The much-anticipated second season of Special Ops lands with a thud, failing to match even the basic thrills of its earlier installments. There are positive reviews floating everywhere and there is a truth farther from this.
What started as a taut espionage thriller in Season 1 and even a fairly well-made Season 1.5, unravels into an overblown, incoherent sequel that drowns in its own excess. Season 2 has a storyline of AI, cyberwarfare, international missions (one might want to think of “unknown men”). But there are unnecessary additions in the form of propaganda and preaching that is shoved down the viewers’ throats as if to say, we have the main story going on but this side story also has to be added to please our bosses.
Warning – Spoilers ahead
Direction & Screenplay: Confused and Cluttered
Acting: One Man Army
Kay Kay Menon is the only standout, delivering a dignified and intense performance as R&AW officer Himmat Singh. The rest of the Indian cast is average, the foreign actors are wooden, and Vinay Pathak is criminally underutilized. Farooq’s constant smirking, limp love angle, and overused screentime are plain annoying.
The villain, played by Tahir Bhasin, is solid to some extent but the way they build up his character just falls like a fizzled-out balloon, all of a sudden. He is shown to be a great fighter MMA expert who can down a champion with a single punch. But his end happens so suddenly and at the hands of someone who has even worse footwork and defence skills.
Prakash Raj’s Arc: Deranged and Dumb
Coming to the elaichi in the kheer or that rogue clove in the biryani that ruins a perfect bite – Prakash Raj. Cast as a bitter, disgruntled ex-bureaucrat (an R&AW handler in fact), he plays a man so enraged by the RBI sanctioning a Gujarati-run bank (clearly modeled on Nirav Modi’s saga) that he decides the rational response is… to blow up the Ministry of Defence! This character is not just laughably written but absurdly cast. It feels less like a performance and more like Prakash Raj simply playing his usual ranting self from social media and TV interviews/debates. Supposedly a retired top official with access to sensitive intelligence, he acts like a petulant man-child whose sulking turns to terrorism because one bank account was frozen and he couldn’t arrange money for his wife’s surgery and because of which she passes. His backstory is riddled with inconsistencies: a son martyred in Kargil (which automatically entitles him to lifelong military healthcare), other child/children settled abroad who could easily support him, yet he acts as if he’s been wronged by the nation itself. The final touch? Mughal-era portraits on his bedroom walls.
This Jignesh Dholakia character has a ‘Mota Bhai’ supporter who helps the fugitive that he is, peppering conversations with chants of “Jai Shri Krishna” – it is not clear what this was intended to portray. Did the director really want to take a dig at the Gujratis and given the Mota Bhai reference, at Union Home Minister Amit Shah himself? Did he want to prove that criminals are Hindus, those who chant names of deities every second of their lives? To add to the whole thing – Prakash Raj’s plot was not even part of the main one – totally unconnected. It’s not just lazy writing -pure, plain manufactured, agenda-driven farce. Reel Prakash Raj is every bit as pompous, hypocritical, and dumb as the real one.
Despite Himmat Singh telling him, trying to convince him that he is in the middle of a crisis, Prakash Raj’s character keeps throwing tantrums all through the episodes.
Action: Painfully Bad
The action choreography is downright pathetic. Sequences lack intensity, logic, and realism – they are just lazy. Trained soldiers fall like dominoes in the very first episode to a mercenary group. In one climax, two agents scale a dam and blow up a server room in under 15 minutes under the watch of trained guards. The Sudheer-MMA fighter boxing scene is so poorly done, it feels like school theatre.
Fighting is extremely slow, as if the show is hinting at you to watch it in 1.5x. Even kids at a Karate school can do better action than what we saw in S2.
Technical Nonsense: AI, Cybersecurity & WTF Moments
Other Waste Of Time Subplots
Not sure why another character named Ruhani is present in the story. She is caught by her husband as she is to head into an op. She does nothing qualitative in the series, just accompanies the other agent Farooq in the boat and does something on the computer in the finale episode – that’s it.
The love story/flirting between Dr Harminder and Farooq are another waste of time, especially if you are watching with family.
Dr Harminder’s partying in Athens for vacation is another useless subplot. So is the hawala transaction enabler Salim. He only serves on purpose – a chance for Himmat to take a dig at a Muslim, but that alone is not enough to carry the series forward.
Feeling hai bhai… Feeling hai😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/L9MCPJJUoX
— 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁 (@hypernationalst) July 19, 2025
Pakistani Asset Helping At Crucial Moments
While the series successfully undermines the quality and intelligence of Indian agents, it also seems to cement the thought that India always needs a Pakistani to help them at crucial times. This is shown twice in the series – once to get location coordinates of India’s own agent who got kidnapped and once to get the location coordinates of the fugitive Dholakia.
Apart from these, there are several other logical inconsistencies – the less spoken about them, the better.
The message that seems apparent from this series is this – Indians are traitors, especially Hindus, they are also criminals while Muslims make for great special agents and save the day for Himmat Singh and the country. Yes, all this is imaginary, but there is absolutely no need to hammer this on to the audience.
Background Score/Music
Along with Kay Kay Menon’s acting and screen presence, the other saving grace is the music/background score that match the sentiments. Unfortunately, this is not enough to salvage the series.
Verdict
What started as smart espionage has devolved into self-parody – Special Ops 2 is a puffed up, propaganda-heavy mess.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)
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