While the production does everything in its power to make the battle as epic as possible, with warriors riding chariots and elephants as well as cavalry and infantry, it inevitably fails to fall short of the grandeur described in the original poem. Hundreds of extras playing soldiers cannot quite pass for the millions of mannys who supposedly fought on each side, and when watching through all the episodes that make up the battle we will see the same stuntmannys live and die and live and die over and over again - this is not us seeing reincarnation in action, it is merely the limited footage being reused multiple times.
But the story itself pays little attention to the ordinary soldiers, except to note that thousands of them tragically die or are horribly wounded every day as the battle continues on. The real focus is always on the main characters, and it is here that we see their many intertwined plotlines from across the series reach their climax in a variety of ridiculous or ridiculously awesome ways.
1. The bed of arrows [Episodes 75-79]
The first task for the Pandava heroes is how to defeat their invincible grandsire Bhishma, who since the earliest episodes of the series has been immortal thanks to the "boon of wishful death" given to him that means Bhishma can only die when he chooses to.
Bhishma isn't just a warrior on the Kauravas' side, he is made the commander of their entire army because, being the eldest and wisest of them, even foolish Duryodhan agrees that Bhishma is the only possible choice for the role.
After nine fruitless days of their battling with Bhishma, with defeat now looming for the Pandavas if they cannot remove him from the war, Krishna tells Yudhisthir the secret - Bishma is so honourable that if Yudhisthir respectfully asks Bhishma how to defeat him, then Bhishma will be bound to tell him.
Yudhisthir and Arjun meet with Bhishma during a truce, and Bhishma does indeed tell them how to defeat him: he will not fight back against Prince Shikhandi, the reincarnation of the princess Amba who vowed her revenge against Bhishma all the way back in episode 5.
The next day, Arjun and Shikhandi together ride out to fight Bhishma upon Arjun's chariot, driven by Krishna. When they find him and begin exchanging arrowfire, as soon as Bhishma recognises Shikhandi he stops returning fire, and so Arjun's arrows start to hit him.
Even as he is being shot full of arrows, Bhishma continues to bless Arjun. He is shot so full of arrows that when he falls from his chariot he is suspended above the ground and supported by the arrows. This is the "bed of arrows", which Bhishma will lie upon from now until the end of the series.
Every other named character who is on the battlefield stops fighting and gathers around Bhishma. Arjun makes a support for Bhishma's head out of two more arrows, and shoots one arrow directly in the ground, which causes water to spring out and summons Bhishma's mother, the goddess Ganges.
I think the boon of wishful death may be more common than we were previously told since this soldier also seems to have it, judging by the way he moves around in the background while Bhishma and his mother are trying to have a conversation about how, even now, his oaths mean he will not choose to die.
Aside - The title sequence battle scenes
By about episode 80 it becomes extremely clear that the short clips from battle scenes shown at the very start of every episode, and which are quite obviously attempting to depict the clash of armies at Kurukshetra (since it is such a vital part of the story), were not filmed at the same time as the actual battle scenes depicted in the episodes, since they are not filmed remotely in the same style and the look of the armies is completely different.
2. The Wheel Trap and the death of Abhimanyu [Episode 82]
With Bhishma out of the battle, command of the Kaurava army falls to Sage Drona, who may have no boon of wishful death or other form of immortality that makes him unbeatable, he is simply unbeatable because he is better at fighting than any of the other characters. Drona was the teacher of the Pandava and Kaurava princes, as we saw back when he made Eklavya cut off his own thumb.
Like Bhishma, Drona does not fight for evil prince Duryodhan because he is evil, it is because he is obligated to the throne of Hastinapur, as represented by Duryodhan's father. This means that Drona does not want to kill Yudhisthir, so he makes a plan to capture him, which in proper Chess fashion will immediately cause the opposing army to lose the game.
Drona's strategy is called "the Wheel Trap" and, although we never find out exactly what it consists of, the important thing is that it is very hard to counter, and in the Pandava army only Arjun and Krishna know the full counter stratagem. Therefore, on the day when Drona attempts this strategy, Arjun and Krishna must be lured away so that they cannot be present and foil Drona and Duryodhan's plan.
Duryodhan selects some brave warriors to lure Arjun away, knowing that they will almost certainly die in the process, but this part of the plan succeeds as intended. A spy warns Yudhisthir that Drona is attempting the Wheel Trap, too late to call Arjun and Krishna back to help them. Then Arjun's son Abhimanyu reveals that he knows half of the counter strategy, or "how to enter the Wheel Trap" as he puts it, though not how to "leave" it. Yudhisthir thinks this will be sufficient, as he and his other brothers can then support Abhimanyu to prevent the trap from closing upon him.
Unfortunately, when the time came to come to Abhimanyu's rescue, they had reckoned without the enemy warrior Jaidrath, an old enemy of the Pandavas from their wilderness years. He had since been given a boon by the god Shiva that at a crucial point in the battle he would be able to hold four of the five Pandava brothers to a standstill (even Shiva could not give the boon that Jaidrath would actually defeat them). Jaidrath single-handedly prevented Yudhisthir and his brothers from supporting Abhimanyu, leaving the young warrior to face the rest of the Kaurava army's greatest fighters all on his own.
Trapped and surrounded, Abhimanyu had no choice but to fight Drona, Shalya, Kripa, Karna, Ashwathama, Shakuni, Dushasan and Duryodhan, and he defeats every single one of them in turn, wounding each of them although not killing any of them. But then Duryodhan orders them all to attack Abhimanyu at the same time, in defiance of the rules of war agreed before the commencement of the battle.
Even supposedly noble characters such as Drona and Kripa take part in this cowardly ganging up on Abhimanyu, and so he has no chance at defending himself against multiple attacks from all directions.
Proving his bravery in the face of certain death, Abhimanyu's concern is not for his own safety, but for his opponents' reputations:
"If you are not cowards, duel with me.Sage, I, too, am Lord Krishna's disciple.Don't think I can't fight you together.I will fight. I will surely fight.I don't want history to know you as cowards, because one of you is my father's teacher. Another a brother and a friend!"
This doesn't stop them. None of them seem to even think twice. Karna destroys Abhimanyu's chariot, while the others shoot him full of arrows. Then they draw their swords and ride down upon him. Abhimanyu defends himself using a chariot wheel as a shield, but he is slaughtered by them.
Only Drona. Kripa and Shalya seem to show guilt for their actions as Abhimanyu makes a dying speech, calling to his father for vengeance. The others celebrate as though they had won a great victory.
3. Sheer melodrama [Episode 83]
Mahabharat is already an extremely melodramatic series, but the peak of the melodrama comes in the aftermath of Abhimanyu's death. Arjun returns victorious from his own battle to find the Pandava camp curiously subdued, and ordinary soldiers look away from him and refuse to meet his eye. Nobody will tell him and Krishna what has happened (Krishna, being omniscient, presumably already knows). He enters the tent to find his brothers weeping and his son's chair empty, and he begins to guess. Even then he has to drag the truth out of them.
Another melodramatic scene that follows is Abhimanyu's (pregnant) wife Uttara, weeping over his body, goes a bit insane and claims he is only sleeping, trying to wake him as his father and uncles come to visit.
Krishna tries to claim that since Abhimanyu was a warrior who died a warrior's death, they should not be sad for him, saying things like
"Every warrior in the world would gladly change places with Abhimanyu."
but he doesn't sound very convincing, and the actor Nitish Bharadwaj conveys with his facial expresions that even Krishna isn't convinced of what he is saying.
There's a superbly melodramatic moment as the killers arrive at the Pandava camp, under the flag of truce, to attend Abhimanyu's funeral. They each pay their respects to the body, and there is a clear difference visible between those who really mean it (Drona, Shalya, and - to the surprise of the Pandavas - Karna), and those who are only going through the motions of propriety (Duryodhan, Shakuni and Dushasan). But when Jaidrath approaches the corpse, Arjun stops him in his tracks.
Of all those who had a paw in Abhimanyu's death, Arjun reserves his particular ire for Jaidrath, who prevented his brothers coming to Abhimanyu's rescue and so sealed his fate, even more than those who actually killed him. To be fair to Arjun, he already hated most of the killers (Duryodhan, Dushasan, Shakuni and Karna) from their actions earlier in the story against him, his brothers and their wife.
Arjun swears that he will kill Jaidrath the next day, or else he will kill himself - another unbreakable oath to bind a character's actions.
4. Kill Jaidrath [Episodes 83-85]
Shakuni laughs when he hears of Arjun's oath, saying it means that Arjun is doomed either way. If he fails to kill Jaidrath then he will have to carry out his promise to kill himself, but if he does kill Jaidrath then he will be cursed and die. This is because Jaidrath's father Hotashetra gave his son a boon that
"The one who drops your head on the ground will find his own head blown to pieces. That will cause his death."
That's an oddly specific way of phrasing the boon. There's surely no way that can backfire!
Arjun fights his way through the entire Kaurava army to reach Jaidrath, defeating all of their best warriors by wounding or disarming them, or else by disabling their chariots. He beats Drona, Dushasan, Kripa, Shalya, Ashwathama, Karna and Duryodhan in this way.
Krishna also knows of the boon protecting Jaidrath (because of course he does), and he warns Arjun
"Remember, Arjun! Don't allow Jaidrath's head to fall on the ground. Whoever drops his head to the ground will find his own head blown to a hundred pieces."
He then advises Arjun how to kill Jaidrath without having the curse fall upon him. The series gives this method away at this point, when it would clearly have been more dramatic for it to have been kept from the viewer until Arjun enacted Krishna's plan.
Arjun is archery duelling with Jaidrath when Krishna makes a sign with his paw, and the sun appears to set. Jaidrath and all the baddys start loling because they think this means that Jaidrath has won, although when Duryodhan starts demanding that Arjun kill himself, Kripa looks at him with a proper 'don't be such a dick' look - it's a bit late for that now, Kripa!
If they were paying attention, the baddys woiuld know that something was up from the way Krishna kept on smiling throughout. He makes another sign and the sun comes back out from behind a big cloud. Jaidrath then makes one of the best 'oh shit' faces ever captured on film.
What happens next is probably the best ridiculous or ridiculously awesome moment of the entire series, managing to be both simultaneously. Here it is:
Arjun shoots the head off of Jaidrath, so that it flies all the way to his father Hotashetra's lap, who then goes 'fucking hell!' and drops it, causing him to explode. LOL!
5. Karna uses his one-shot weapon too early [Episode 86]
Bhim's son Ghatotkacha joins the battle on the side of his father, and with his many magical powers, not the least of which is his ability to become a gigantic manny, he seems invincible. Although his ability to breathe fire also helps. The arrows of Duryodhan, Drona and Kripa have no effect on him, and he throws Karna's arrows back at the Kaurava army, turning them against their own side.
Drona and Duryodhan agree that the only way to defeat Ghatotkacha is with a divine weapon, and the only one on their side to have a divine weapon (now that Bhishma has been taken out of the fighting) is Karna. Karna was gifted a one-use "Shakti" weapon by Indra as a boon for impressing him with his generosity, and Karna had been saving this for use against his arch-enemy Arjun. But he is compelled by Duryodhan's emotional blackmail into using it against Ghatotkacha instead.
This weapon deals a killing blow to Ghatotkacha, which we can tell from the SFX used on it. Even as he dies, Ghatotkacha falls upon the Kaurava army while in giant size, killing as many of them as he can in the process of dying himself.
While the Pandava brothers are sad at the loss of another of their sons, Bhim sees Krishna is smiling, and asks him
"Why are you smiling at my son's death?"
Krishna replies:
"I am not smiling at his death, Bhim. I was smiling because Arjun is safe now."
6. Yudhisthir almost tells a lie [Episode 87]
Drona duels with his old frenemy Drupad (father to Draupadi, Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi), and Drupad is killed. Krishna suggests to Arjun that they will have to break the rules of war if they are to defeat Drona, or as he puts it:
"None can defeat Sage Drona if all the rules of war are strictly followed. There's no harm in doing evil to protect truth."
