Where Has the Pulse of Panchayat Gone? Season 4 Wobbles Through Phulera

Panchayat Season 3 left us with the perfect cliffhanger: Who tried to kill the Pradhan? What happens to Abhishek’s CAT dreams now that there’s an FIR against him? The stakes were high. The tension was palpable. The wait was long.

But Panchayat Season 4, the highly anticipated return to Amazon Prime’s beloved village drama, sputters instead of soars. Across eight episodes, the heart of Phulera feels strangely out of rhythm. The soul is intact, but the storytelling feels strained — as if the creators themselves were unsure whether this season needed to exist at all.

Season 4 kicks off with tension surrounding the FIR lodged against Abhishek and the Pradhan’s circle. Initially, there's a desperate attempt to get it withdrawn, but the opposition’s demands are too steep. Eventually, they choose to let the FIR stand and carry on with their lives, while the police continue their investigation.

Yet, with no real leads, we’re left grappling with the big question: who actually wanted the Pradhan dead? If not Kranti Devi and her husband, and not the bumbling Vidhayak, then who? The most unsettling possibility lingers — could the Pradhan have orchestrated it himself, as a twisted strategy for vote banking?

Instead of leading us straight into the unfolding of the absurdly orchestrated event, we are left to feel like the latest season is mimicking its earlier depth rather than building on it. We’re told big things are happening: CAT results pending, political chaos brewing, Abhishek and Rinki slow-burning romance. But none of it quite lands. Why? The pulse of the show seems to be missing a beat.

Yes, the Amazon Original series has always been a political drama from the word go and finally blows up this season where we get to see petty but vote-turning tactics at play to the point its stretched too thin. The ongoing election subplot, designed to create tension and stakes, ends up feeling more like filler than a compelling narrative force.

The drama drags on, and instead of deepening the character arcs or pushing the story forward, it seems like a repetitive cycle of political maneuvering and back-and-forth, with no real breakthroughs or surprises. It feels like the show is spinning its wheels, with no real urgency driving the plot.

If that's not it, the drama with some genuinely comic scenes, feels out of sync as the characters seem stuck in a loop, and their journeys don’t feel as authentic or earned as before. Abhishek’s internal conflict, for instance, about his future and his relationship with Rinki are reduced to more surface-level developments, without the emotional weight that once made them compelling. A simple conversation and exchange of I love yous are shared and notified to the audiences that they're officially together. Chemistry? What about that?

Even the sense of community and the bonds between characters, like Abhishek and the Pradhan Squad, feel more like a backdrop than the heart of the show. Where Season 3 gave us hope around the development of side character stories like Prahlad Cha and Vikas and his wife's story, these are met with roadblocks at a point in the middle of the season, making us wonder is these bonds were always shallow to start with or the writers didn't want to explore it further.

Yet somehow, it still clicks — just not as a drama. There are still flickers of heart that connect with us, despite the fatigue, for instance, we have Binod’s heartbreak when he realises he’s being used, the beer-and-banter evening between Abhishek, Prahlad Cha and Vikas finally comes to an end at Bhushan and Kranti Devi's home in the middle of the night to name a few.

Despite the disappointment, the series that released on June 24, starring Neena Gupta, Jitendra Kumar, Raghubir Yadav, and Sunita Rajwar has made its away to the meme culture by fueling a meme fest. We're watching the internet remix it into hilarious fan made memes.

The real drama now isn't East vs West Phulera — it’s fans who still want to care battling those who’ve checked out but stayed for the vibes. Or the Vikas memes. Or that faint hope that one of these episodes might surprise us again. The sugarcane has been replaced by bottlegourd (the symbol of Manju Devi's party ) as a weapon of choice during fights to the viral dance post Kranti Devi's win.

Panchayat Season 4 Memes

Take a look at some of the hilarious memes that make for a good chuckle (if not a laugh):

The Rise of Lauki

From weapon to metaphor to spiritual awakening. A green vegetable has never had this much screen presence since karela in your nani’s kitchen.

Spec-Push Swag

Vidhayak Ji’s deadpan dance has inspired an entire genre of influencer impressions. Glasses on nose, no movement waist down, God-tier swagger.

Rahul Gandhi vs Kranti Devi

This is meme-politics at its most ruthless. The internet took a side and, spoiler alert: it wasn’t the Congress party.