‘Sacred Games’ Season 2 is superfluous but brilliant

The game is afoot (again). Netflix India’s Sacred Games is back for a second season, this time expanding beyond the novel by Vikram Chandra and into the turbulent territory of the unknown blazed by Big Little Lies, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Game of Thrones.

And out there, it holds its own.

Not that Sacred Games Season 2 is the revelation its predecessor was, or that it necessarily justifies its existence in the way that show-based-on-book sequels don’t even bother trying to. But it remains a gripping mystery, an embarrassment of riches when it comes to showcasing Indian actors, and part of the growing mountain of exceptional Indian television that burst onto the scene last year.

A quick advisory: As of publishing, either a Netflix glitch or editing oversight has many of the Season 2 subtitles out of sync with their corresponding dialogue – but only if you select “English” from the subtitles. Select “English (CC)” and everything is fine, but you have to do this manually with each episode. (Netflix India did not respond to this reporter’s confused tweets with comment.) As an alternative, one could simply watch in any of the dubbed languages, but as I advised last year, this does a disservice to the story’s atmosphere.

To quickly recap Season 1, since Netflix won’t, Sacred Games is one drawn-out game of cat-and-mouse between notorious Mumbai gangster Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and his chosen police mark, police officer Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan). Season 1 presented Gaitonde’s twisted history, intercut with Singh chasing him down in the present only to find the criminal dead and his dastardly (and as-yet unknown) plans set in motion.

Season 2 picks up right there, halfway through the 25 days afforded to Singh to save Mumbai from uncertain calamity. Singh, down a finger (the first episode is quick to remind you of this gruesome and painful event), dives back into the investigation, following a trail that points to nuclear weapons, terrorism, and Gaitonde’s link to the ashram of one Khanna Guruji (Pankaj Tripathi).

Gaitonde, still narrating to Singh but actually to us, calls Guruji his third father, to whom he and so many others were drawn like moths to flame. Tripathi is so magnetic that his character’s appeal is more than plausible. The ashram is a cult and its leaders liaisons between Gaitonde’s drug trade and the weapons Singh suspects will be used to attack Mumbai in the present.

Avid Netflix viewers will see the parallels between this and Rajneeshpuram, subject of the addictive docuseries Wild Wild Country. If Guruji is Bhagvan Shree Rajneesh, then his Maa Anand Sheila is Batya (Kalki Koechlin).

Koechlin is one of several actresses this season who serve to fill the void otherwise left by Radhika Apte and Kubra Sait, the others being Amruta Subhash as intelligence agent Kusum Devi Yadav and Surveen Chawla returning as fellow foul-mouthed gangster Jojo Mascarenas. Each shares a fascinating dynamic with Gaitonde and a multifaceted role unlike many written for women in Bollywood. Indian films about the criminal underworld rarely if ever pass the Bechdel test, with women portrayed as wives and victims, never as agents of chaos and control in their own right.

Gaitonde and Jojo’s connection is the most engrossing, the first of any of his relationships in the show to have palpable chemistry and explicable attraction. Though her character featured in Season 1, Jojo didn’t have a chance to make the same impression in a story dominated by the allegedly legendary love story of Gaitonde and Kukoo (Sait). In Season 2, the duo spar in guttural Hindi, hurling curse words during phone conversations that feel as sexually charged as any physically explicit scene.

It’s only eight episodes, but the season drags noticeably in the middle, especially compared to the physicality and urgency of Season 1. Siddiqui’s soliloquys about Gaitonde’s past haven’t suffered, but they serve the same purpose as Guruji’s own monologues about sacrifice and how the world must burn to be born anew (this fuckin’ guy). At one point we’re forced to watch Gaitonde produce a movie about his own life, including a D-grade Bollywood song-and-dance number. Jojo rightly says that the film undermined him, and it undermines the show as a subplot, however brief. 

It feels worth disclosing that Season 2 contains a 9/11 reference complete with footage of the towers, which appears to be one of 2019’s trendiest and easily most unnecessary on-screen trends. I find these scenes particularly squeamish as an Indian American; they feel shoehorned in as a way of inserting the film, characters, or even India itself into one of the most recognizable traumas of the century. I wonder if this is how people in Eastern Europe feel about Chernobyl or how India received Hotel Mumbai, how we own the cultural commodification of national trauma on-screen.

But back to Games. Siddiqui and Khan are now known commodities, sliding back into their roles with veteran virtuosity. The story is once again intertwined with literary epics and grand allegory. Gaitonde addresses but does not want to reckon with his own hubris and mortality, pining for Guruji’s undivided and practically begging, with each act of violence or criminality or as he reaches through the past to Singh, to immortalize his own notoriety. 

Without spoiling the ending, it’s safe to say that Gaitonde and Games have a clear legacy which followers will strive to honor.

Sacred Games Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.