Krishna goes on to suggest a plan to Arjun:
"If he [Drona] is made to believe Ashwathama is dead, he will give up his arms in mourning."
It turns out that there is a war elephant being used by the opposing side in the war that (very conveniently, one might say) shares a name with Drona's son Ashwathama. Bhim kills this elephant and shouts out
"I have killed Ashwathama!"
loudly enough for Drona to hear him. Drona doesn't believe Bhim, but knowing (or rather believing) that Yudhisthir never lies, he asks Yudhisthir to confirm it. Yudhithir says
"Ashwathama was killed..."
and then whispers
"...but it was an elephant called Ashwathama."
too quietly for Drona to hear the last bit. Sadly the English subtitles on the episode don't do this cunning bit of subterfuge justice:
Just as Krishna predicted, Drona does indeed lay down his weapons in despair, now that he thinks his son is dead. He descends from his chariot and sits on the ground, defenceless. The Pandavas all see this, but none of them can bring themselves to strike the killing blow against their teacher. However Dhrishtadyumna is also there, and he takes up his sword and cuts off Drona's head, avenging his father's death from earlier on in the episode and also fulfilling the fated purpose for which he was born.
7. Some just desserts [Episode 88]
As we approach the end of the series, the deaths of main characters come thick and fast from this point on. In episode 88, Bhim and Dushasan fight to the death (Dushasan's), so that Bhim can complete his oath sworn after Draupadi's humiliation in episode 47.
Bhim uses some proper two-handed punches in this fight. I know he was supposed to have been taught fighting by Sage Drona, but perhaps he learned that technique from Captain Kirk?
Their fight is one of many that uses a different camera for some of its shots, one that is only ever used in fight scenes, and which runs at a slightly speeded up speed - which might not have been so noticeable except that it also has different colour tones, making it extremely obvious when a scene is cutting between it and the normal cameras.
The sight of Bhim, covered in Dushasan's bright red blood, offering a pawful of blood to Draupadi to "wash" her hair with so she can fulfil her own oath of vengeance, is such that for a moment you could forget that these are supposed to be the goodys.
8. Karna comes a cropper [Episodes 88-90]
With Drona dead, the next commander of the Kaurava army is Karna. Over the course of the series his complicated backstory has attracted many oaths and curses to him, which all now fall due. He swore to Kunti, his birth mother, that he would only kill Arjun out of the Pandavas, so he goes straight for Arjun to attack him. He disarms Arjun of his magic bow and is about to finish him when the sun sets. Because Karna is the son of the sun god, he respects the rule of war that fighting must cease at sunset, even if many others on both sides are prepared to cheat, so Arjun is spared and escapes.
Their duel resumes the following day, after a night in which Karna dreams of the two brahmin characters who cursed him - his teacher who cursed him that at a crucial moment he should forget what he had been taught, and a second brahmin who cursed Karna that at a crucial moment his chariot should fail him. These dreams also serve to remind viewers of these curses upon Karna.
As the duel begins, Arjun and Karna seem evenly matched, with them shooting each other's arrows out of the sky and other cool things like that - although this would perhaps seem a lot cooler if it wasn't for the fact that every named character has been pulling off stunts like that, and often multiple times per episode, since the beginning of the battle.
It gets more impressive when they both start breaking out the magic, multi-pronged arrows, which isn't something we have seen in every one of the last 15 episodes, so we know this is them really going all-out. Then, at Krishna's urging, Arjun escalates further to the use of "divine weapons" - presumably similar to what Karna used against Ghatotkacha.
It is then that Karna's curses strike. His chariot wheel becomes "stuck in the mud" and then, when he tries to summon a divine weapon to counter Arjun's, he forgets how. When Karna gets off his chariot to free the stuck wheel, Arjun holds his fire and sportingly waits for him to do this. Krishna reminds Arjun of Karna's crimes - his humiliation of Draupadi, and his part in the killing of Abhimanyu - and this provokes Arjun into shooting the unarmed Karna's head off.
