Mirzapur 2 Is A Revenge Story of Women Wronged, Not Just Mindless Bloodshed

Mirzapur 2 is not all gore and bloodshed. It is also a story of women wronged, rising from the ashes to vanquish men who think women can be tamed.

With revenge being the central motif this time, just like its first season, bloodbath and thirst for power continue to vehicle the series forward. It begins with Guddu (Ali Faizal), Dimpy (Harshita Gor) and Golu (Swetha Tripathi) being in hiding, still grieving the loss of Bablu (Vikrant Massey) and Sweety. Seething from within, biding their time for retribution.

All scenes are carefully crafted as a lead up to the central question – who will sit on the throne of Mirzapur? Will Guddu finally dethrone Akhandanand Tripathi? Or would Munna Tripathi (Divyendu Sharma) – caught in the perennial cycle of trying to prove his worth to his father and falling short each time – try to kill his father again? Only this time he succeeds?

Pankaj Tripathi continues to steal the show as Akhandanand Tripathi, the king of Mirzapur, running a drug and ammunitions business. A man of few words, shrewd and ruthless, instilling fear and wielding power.

It’s not all warfare and bloodshed, though – Mirzapur’s women are finally making their presence felt.

Women play meaty roles in Season 2

In the testosterone-fuelled, dog-eat-dog world of Mirzapur, women have always been seen as the inferior lot, to be kept under men, and used and discarded as the situation demands. Several scenes from both seasons corroborate this fact.

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From Sathyanand Tripathi, the patriarch of the Tripathi family and father of Akhandanand Tripathi, asking for sexual favours from his daughter in law and domestic help, to Munna Tripathi objectifying women and using them for his sexual gratification, women have always played the second fiddle to men.

But, as much as Mirzapur is a men’s universe, we see an uprising of women in Season 2.

When women are silenced for too long, their resentment ferments long enough for them to become raging lionesses. They lurk silently in corners, waiting. And when the time inevitably arrives, they pounce on their prey. This comes across beautifully in Mirzapur 2.

Growth of Rasika Dugal and Swetha Tripathi’s characters

If in the 1^st season, Beena Tripathi (Rasika Dugal), the wife of Akhandanand Tripathi, was seen as a sexually uninhibited woman, with an insatiable craving for sex, we see rare depth in her character in Season 2. Pressurized into sex by her 70 year old father-in-law, she is no longer seen looking for opportunities to seduce men; instead, in one scene, she is seen contemplating killing herself, which becomes a turning point of sorts.

However, she decides to live and quietly plans her revenge. Eventually, she becomes an informant for Guddu, secretly leaking all inside information to him. Exhibiting foresight and unseen guts, she learns not just to think on her feet, but to use the art of manipulation to meet her ends.

Swetha Tripathi, as Golu, once screamed at Bablu for resorting to violence during their college election campaign. That same Golu now fires bullets into the skulls of men as effortlessly as men do.

Golu is now a mere shadow of her former self, emotionally crippled from the death of the ones she held the closest to her. With a steely resolve to kill the ones who wronged her, she finds a strange, inexplicable comfort in her brother-in-law, Guddu. Scarred from a shared tragedy, pain brings them closer. In one particular scene, unable to fight her unrelenting thoughts, Golu ends up in Guddu’s bed. That scene is executed with such brilliant precision that the viewer can’t help but become one with their pain.

But, what is notable is the quiet ease with which Golu experiences all of her emotions, from grief to anger to resignation, sometimes in isolation, sometimes all at once. In season 2, Golu is no longer a scared, timid girl on the threshold of womanhood. Instead, she epitomizes a queen pumping power, refusing to care about the world’s opinion of her. For, she has loved and lost, the pain pulsating within her – a constant reminder of this irreplaceable void.

While Golu and Beena are the central characters, Isha Talwar as Madhuri Yadav is one of the rare finds of this season. As Akhandananda’s daughter-in law, she manipulates him and wrests the position of CM from right under his nose, leaving his ego bruised. That the king of Mirzapur is outwitted by a mere woman is the ultimate insult, one he is unable to digest.

If you thought the trailer of Mirzapur 2 was promising, wait no more, for season 2 is darker and gorier than its prequel.

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