A good mystery is one that keeps you hooked from beginning to end, and despite a few or many flaws—logical or of another kind—you go home entertained. But a truly great mystery works differently—like a surgical procedure, with proper precision; everything here is well thought out and laid down in a manner that deceives you, then surprises you, and then maybe leaves you with a major shock. The impact sticks with you. In case you’re wondering what an example of that might be, I would name David Fincher’s Se7en (1995). If you haven’t watched it, then I urge you to drop everything and check that out. We are, of course, talking about the second season of Suzhal: The Vortex, Prime Video’s hit series that created ripples back in 2022. The reason I brought up the good versus great analogy is because here we have a mystery that has all the makings of a great mystery but ultimately falls short.
We live in an era where we’re blessed with accessibility to content. Thanks to that, many of you know how the mechanism of these shows works. You probably have watched tons of these on Netflix—I always get confused when it comes to the titles of all those Harlan Coben shows, so I’ll refrain from name-dropping; you get the drift. While Suzhal: The Vortex is a notch higher than all those, it fails to reach the height of something like True Detective (talking about the first season only) or Mare of Easttown, or even its own first season. And the problem lies in the abrupt tonal shift in the middle. At the start of it, the show does everything right—from setting up the story in a small town to bringing back the characters of Inspector Sakkarai and Nandini, then putting them into a new narrative. I would even say that the sophomore installment beats the maiden one in terms of the central mystery—it is certainly more dense and also has the coastal town backdrop, which I liked more than the hills from season 1. The infusion of mythology into the story is also something the show brings back from the first season, and you can clearly see the amount of research they’ve put in here. But then when it finally starts unraveling, all the finesse and nuance go away, and the show suddenly becomes a loud exposition. To put things into perspective, imagine watching a perfectly crafted neo-noir turning into an overly melodramatic thriller; the less said about the long-drawn climatic showdown, the better.
If there’s one mystery thriller show trope I absolutely despise, then that would be dedicating an entire episode to showcase events from the past. It puts a halt in the natural flow of the story, and by the time you are back to the present, things just don’t seem as interesting as before. Suzhal: The Vortex does the exact same thing by missing the simple trick of running that ‘all-important’ part of it as a parallel narrative. Sure, there could be an argument that a lot was already going on, but it’s always better to have faith in the audience—that they’ll be able to handle things together. There was sort of a filler episode anyway (I’m not going to mention which one) where our main characters were going round and round; taking a slice from the explanatory episode and putting it there would have made the narrative more seamless. Then there’s a subplot—that seems a lot like a famous SRK blockbuster, contextually—which doesn’t add any value to the main story. The show could have easily done away with this thing and put some of the backstory there too.
I’m not going to tell you what this season is about, by the way. Because the best way to watch this has to be going into it without knowing anything about the story, even better if you’ve not watched the trailer. But I should assure you that in case you haven’t seen the first season of Suzhal, you can still get onboard and have no problem following the story. The makers, husband-wife duo of Pushkar and Gayatri, have done a really smart job there—by spinning the tale as both an anthology and a serialized drama spanning two seasons. Pushkar-Gayatri, as you know, have a knack for telling intriguing stories that usually have a lot of social relevance and often a moral angle—I’m mainly talking about their most famous work, Vikram Veda (and its Hindi remake of the same name, also helmed by them) and the first season here. The current season is no exception, also with the mythological references as well. That’s another signature of the creators, and here they’ve gone really deep—as I don’t think the Asthakali festival, the backdrop of this season, is widely popular. I am unable to talk about this aspect more as I don’t wish to give away anything about the story.
Now coming to the performances, both Kathir and Aishwarya Rajesh are expectedly great, reprising their earlier characters. National award-winning Lal has joined the cast as a new entrant, playing perhaps the most important role in this season. The pick of the lot, though, is Saravanan, who is phenomenal here. He does have the most exciting part to play, though—you’ll know what I’m talking about when you watch. That also effectively means I am recommending the second season of Suzhal: The Vortex in spite of me pointing out all the problems (that’s part of the job). At the end of the day, a show like Suzhal does come off as a mostly accurate representation of the society and the many intricacies of it. The characters are so well written that they feel like people you know. On top of that, the show is not short on entertainment value, thanks to the story and acting. I see no reason to not get behind something like this.
