This Thursday, Netflix released the second season of their Indian thriller series Sacred Games, described by the Hindustan Times as the streamer’s “biggest Indian original show.” The launch was preceded by red-carpet screenings in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore.
The show, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap, has received an overwhelmingly positive reception from its Indian audience, its first season earning a 94% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Sacred Games is adapted from the novel of the same name by Indian-American author Vikram Chandra, and is Netflix’s first original series to be produced in India. Set in Mumbai, the show tells cop-versus-mob story following honorable police officer Sartaj Singh, played by Saif Ali Khan, as he struggles with corruption in his force, crossing paths with mob-boss Ganesh Gaitonde, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Though the show’s concept is simple, it has been praised by outlets such as HuffPost for expressing the religious polarization and conflict present throughout India. HuffPost’s review declared Sacred Games to be “India’s submission to the global catalog of Prestige TV.”
Sacred Games 2, the second season of the show released this week, ended with a cliffhanger, leaving fans both excited and craving a resolution. The final scene of the finale follows the main characters as they attempt to defuse a bomb by guessing a passcode pattern to stop the detonation, and they have a limited number of guesses before they are locked out. On their final try, they enter one more pattern, and the screen fades to black before the audience can see whether the guess was correct. Fans of the show have since taken to Twitter, theorizing about the show’s ambiguous ending reminiscent of The Sopranos.
The Hindustan Times reported some of the reactions: one Twitter user wrote, “So sacred games ends with ending for both Optimistic and Pessimistic audience. I am on the pessimistic side that the pattern didn’t work.” Another commented, “I hope Anurag Kashyap and @NetflixIndia don’t make another season of #SacredGames. The ending was pitch perfect. Each of us has the power to save or doom our beautiful home planet.”
Seasons 1 and 2 of Sacred Games are available on Netflix in the U.S. now. You can watch the trailer for season 2 here: