Stree 2 is currently enjoying a successful run at the box office. The film features Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor in lead roles. In addition to the original cast of the movie, the sequel also introduced a new villain in the franchise - Sarkata. In an interview with PTI, writer Niren Bhatt revealed how all these fantastical characters in Dinesh Vijan's horror comedy universe represent something about society. He said, "Some people complain that there is a lot of humour but less horror or vice versa but these are not horror films where actual ghosts are haunting people. All our ghosts are fallacies of our society. Sarkata is the most warped form of patriarchy. Stree is the symbol of matriarchy, she is not a witch. Bhediya is the protector of the forests. We have designed these characters in a certain way. We are not talking about hocus pocus or spirits out of the blue."
In an interaction with Bollywood Hungama, Niren Bhatt shared how the idea of Sarkata as a character came into being. He said, "The destroyed idols in the cave where they cut the choti of Stree in the first film has her backstory through murals saying that she had a lover when she was a sex worker. The lover was shown headless. Now whether the head was cut because it was a destroyed idol, or someone had cut is not even mentioned in the first film. But after looking at it we thought that we can make a monster out of him whose head is missing.”
He added, “But he can't be Stree's lover because he was killed and why would he go against Stree and become a danger for others? Then I came with the idea that he has to be the person who killed Stree and her lover and became responsible for making her the Stree. That's how he became the symbol of patriarchy.”
While Stree was about a female spirit who suffered injustice during her mortal existence, the sequel centres on Sarkata, a headless villain who has a connection with the title character. The original cast of Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Abhishek Banerjee, Pankaj Tripathi, and Aparshakti Khurana returns for Amar Kaushik-directed Stree 2.