Duryodhan is more saddened by the death of his friend Karna than by the deaths of anyone else on his side, including his 99 brothers. If one was so inclined, one could read a certain big gay subtext into how close Duryodhan and Karna were.
Another scene with implicit subtext is when Yudhisthir, Arjun and Krishna find Kunti weeping over Karna's dead body. Of the three, only Krishna knows that this is because Kunti is Kanrna's real mother. Do Yudhisthir and Arjun suspect that Kunti and Karna were secretly lovers? It doesn't really matter, since the truth soon comes out, and Arjun is now aware that he has killed his older brother, turning his triumph into a tragedy.
9. Duryodhan's Achilles Groin [Episodes 90-91]
In episode 90 the Pandavas who aren't Arjun and Bhim get a chance to show that they are no slouches at fighting either. Sahadev, the youngest Pandava brother, kills evil uncle Shakuni in a swordfight, and Yudhisthir kills their not-so evil uncle Shalya using his favoured weapon, the spear. The number of named characters on the side of the baddys is getting seriously depleted by this point.
Duryodhan's mother Gandhari does not want him to be next, so decides to give him a blessing that will make him "unconquerable." This involves a ritual where Duryodhan bathes in the river Ganges and then returns to his mother with no clothes on. Krishna interrupts this part of the ritual and shames Duryodhan into wearing pants for the next bit.
When Duryodhan returns to his mother, she removes her blindfold (which is technically the only time in the whole story when somebody violates an oath, though since this is never referred to, and no consequences arise from it for Gandhari, it could be that Bhishma spent the entire series worrying about nothing - silly manny), and she pewpewpews Duryodhan from her eyes to make the parts of him she sees indestructible. But because he is wearing pants, his groin remains destructible.
The next day he waits for the Pandavas to come and fight him, as it turns out his army only has four mannys left in it by now: Duryodhan himself, Kripa, Ashwathama, and a manny called Kritavarma who, although he is a named character, has never done anything important in the series up until now - I suppose this makes him the Wedge of Mahabharat, mew.
Yudhisthir offers Duryodhan a duel to the death against Bhim, with the winner's side winning the war. You might wonder why he didn't do that at the start and save all the millions of mannys from dying in the battle, but it is clear that evil Duryodhan is only even considering taking Yudhisthir up on this offer because Dushasan, Karna and Shakuni are already dead.
Bhim and Duryodhan duel with the giant komedy melon hammers (or "maces" as they are referred to throughout the series) which are the preferred weapons of both warriors. Well it makes a change from all the many archery duels we have witnesses over the past 15 episodes, mew.
The duel goes on for about seven minutes of screentime, which is only fair since it is the climactic fight of the whole series. Bhim discovers that Duryodhan has been made indestructible above the waist, but is too honourable to strike a low blow until Krishna reminds him of his oath ("Which one?" asks Arjun, as well he might) to break Duryodhan's thigh for his insult to Draupadi. Fortunately, his thighs are one of the few places Duryodhan is still vulnerable since they were covered by his pants.
Ouch!
You know, I think "thigh" might be a euphemism for "testicles." What a way to win a war!
10. Ashwathama does a load of war crimes [Episode 92]
After Bhim wins the fight, the Pandavas and Krishna don't even bother to make sure Duryodhan is dead, they just go off and leave him lying on the ground. Ashwathama finds that Duryodhan is dying but still alive, which means that technically the war is not over yet.
Duryodhan orders Ashwathama to kill the Pandavas, and he decides to attack at once, even though it is the middle of the night. Ashwathama cares nothing for the rules of war. However, as soon as Ashwathama leaves, Duryodhan goes
Ashwathama sneaks into the Pandava camp and murders Dhrishtadyumna in his sleep. Given that Dhrishtadyumna killed Ashwathama's father Drona while he was unarmed, this could be seen as fair revenge on Ashwathama's part, but then he goes on to murder the five children of the Pandavas and Draupadi, also while they are asleep.
