Netflix renews 'Heeramandi' for second season after record-breaking debut

The women move on from Lahore to Mumbai, Bhansali teases plot for upcoming season

Fans currently nursing post-series depression after binge-watching Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s global hit, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, won’t have to wallow for long. Bhansali himself confirmed that Netflix has renewed the series for a second season, according to Variety. 

Within its first week of its May 1 launch, the series sashayed its way up Netflix’s worldwide non-English TV chart in 43 countries, becoming the most-viewed Indian series globally. It has been holding the Number 1 spot on India’s Top 10 chart since its debut.

Season 1 was achieved after an intense production process that spanned 350 shooting days across three years. “It takes a lot to make a series. This one has taken a lot. After Gangubai released in February 2022, from that to now every single day I have worked without a break. So, the responsibility is huge on the series,” Bhansali told Variety.

He teased the upcoming season, saying, “In Heeramandi 2, the women now come from Lahore to the film world. They leave Lahore after the partition and most of them settle in the Mumbai film industry or Kolkata film industry. So that journey in the bazaar remains the same. They still have to dance and sing, but this time for the producers and not for the nawabs. So that’s the second season we are planning, let’s see where it goes.”

The announcement of season 2 was nothing short of dramatic. At an event on Carter Road, Mumbai, a flash mob of 100 dancers, adorned in sparkling anarkalis and ghungroos, performed a medley of songs from the series, delivering the news mid-performance. Monika Shergill, Vice President of Content for Netflix India, remarked, “Sanjay Leela Bhansali has intricately woven magic to bring Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar to life. Watching audiences everywhere fall in love with this series — making it truly their own as a cultural phenomenon — has been hugely energising and it thrills me to share that we will be back with Season 2.”

Spanning 1920 through 1947, when the subcontinent was partitioned into India and Pakistan, the lavish first season is set in the Heeramandi district of Lahore, British India, the milieu of the tawaifs. Much like Japan’s geishas, tawaifs were trained in music and dance and courted by nobility. At the show’s centre are Mallikajaan (Manisha Koirala), the scheming queen of Heeramandi, and her vindictive niece Fareedan (Sonakshi Sinha), who has ambitions to dethrone her aunt.

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