Highway Love 2 review: Kartik & Inaaya's sweet love story returns, with a pitstop at Gen Z angst

'Highway Love Season 1' started with Kartik / Dhundhun (Ritvik Sahore) and Inaaya (Gayatri Bhardwaj) meeting by chance on the Mumbai-Pune expressway en route to Mahabaleshwar. Over four episodes, Season 1 showed us Kartik and Inaaya's instant connection, their growing fondness for each other and how Kartik's insecurity almost ruins their relationship. Season 2 of the BBC Studios India series follows the exact same blueprint: Kartik and Inaaya meet unexpectedly—again, things go swimmingly for a while, until Kartik's insecurity over being with someone he thinks is out of his league maybe almost ruins everything.

Ritvik Sahore as Rajat in teen romance 'Flames' had already shown us that he could play the nerdy chocolate boy well. In 'Highway Love', he gives us the grown-up version of the same nerdy chocolate boy—albeit one with a disturbing streak of anger. Despite this, there's a certain gender parity in director Sahir Raza's show that is nice to see. Even if it is with the knowledge that the show is about a very privileged set of Gen Z-ers inside the fantasy of an OTT show (perhaps the show makers could tell The Tenant on Moneycontrol how a struggling independent architect and spoken-word-poetry-events organizer-turned-song writer can afford such a large and lovely home in Mumbai?).

Having said that, there's much to recommend Highway Love 2, if you are looking for a light romance to binge this weekend.

For starters, with six episodes of roughly 30 minutes each, the time commitment—though substantial—is much lower than many others that seek to corner your attention for hour-long episodes over 10- to 16-episode series.

Second, if you loved Sahil (Vvansh S. Sethi) and Meera (Gunit Cour) in season 1—which released on Amazon MX Player on June 16, 2023—in Highway Love Season 2, their crazy love story hits another milestone. Sahil's metrosexual pink nurse's uniform is also hard to miss this season, as is Varun's (Anshuman Malhotra) commitment phobia that echoes his sister Inaaya's in many ways.

Third, as with Season 1, the writing in Highway Love 2—by Chiranjeevi Bajpai, Chris George, Siddharth Hirwe and Riya Poojary—seems effortless. This, of course, is key in a series that could have easily devolved into a mushy mediocre love story with hard-to-stomach syrupy lines or sequences. The songs in this series leave something to be desired, though, with the final 'Yeh Khoobsurat Kissey Khatam Kyun Ho Gayege' puzzlingly half-baked.

Behind-the-scenes photo of the cast of Highway Love Season 2. (Image via Instagram/Himika Bose)

Highway Love 2 plot

(Contains spoilers) If you saw Season 1 of 'Highway Love', you know that Kartik went off to Barcelona at the end with the understanding that Inaaya will wrap up her events business and move to Spain to be with him. Season 2 picks up from where Season 1 left off - Kartik is in Spain, and Kartik and Inaaya try to keep the spark alive over video chat till Inaaya moves to Spain too. Things change when Inaaya's brother Varun meets with a car accident, and she decides to stay back in Mumbai a while longer to nurse him back to health. Helping her in this—you guessed it—is Sahil in his pink nurse's uniform.

If Season 1 left a few details about Sahil and Meera's lives out, Season 2 makes up for this. We learn that Sahil is a nurse, and he loves his job. Meera is an HR professional, and likely makes more money than he. Their relationship is unchanged from Season 1, with her craziness fitting his perfectly. The proof of the pudding is in their unique Haldi, Sangeet and wedding in the finale of 'Highway Love 2'.

Varun's character, and life, are fleshed out more in this season, as he falls for someone he hooked up with and then ghosted years ago. It's a sweet, if not central, track in a story that's all about love.

Kartik and Inaaya's story sees more ups and downs, as Inaaya tries to deal with Kartik's silences and insecurities. There are other people who fall in love with them, and that complicates things. The lead couple's bond, however, is tested farther than either of them can stand. At one point, Inaaya spells out her Gen Z angst—in so many words—to a bandmate. Everything about my life, she tells him, was my choice, and yet it's all a tangled mess.

What's clear at the end of Highway Love Season 2 is that there will have to be a Season 3 or at least an epilogue to season 2 if we are to find out if Kartik and Inaaya can break this destructive pattern and be together in the end.

Of course, there have been shows like this in the past. 'Permanent Roommates' comes to mind especially, as Kartik and Inaaya become live-in partner this season. But there have been an equal number of disasters on this route, with poor writing compounded by poorer direction and acting. 'Highway Love' steers clear of those for the second straight season.

Highway Love Season 2 writer, director, cast performances

Writers Chiranjeevi Bajpai, Chris George, Siddharth Hirwe and Riya Poojary, and director Sahir Raza have done well to stay on their chosen path in Season 2. This season, as Kartik and Inaaya's love story progresses, some of the issues that were voiced in season 1 come back to haunt the couple. If in Season 1 Kartik can't believe someone like Inaaya could be his girlfriend, in season 2, the same disbelief turns into an insecurity that threatens to ruin their relationship. Having said that, Highway Love is a light romance drama. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary or awful happens to this couple or any of the young couples in the show, for that matter.

The writers also manage to work each character's motivations into the show: we are told why Kartik continues to work with his business partner Nidhi (Himika Bose) even though she has feelings for him. Why Inaaya (and Varun) is commitment-phobic, and how Kartik's inability to say what he's feeling and thinking affects them both.

Gayatri Bhardwaj is perfectly cast as Inaaya. Her confident, almost strident, act offer a contrast to Kartik's geeky musings about fusing cockroach exoskeletons and AI to avert the end of days. The Mamaearth product placement continues in this Season, with Meera also roped in to sell lipsticks and eye makeup. It's a bit odd, but perhaps not as odd as the Pilgrim shampoo ads in the first season of the free-to-air show—these ads featured either Gayatri Bhardwaj or Rashmika Mandanna and Manish Koirala. The latter dressed, strangely, in Professor McGonagall-esque robes, hat and broom!

Coming back to the show, Ritvik Sahore is consistent and consistently likeable as the weird geeky guy with the best luck in terms of finding and keeping good friends close. His angry outburst in the season finale should give Inaaya pause if there is a third season, but perhaps the writers could work that wrinkle out too.

Special credit is due here to the casting directors of the show. Apart from Kartik, Inaaya, Sahil, Meera and Varun, this season saw the addition of Nidhi and Rishi (Rohan Khurana), among others. These are people we've seen in OTT shows and web series before, and their addition here reinforces the young-love Gen Z vein this show seems to have aimed for from the get-go. Plus, Gupta with his tall-and-broad frame embodies the character of Rishi as someone who walks through the world with an ease that puts nerdy Kartik on the backfoot. His equation with Inaaya, whom who christens Enu and praises as a hidden talent, offers just the rub to bring out Kartik's angry and insecure streak. It's the perfect example of casting for the part rather than casting well-known actors and hoping they do not overshadow the character.

One final word on the free-to-air status of the show: if this is the show Amazon MX Player wants to stream for free to, ostensibly, rope in more subscribers, then perhaps that speaks to some extent of the confidence the platform has in it too?

Highway Love 2 trailer

Released on September 27, the trailer for Highway Love Season 2 has crossed 10 million views. The show dropped on Amazon MX Player on October 10. See the trailer here: