As of now, there is no official news confirming the renewal or cancelation of Guns & Gulaabs Seson 2, so we are just going to be speculating here. Unlike the rest of the hour-long episodes of the show, the final episode has a running time of a whopping 1 hour and 21 minutes. It essentially revolves around the truck full of opium that Arjun is supposed to deliver to Sukanto. But at the last minute, Atmaram kidnaps Arjun’s daughter, Jyotsna, as well as Nannu, and takes them to an abandoned warehouse, waiting for Arjun to arrive with the truck so that he can deliver it to Prateek’s henchman, Dheeraj. But before he can get there, Gangu, Chandralekha, Tipu, and Bunty reach the spot to rescue the kids from Atmaram’s clutches. When the going gets tough for Tipu and Bunty, Arjun and Ramprasad arrive and send all the goons running. While Arjun goes after Dheeraj and secures the truck full of opium, Tipu gets into a battle with Atmaram. Elsewhere, Ganchi Junior, AKA Jugnu, who has been thwarted by Tipu, confronts Sukanto and gets into a shootout.

Spoiler Alert

Did Tipu Die?

Tipu wastes all the bullets in his gun while trying to kill Atmaram, who moves at superspeed after being hit by a van. Atmaram uses this opportunity to cut Tipu in four places and then finish him off. But Tipu pushes him away after the third cut, and by the time Atmaram gets to him again, Tipu pulls out his dad’s gun (which he has received from Gangu) and shoots Atmaram in the chest or stomach. To make sure that Atmaram is, in fact, dead, Tipu tries to unload the rest of the bullets into him and finds out that the gun had that one bullet. He faints on top of Atmaram’s body, and by the time Chandralekha and Arjun locate Tipu, he has lost a lot of blood. When they rush him to the hospital, Tipu seems to have some consciousness. He uses his limited energy to give Lekha the receipt that’ll help her father avert any government investigation for not delivering his portion of the opium, and he wishes her the best in life. Then he turns to Bunty and tells him that his revenge quest (to avenge the deaths of his father, Babu Tiger, and friend, Suneel) is complete. On that note, he apparently loses consciousness and dies in Chandralekha’s arms.

Well, since the character is played by Rajkummar Rao and he gets to paint such an interesting portrait of Tipu, I don’t think this is it for him. On the surface, he doesn’t have any real aspirations. However, early on in Guns & Gulaabs, the man tries to leave Gulaabganj and write his own future, away from the shadow of his deceased father. He is in love with Chandralekha, who has seemingly started to reciprocate his feelings. Therefore, a combination of these two aspects can help him fight to stay alive. Also, Atmaram is actually alive. Therefore, his revenge saga is technically incomplete. That’s why he has to recover and put up a fight again.

Is Atmaram Alive?

Yes, of course, he is alive. After getting shot through his stomach or his chest, when there’s no one around to check his body, Atmaram gets up and reaches for his trusty blade. It’s really obvious that his arc in Guns & Gulaabs Season 2 is going to be all about hunting down Tipu, if he’s alive. If Tipu doesn’t make it, there’s a good chance that Atmaram is going to go after the people he has rescued, i.e., Chandralekha, Jyotsna, Gangu, Nannu, and Bunty. Why? He’s a Ramsay Brothers-inspired version of the devil. This is what he is meant to do. However, he has to find a way to replenish his health. I am not sure if he’s human, even though he bleeds. It is totally possible that he bleeds, but he recovers as well, without any lasting damage to his body. So, he needs to reinstate his seven lives because I have a feeling he is down to just one. Where is he going to get those lives? Well, I have a theory that the more Atmaram kills, the more powerful he becomes. Hence, maybe he has to go on a killing spree to become immortal again. But that means he is going to be more powerful than ever, and Tipu (if he’s alive) will need an entire army to put an end to Atmaram. Do I want to see him die? Not exactly. I want Atmaram to haunt the characters as long as the series lasts.

Does Arjun Confess To His Wife?

Instead of delivering the truck full of opium to Prateek, in order to avoid the risk of exposing his affair with Yamini to Madhu, Arjun actually sends it away to the government so that it can be processed in a legal fashion. Earlier in the show, Arjun had asked Yamini to retrieve the negatives of the photos of him and her so that they couldn’t be reprinted and sent to his wife. Yamini said that that wasn’t possible. But by the end of Guns & Gulaabs Season 1, Yamini does retrieve it from the clutches of Prateek or whoever had it in their possession and gives it to Arjun. Yamini does it so that her chapter with Arjun is closed once and for all, and Arjun doesn’t have to worry about the revelation of his extramarital affair. Arjun says that he wants to confess to his wife because the guilt is eating him from the inside out. Yamini advises him not to do so because it’s not her cross to bear. She makes the generalized statement that men think apologizing for their mistakes is enough because the information is now the apologee’s responsibility, and that’s exactly what Arjun is about to do. Yamini says that the least Arjun can do is live his lie and give a peaceful life to Madhu and Jytosna. The catch here is that Madhu already suspects that Arjun is cheating on her after smelling one of his jackets, i.e., the one that he had worn while meeting and hugging Yamini.

