What are the pros? Asur 2 is its pace and novelty, even if the approach has all the craziness of a comic, notes Deepa Gahlot.

The fact that the second season comes out more than three years after the first means that the memory of Asur: Welcome to your dark side is dimmed.

It would have come to mind immediately if it weren’t any different than the usual crime series that had been streamed up until then.

The mix of crime and mythology was reasonably entertaining. A good cast was an additional factor.

Asur 2created by Gaurav Shukla and directed by Oni Sen, picks up where the first left off: the mask-wearing creepy serial killer escapes.

Forensic expert Nikhil Nair (Barun Sobti) lost his daughter, which ended his marriage to computer expert Naina (Anupriya Goenka).

The other CBI guy, Dhananjay Rajput (Arshad Warsi), ended up in a monastery where he delivers pep talks from a frighteningly wise monk, Anant (Atharva Vishwakarma).

Nusrat Saeed (Riddhi Dogra) is still weary in the CBI offices, as is techie Rasool Shaikh (Amey Wagh) and her ineffective boss Awasthi (Pawan Chopra).

Lolark Dubey (Sharib Hashmi) was sadly killed last season.

Smart new detective Ishani (Adithi Kalkunte Shyamaprasad) has more brains than anyone else combined.

People still drop dead in random order, and the “Asur‘ challenges the team to catch him.

Each episode begins with an episode from the past of Shubh (Vishesh Bansal), the bad boy genius who kept his serial killing habits and grew to become the police’s biggest headache (Abhishek Chauhan).

Asur 2 Starts off really well and then gets far fetched.

The crowd is bigger, too, as ATF’s Paul (Meiyang Chang) and his team crash the party to little effect.

Nikhil-Nusrat conducts an investigation, Dhananjay (refusing the monk’s robes) and Naina riot themselves, and Shubh’s killings get even bolder.

There’s plenty of elemental philosophizing, too, as Shubh leaves clues in corpses, hacks into any network he wants, and manages to construct an AI lair that Silicon Valley would envy him for.

The guy doesn’t believe in justice or morality and has delusions about creating a new world order.

Through the dark web, he has amassed a following of people who follow his wishes. The crowds are like sheep, the show seems to say, who can be manipulated by anyone with the ability to exploit their greed or insecurity.

What are the pros? Asur 2 is its pace and novelty, even if the approach has comic book hokiness and expects too much suspension of disbelief.

If the viewer is up for it, then it’s an entertaining film.

What also gets it right is that new wars for world domination are being waged through the control or misuse of information over the Internet.

AI is already causing a stir, even at the benign level of ChatGPT.

Naina’s finger flying across the keyboard as she averts crises in a matter of seconds is more exciting than thugs parading guns.

The actors all look tense, as they should, and a man performs a happy dance for them.

Arshad Warsi looks suitably fierce and Barun Sobti looks so disheveled that someone should have offered him a comb and a wet wipe!

The boy with his totally cool and unfathomable smile is walking away this season.

And there’s a hint that more is to come.

Asur 2 streams on Jio Cinema.

Asur 2 Review Rediff Rating: