Breathe Season 2: Into The Shadows – Episode 1 Recap & Review

Papa’s Princess

After a 2 year hiatus, Breathe is back with a brand new story and a few familiar faces along the way to tie everything together. The first episode sets the scene for this 12-episode series to follow but whether the show can keep up this same level of momentum however, remains to be seen.

Episode 1 of Breathe: Into The Shadows begins with medical student Gayatri walking home through the foggy, dimly lit streets. With her footsteps echoing ominously off the pavement, she senses someone drawing near to her. Unfortunately this man grabs her and races away, leaving her medical notes strewn across the ground.

Meanwhile, 21 year old Chandri is labelled as a psycho killer after brutally murdering 3 family members. In court, her schizophrenic behaviour is called into question by doctors, concluding that she’s not actually mentally ill.

Family-man Avinash is our main protagonist here though and much like Danny in the first season, he has a good relationship with both his wife Abha and daughter Siya. After reading the paper, seeing news about missing college student Gayarti, he takes Siya to her birthday party.

Despite dropping her off and believing she’s safe, Siya is approached by that same shadowy man we saw at the start of the series. When Avinash arrives to pick her up again, she’s nowhere to be seen. The police inevitably get involved too and find Siya’s lion mask in the road and balloons blocking the cameras.

Believing there may be a ransom call coming in soon, the worried parents head back home but as night turns to day they take to the media instead and give an impassioned plea to try and save her.

With Missing posters up around Delhi and the video circulated around India, Avinash and Abha start to drift apart after 5 months of fruitless searching.

At the police station, Avinash talks to the other officers about the direness of the situation. Avinash struggles to hold his anxiety and fear in, telling Tejinder and Jaiprakash that the killer may have messed up and prepares for the worst.

As we skip ahead again, it’s now been 9 months since Siya has gone missing and inside Nashik Prison Kabir gets into a fight with one of the guards.

Back home, Avinash receives a package with an ominous note reading “How far will you go to save your daughter?” and an accompanying video message from Siya. She’s still alive! Even more surprising, Gayatri is there too with the kidnapper.

In order to keep her that way and get her back, the killer tasks Avinash with killing a man named Pritpal Bharaj. Only, there’s a limited amount of insulin left for Siya and this puts them in a really difficult position. Tick. Tock.

The second season of Breathe comes out swinging with an episode that sets the tone and mood for the story ahead. Instead of Danny fighting to move his child up the donor list, it looks like we’re instead getting a killer forcing Avinash into these horrible murders.

Right now the reasoning for this is unknown but there’s certainly enough here to whet the appetite and keep watching.