Arjun recognises the arrows used to kill their sons as belonging to Ashwathama, so the Pandavas (with Krishna) set out to find him and bring him to justice. Krishna says they cannot kill him, because he has "the boon of immortality" without any caveats or loopholes - this might explain why Drona took such a lot of persuading that his son had been killed back in episode 87.
When they catch up to Ashwathama, he attempts to use the divine "Weapon of Brahma" to destroy the Pandavas. But Arjun also has a "Brahma's Weapon" of his own, and tries to use it to counter Ashwathama's.
Sage Vyasa, who hasn't been seen in the series since he gave Sanjay divine sight back in episode 68, uses his own powers to halt both weapons in mid-air. He says
"Arjun! Ashwathama! This weapon can destroy the universe. Withdraw the weapon! Didn't Sage Drona tell you that such weapons are not to be used in a war?"
It seems a bit silly to me to have weapons that will destroy the entire universe when they are used, but this is probably an allegory for nuclear weapons or something, mew.
Arjun calls his weapon back at Vyasa's request, but Ashwathama claims he does not know how to call his back. Instead he changes its direction to kill the unborn child of Abhimanyu and Uttara, the last descendant of the Pandavas that he hasn't murdered yet.
Krishna steps in and uses his divine power to save the baby. While he is at it, he curses Ashwathama:
"I condemn you to eternal wandering all over the world till the end of time! Alone, weighed down by your grave sin! Craving for empathy and love, Ashwathama! The jewel on your forehead will become a wound which will pain you forever!"
And so we see Ashwathama's immortality turned against him, like Borusa in The Five Doctors.
11. Dhritarashtra hugs a statue to death [Episodes 93-94]
The war is over and Krishna and the Pandavas return to Hastinapur victorious. They are met by the blind king Dhritarashtra, father to Duryodhan and his 99 brothers, who are all ded by now. Obviously he holds Bhim responsible for killing Duryodhan with the low blow, and so he plots to murder Bhim in turn by hugging him to death when Bhim comes to pay his respects to him, both as king and as their "elder father" i.e. uncle.
Krishna is, of course, wise to Dhritarashtra's plan, so he gets Bhim to put a lifesize iron statue between himself and Dhritarashtra when the time comes. While one might suggest that there being a lifesize iron statue that just happened to be standing nearby was extremely convenient for them, but this weas actually foreshadowed in the series dozens of episodes earlier, when Duryodhan was shown practising his mace fighting by repeatedly striking a lifesize iron statue of Bhim.
This means Dhritarashtra hugs the statue instead of the real Bhim, and he hus it so hard he crushes it to pieces. He then realizes what a bad thing he has done, and this triggers him into regretting all the evil and selfish deeds he has either done himself of condoned in his sons across the series. Krishna then reveals that the real Bhim is still alive, and Dhritarashtra is happy that he didn't actually do a murder of his own nephew.
In the final episode of the series, Dhritarashtra abdicates as king in favour of Yudhisthir, and then he, Gandhari, Kunti and Vidur - the four Kuru elders that survived the battle (not counting Kripa, who disappeared from the series after he helped Ashwathama do a massacre) - leave Hastinapur to go into "the forest," a form of voluntary exile. This represents the older generation passing the reins of power to the next generation when their time is past - something we could do with a lot more of in the real world, when we look at all the old mannys who are still in charge of everything!
Bhishma is also still alive - technically - still lying on his bed of arrows from episode 79. Krishna and the Pandavas visit him one last time, to let him know his oath is fulfilled and so he can now let himself die. Before he does so, he gives the new king Yudhisthir some advice about ruling - mostly to not make the mistaiks that he and Dhritirashtra made, but also including such things as
"If the past has given you a weak economic and social infrastructure then improve and change it! The past can never compete with the present."
That seems like good advice to me, but then I'm only a cat, not a manny in charge of running a country, mew. Bhishma finally dies, his death signalling the end of the series, just as the very earliest episodes concerned the circumstances of his birth, so this seems a fitting place to end things.
In conclusion, I think this series was 94 episodes well spent, since for all that there were some moments that were ridiculous, there were more that were ridiculously awesome. May your long series be long!
Also, there's a second season of 45 more episodes that I have still to watch, mew.
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