Why is Panchayat Season 4 not as bad as you all are thinking it to be

*All views expressed in this article are my personal views regarding few things. I do not intend to offend anyone from this article.

*SPOILER FREE PART

Firstly, talking about my experience, my expectations were already low that this season is going to be mid, because c'mon, there's no way Amazon Prime would bring 2 Panchayat seasons within such a short span of one year. The only reason would be the kind of subscriber shortage they are facing due to their lacklusture content from past few years. And that brings greed, which in turn finally brings pressure for the creators to deliver quantity, not quality (P.S not that I am sad that this came in such a short span, if they can maintain, the quality, and bring new season every year, I am ready to pay subscription charger every month for this beauty).

But then also, my expectations were crossed with a huge margin. The Season 4 of Panchayat is as good as the previous 3 seasons.

Panchayat, a series from TVF, based on rural area problems faced by village people, for the first time in a light hearted manner unlike what bollywood has been serving us for since past few years. Don't know who will agree with me, but it's just what I have noticed in a maximum bollywood movies, that whenever a film is set place in a village setting, then if it's a serious movie, then the village folks are shown as savages, and if the genre is comedy, then they are shown as dumb people who son't have any knowledge of the world. In both cases, village men will be of misognist and patriarchal mindset and women will be the oppressed ones. The point is not "BRO RURAL INDIA IS UNDERDEVELOPED, RURAL INDIA IS CASTEIST, RURAL INDIA IS MISOGNYST, WE HAVE LEARNT HISTORY FROM BOLLYWOOD AND DRAVIDIAN CINEMA .etc .etc" that's not my point. The point is how you represent a thing on screen. When you show something repeatedly, it becomes monotonous after a point. That's where Panchayat has excelled. It has shown village people as human beings. Even the negative characters from the village are shown with a shade of grey rather than monsters. The characters of this series are shown as people whom we encouter in our day to day daily lives. Their small tales, their humorous discussions, their heartfelt understanding of each other, no unnecessary preaching or monologues, performances which made us believe that these are real people, not actors, that's what made this series such a brilliant piece of art.

So is this pattern carried on in the 4th season or not?

Ofcourse it does, and the story telling is miles ahead but the scale is a step down from what we saw in Season 3. What felt like it would be a full on Gangs of Wasseypur mode action drama, especially after the Battle of Baghpat inspired fight in the season 3 finale, turns out to be more politically inclined this time, and the hint was also given in the Season 3 finale that this time, they will be going all out to be a political drama more. And that's what I suppose has disheartened most of the viewers. Another reason is the ending, about which we will be talking in our spoiler filled section, but if you want to know about the overall experience, then just know that unlike other seasons, this will be leaving you on a very very sad and heartbreaking note.

The dialogues, as usually leaves a mark, some in form of meme templates and some in form of hard hitting dialogues like where Prahlad says "Lagta hai jaise humne apna beta nahi khoya hai balki lottery lag gayi. Ye lo sahanbhuti, Ye lo paise, Ye lo Vidhayak ki kursi" it's actually heartbreaking and tells how badly politics affects some individuals, and some people who are in the game of politics maybe themselves the victims of this game.

But one major gripe I actually had with this one, is the subplots this season seemed to go nowhere and were pointless. Other than that, there were minor issues which can be easily ignored.

SPOILER DISCUSSION

I have a theory that why this season is disliked by those who are in love with the series from Season 1 itself.

The ending

The series from it's 1st season only, has approached different types of endings

Season 1: Season 1 was all about sachiv's new experience in the village where in the whole series, he felt like irritated amd frustrated by the village especially after failing his CAT exam, he get's motivation in the ending episode for giving a 2nd try for CAT. But that was about the last episode, not the ending scene. The ending scene is where he meets Rinki and finds some motivation to stay in the village, which was an overall sweet and satisfactory ending

Season 2: Season 2 ended on a rather ambigous note with a post credit scene leaving us on a cliffhanger. While everyone liked the sad and emotional ending, I personally felt it was a bit odd, and it really felt that the patriotic angle was streched as the character of Rahul Pandey, Prahlad's son, who martyred for the country, wasn't given enough screen time before that, which leaves us caring less about that character (I'm talking about that character from writing POV only, otherwise watching the scenes of our country's martyr's funeral with their family members crying there, are a heartbreaking scenes for all of us). What actually broke our heart is watching a character like Prahlad, who has been entertaining and jolly throughout the 2 seasons, getting shattered and breaking down telling that he has nobody in the world anymore, made everyone's eyes wet. That was an emotional closure.