So, Arjun’s only option is to confront Madhu and decide if he wants to tell the truth or lie to her. The thing is, once somebody is suspicious about their partner’s ability to be relied upon, there’s no going back. No matter how much you convince them that their apprehensions are unfounded, it doesn’t work. In Arjun’s case, Madhu has a good reason not to trust him. That’s why Arjun has to go with the truth and see how it impacts their relationship. At the very beginning of the show, Madhu said that if she ever feels that Arjun’s work life is negatively impacting her makeup business, she’s going to let him know. Hence, there’s a good chance that she’ll use this as an opportunity to leave Arjun and settle somewhere else with Jyotsna and prosper. Since it’s the ‘90s and divorces are not that common, she may continue to stay with Arjun while maintaining a tense relationship with him. This will have an effect on the couple and Jyotsna, but that’s the direction in which their lives are bound to go. Now, if Madhu chooses to forget about the jacket and Arjun chooses to not say anything, then they can continue to live their lives, albeit with an undercurrent of doubt.

What’s Up With Jugnu’s Final Reveal?

Jugnu reveals that their (I am using they/them/their pronouns, FYI, because it’s not very clear what pronouns should be used for the character) gender identity is trans. Jugnu shows up at the hospital and confronts Ganchi about his patriarchal, abusive, and sexist way of running things, and then they proceed to kill him. Jugnu says that they are going to run things the way they want instead of trying to live up to Ganchi’s expectations. Now, this can seem like a twist for the sake of being a twist and a tad bit problematic. Throughout the show, Jugnu points out that they don’t want to do the typical masculine things that they are expected to do, e.g., drinking liquor and being assertive. Jugnu is constantly reminded that many female children have either been killed or sent away before they were born, which is a massive chip to put on anybody’s shoulder.

At one point, Jugnu even wondered why Ganchi couldn’t let a woman run the business, especially since they were living in an India where Indira Gandhi had led the country and Phoolan Devi had ruled the Chambal Valley. Jugnu showed interest in their friend Nirmal’s wife’s jewelry, which seemed lewd but was probably sincere. And Jugnu’s eagerness to shift Nirmal to the Ganchi household and their expression of sadness over Nirmal’s death hinted at the notion that they were in love with him. These aspects are not obvious; hence, Jugnu’s reveal can feel like it has come out of left field, even though it’s not. That said, the murder and mayhem that’s associated with the character falls into the age-old trope of violent representations of the transgender community.

Bollywood is infamous for doing this, and in a day and age when Made In Heaven Season 2 featured a trans actor in a trans role while highlighting what they face on a daily basis, Guns & Gulaabs has done this. In my opinion, there’s no good way of taking this character forward unless they recast the role with a trans actor. Adarsh Gourav is a great actor, but I don’t want to see him pretending to be a trans person in seven more episodes. I don’t care about the character arc. I just want trans actors to play trans characters, period. If you can’t do that, you may as well apologize to the trans community for this misguided portrayal of a trans character and retire the role.

Final Words

Guns & Gulaabs didn’t generate any interest until the very last episode. So, my biggest expectation from a potential Season 2 of the show is consistent writing. I want every episode to matter, like it’s the last episode of that season. I don’t care about the plot. So don’t waste your time explaining it to me. Give me compelling character moments, action sequences, funny gags, even if they deviate from the central plot, and interesting themes to chew on for days, weeks, and months. And I expect Season 2 to be about consequences.

There are a lot of loose threads, with the biggest one being Prateek’s desire to destroy Varun’s life. I want to see where that goes. Gangu, Nannu, Jyotsna, and Ikhlaq have been through a lot, and who knows how traumatized they are? I want to see how the last moments of Season 1 are going to impact these characters. More than anything else, I want to see more of Atmaram. He is perfect. He is everything. I don’t want to know his backstory. I just want him to get into ludicrous situations and still make it out alive. That’s it. What do you expect from Season 2 of Guns & Gulaabs? Please feel free to share your theories and expectations in the comments below.