu, metamorphosing from a happy-go-lucky college-going girl to a hard-as-nails trigger-happy crime maven is the real brain behind the all-brawn ambitions of Guddu, whose trajectory mirrors that of Hamlet, and that is not limited to him just saying: “I see dead people.”
With Kaleen Bhaiyya (Pankaj Tripathi, sublime as always) almost fatally wounded in the grisly, take-no-prisoners-alive shootout in the penultimate moments of the show’s sophomore season and given up for dead by most, the hot seat of Mirzapur — with Guddu taking the chair, both literally and metaphorically as the curtains came down four years ago — is now the prized trophy that stands to separate the men from the boys.
But as Mirzapur Season 3 hits the ground running, it is the women — ranging from charming and charismatic to competitive and cunning — who take the upper hand. Madhuri (Isha Talwar) ascends the chief minister’s seat with the claim of “bhaymukt pradesh” but what is really on her agenda is seeking revenge for the killings of both her father and husband Munna (Divyenndu’s absence is deeply felt this season). For this, she isn’t averse to shaking hands with those who break the law in order to bring Guddu to justice. Beena (Rasika Dugal) remains as wily as ever, playing both sides, using and betraying with abandon. Golu, with the petite Shweta embodying the character wholly, truly comes into her own this season, her varied character arc, powered more by practicality than emotionality, giving the series quite a bit of its drama.
As the wrestling bout for the crown of Mirzapur — and the dominance over ‘Purvanchal’ — traverses its bloody and bullet-riddled crests and troughs between Guddu and Jaunpur’s ‘Bahubali’ Sharad Shukla (Anjumm Ssharma is solid), the fate of those inexorably linked with them fluctuates in ways that keep the viewers’ engagement with Season 3 alive episode after episode.
These include Guddu’s father (Ramakant, played by the always dependable Rajesh Tailang), now doing time in jail for pulling the trigger on cop Maurya (Amit Sial) in the previous season. Lala (Anil George) is also in jail, leaving his daughter Shabnam (Shernavaz Jijina) in charge of his “vyapaar” and in close proximity to Guddu. Cantankerous politician J.P. Yadav (Pramod Pathak) is now in hiding but plotting his next move.
The key player in all of this is Vijay Varma’s Tyagi whose betrayal of his family — and specifically of his twin brother — in Season 2 sets up a delectable dual-faced dav-pech that reminds one of the actor’s equally intriguing mind games synonymous with his serial-killer character in last year’s Dahaad, another winner from Prime Video.
Compared to the first two seasons, Season 3 doesn’t use gratuitous sex and violence as clickbait. There is, of course, the series staples of grime and gore — including a decapitated head stuffed in a gift bag and an important character’s eyes being gouged out with bare fingers — but the violence this time around is more felt than seen.
As it has been from its start, survival of the fittest remains the mantra of Mirzapur, but is spelt out succinctly this season. Every player, in his or her own way, works to survive by eliminating the closest threat. It all comes full circle when Ramakant, perhaps the only character untouched by the greys of crime and corruption around him, urges son Guddu to go all out and do all that he has to do to survive in this dog-eat-dog, or rather Bahubali-eat-Bahubali, world.
The relentless pace familiar to Mirzapur is, however, missing in the first few episodes and may make quite a few fans of the series restless, with a few predictable narrative turns treading deja-vu territory.
But directors Gurmmeet Singh and Anand Iyer, aided by writers Apurva Dhar Badgaiyann, Avinash Singh Tomar, Avinash Singh and Vijay Narayan Verma, as well as John Stewart Eduri’s scintillating background score, ensure a rich payoff towards the end of the season. It marks the return to form of the show’s master player — “Bhool toh nahi gaye humein?” — and a new lease of life (and a changed relationship) for two other Mirzapur MVPs. Expect more ‘bhaukaal’... and a whole lot more of Mirzapur. No one is complaining.
