Things We Want Mirzapur Season 3 To Do Differently

Pankaj Tripathi and Ali Fazal's Mirzapur will be hopefully returning to OTT for its third season this year. The crime thriller has been much loved by its viewers for its gripping plot and impressive cast. However, critics of the series have also pointed out the overuse of violence and problematic portrayal of women for the sake of grabbing eyeballs. A good crime thriller is always taut and binge-worthy, but does it always have to be gory and sexually explicit?

What is Mirzapur about?

Created by Karan Anshuman and Puneet Krishna, Mirzapur revolves around the powerful Tripathi family that runs an arms and drugs operation under the banner of its carpet business. Two middle-class brothers join the family's head Kaleen Bhaiyaa (played by Pankaj Tripathi) in order to escape the clutches of his son Munna (Divyenndu) who is threatening their advocate father for filing a case against him. What begins as an act to protect their family soon ends up being the quest for unbridled power and money.

However, all doesn't end well for brother Bablu (Vikrant Massey) and Guddu (Ali Fazal) as an enraged and jealous Munna comes after the family with a renewed vengeance leading to a tragedy. Season 2 of the show focuses on the rise of Guddu and Golu (Shweta Tripathi Sharma) whose sister was married to Bablu, as rivals of Kaleen Bhaiyya, vying to takeover his operations in Mirzapur.

Suggested Reading: Mirzapur Season 3 Release Date: When Is The Third Season Coming Out?

The second season of the show also featured actors Priyanshu Painyuli, Lilliput, Vijay Varma, Amit Sial and Isha Talwar, apart from series regulars like Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Shweta Tripathi Sharma, Rasika Duggal and Kulbhshan Kharbanda. The season 2 of Mirzapur bid farewell to multiple characters in the series, making way for new characters and subplots in future.

How we want Mirzapur Season 3 to be different

*Spoilers ahead

Mirzapur is infamous for its graphic violence and reducing women to stereotypically bold characters. The women of Mirzapur are sexually liberated and are well aware of political and power dynamics unfolding around them, but then isn't this the kind of portrayal most Indian web series have of women? Be it Sacred Games, Tandav, Inside Edge or other Indian male-centric web series in the last few years, most of them are guilty of giving women specific character sketches, with a ten-degree variation from others, in order to trick the audience into thinking that they are doing something different.

Suggested Reading: Does Mirzapur 2 Give A Fair Representation To Its Marginalised Women Characters?

However, we have high hopes from season 3 of Mirzapur as many female characters who were peripheral to the narration as of yet will now take the centre stage. There is Golu, who partners with Guddu to avenge the death of her sister Sweety and now is poised to rule Mirzapur. There is Madhuri, a widowed politician who marries Munna and finds love in the relationship, only to lose her husband shortly after she is appointed as Uttar Pradesh chief minister. And then there is Beena, Kaleen Bhaiyya's wife, who kills her abusive father-in-law and then joins forces with her husband's enemies to secure power for her newborn son.

These women can not only take the story of Mirzapur forward but also change the way the series has ">portrayed women so far. The change in these dynamics will lead to a shift in the style of narration and give women enough agency even outside their beds. Is Mirzapur now on the verge of changing from being a male-centric show to the one where women characters have an equal weightage? We will have to wait and find out.