Never have I ever season 2 is everything season 1 failed to cater

Spoilers ahead alert to those who haven’t watched Never Have I Ever Season 2 yet!

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan has truly Devi’d the new season with her flawless acting skills and mindblowing expressions. IMDB gives a 7.9 rating to the show while Rotten Tomatoes gives a 96% rating. A ton of twitteratis burst up with their mixed feelings after binge-watching the second season.

Personally, I’d give a four out of five stars for the second season. Beside Devi’s hyped up love-triangle, Netflix covers another most awaited area in the second season – Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet’s) character development.

Paxton’s personality is further explored in the second season as a shy, romantic teen struggling with his academics and self-doubt. He discovers a dominant family history that turns his life upside down. Not to mention, American Supermodel Gigi Hadid relating to his life and delivering her special narration in the third episode of the second season, replacing Chrissy Teigen.

Hadid narrates how people see them as sex symbols and often forget that there’s a human with thoughts, struggles and feelings behind their symmetrically perfect face. This phase of Paxton’s life ironically reminds us how Devi used to struggle with societal beauty standards in the first season.

Paxton’s friend Trent (Benjamin Norris) totally nails his character with his epic dialogues.

In the first season we were left with the fact that Devi along with her mother, Nalini Vishwakumar (Poorna Jagannathan) would be moving to India soon. Here, we are introduced to the theme of diaspora.

The ‘Delhi Belly’ sensation has appealed to us all with her witty, sensible remarks in the first season while dealing with the grief of her deceased husband. In the second season, we get to explore more of her life as a daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, mother and a human. Poorna aka Nalini visits Chennai, India (her home town) to search for a house to settle in and her arrival is greeted like an “Amazon package”. In this phase of the story, we see the evolution of the definition of feminism with the generations. While Nalini’s mother tries to remarry her with an old man on her death bed to get financial support. Ironically, she keeps talking about feminism. It was then that she realises she doesn’t fit in with the people she had left behind for so many years.Nalini realises the loneliness her mother-in-law, Nirmala, has been living with in her last years and changes her mind to shift to India. She decides to bring her mother-in-law with her to California instead.

She is also seen romancing with the charming Chris Jackson (Common) which portrays her moving on from the grief of her husband.

She struggles with parenting a teenager and ultimately succeeds in winning her daughter’s heart.

In season one, audiences were engrossed with Devi’s life but in season 2, viewers got to focus on Kamala (Richa Moorjani’s) life. In this season, we get introduced to Kamala’s nerdy side and the sexism she faces at the workplace.

We see her transformation from an Indian girl trying to please everyone with modesty to a strong woman who stands up for herself. We also get to notice some clear incompatibility between her and her handsome fiance, Prashant (Rushi Kota) from season one.

Apart from the very hyped-up love triangle, viewers were curious about the new Indian girl, Aneessa (Megan Suri) who is prettier, cooler and smarter. Her character is beautifully explored as well as portrayed along with her little romance with Devi’s love interest, Ben Gross. Netflix trying to aware the audiences about eating disorders teens face and how it affects their mental health forms most of the season.

This season also includes the test and trials of friendship between the trio, Devi, Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) and Eleanor (Ramona Young). The beauty of Fabiola’s personality is heightened and her relationship with Eve (Christina Kartchner) evolves in this season. Eleanor makes some questionable decisions and learns a pretty lot about the world.

Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison) is left heartbroken when Devi leaves him at the party and runs after Paxton. However, his character is given a relief with Aneessa’s entry into his life.

The fact that Aneessa is cooler than her upsets Devi and makes her insecure about herself. All these years she thought it was racism whereas she was actually lame as portrayed by the show. However, racism is prevalent in many parts of the world and is still an issue to consider. Devi wasn’t as lame as portrayed by herself in one of the sequences.

Dr. Ryan (Neicy Nash’s) wise words continue to affect the growth of Devi as a human being.

Her deceased father, Mohan Vishwakumar (Sendhil Ramamurthy), continues to give her life-saving bits of advice through flashbacks or dreams.

Finally, Devi holds onto her values and comes up as a sensible person after making a series of mistakes and questionable decisions in the show and evolves to become an adult in the process.

A “crazy” teen’s long-term crush on a boy finally pays off but their slightly wrecked compatibility is clear at the end of the second season giving hints of season three. Wait, did I forget to mention John McEnroe’s accurate narration? He literally spoke our heart during the whole show. I will increase the rating to a 4.2 star for his brilliant reactions.

Last but not the least, Never Have I Ever season 2 has managed to serve us a ton of meme template goals.