Season 3: This is where the problem began, as most of the people didn't love the season 3 as much as the first 2 seasons, although I will still say that this is the best season out of all four. But not giving the story any closure was a reason why most of the people felt that it was incomplete. Still the suspense of who shot Pradhanji was something everone was hooked for.

Season 4 was something that none of us anticipated. This season ended on a rather depressing note. I would not use the word DISAPPOINTING, because that questions the storytelling and technical aspects of the movie which aren't the issues here (that does not mean that they are flawless either, as I have already mentioned above what issues I had).

None of us could accept Pradhanji loosing elections so badly and Banrakas winning the elections. That's where a more reality based approach was taken this time because you yourself see who did what. In season 4, Bhushan did everything in the favour of village

• He brought the road problem to everyone's attention.

• He brought generator to solve the electricity problem.

• He was the first one to start cleaning various places in the village (yes, he stole the idea, but public sees who did it first)

Now just think yourself as a voter in Phulera, whom will you vote? Obviously Bhushan. Pradhanji on the other hand differentiated between East and West Phulera. It was inevitable for him to loose. His breakdown scene in the ending scene instead of generating sympathy for him, made us question him even more, but I don't think the intention was to ever sympathize him, as it was clearly shown that greed has overtaken his conscience when he mentioned that if in return of him being shot, Prahlad gets MLA ticket, then it's okay for him to be shot. But if we again consider this from a real life perspective, then also politics is no saint work. You have to get your hands dirty in it and that's where Pradhanji's helplessness is displayed brilliantly by an extraordinary performance by Raghubir Yadav. You can have Bhushan's sidekick Madhav for example, a naive villager in first 2 seasons, in one scene, on Vidhayak's order he mercilessly thrashes a gunman, that also shocks Bhushan. That's the impact politics has on you. But on the other hand we have people like Binod, Bhushan's another sidekick, who had the best character arc written this season. He voices against the wrong but also does not betray those who are his friends, like his dialogue "Hum gareeb hai, Gaddaar nahi" is the perfect definition of what his character wanted to convey. In episode 3, when Pradhanji offers him laddoo in celebration of Vikas buying a land, he does not hesitate to take it from him, but in the ending, when after winning the election, he offers laddoo to Pradhan, Pradhan goes away. But even after this, he with a clean heart offers it to Manju Devi who takes it and he then touches her feet to take blessings from her. This is a clear hint given that Bhushan's victory was not completely undeserving, as he will have people like Binod in his cabinet who will look after everyone. However Bhushan himself is a stooge of the Vidhayak and Binod even points this thing also in one episode. Vidhayak however is reduced to a very weak man in terms of position, this season and it was a bit disappointing to see him like this. But then Vidhayak also, who is the most despicable character of this show, gets emotional everytime someone mentions his Horse, Sitara, as he genuinely loves her so much, After Bhushan's victory there are chances that he might reunite with Sitara.

The point is that every character in this series so far, is having a human emotion or a soft corner and that's why we should understand that everyone recieves their share of happiness or sadness one day, according to their Karma, which was repeatedly shown through Nanaji's character.

That's why everyone loved the lead characters of this show and had a kind of attachment with them and showing them in such a bad condition in the end may not be liked by everyone.

Conclusion

All in all, the season 4 sets up season 5 perfectly as this time, it's actually the amtagonists who are in a position of power and it's actually quite ambiguous that what will Prahlad do with the MLA ticket offer. The only thing I expect them is to present us the story on a bigger scale and by that I don't mean action scenes or big budgets or foreign locations or big stars, but to increase the scale of the presentation of the story and move Sachiv and Rinki's story forward, from where it is stuck since Season 3.

Overally, for me, yes, Panchayat Season 4 is as good as the previous seasons, if not better.

The season 5 is reported for Summer 2026 release, but I don't think it will be happening as TVF has it's first big budget motion picture Vann with Sidhart Malhotra slated for a release on 15 May 2026. So I don't think that they will release 2 of their biggest assets in such a short span. Still let's hope that we don't have to wait for it as long as we did for Season 3 or 2.

Thank you for reading till here!