The Believers will return to action in season two, and don’t give you an easy ride when it does. This thriller series from Netflix continues to improve upon the first season and leaves its characters with nothing to guard their emotions with. The Believers sees Game venture into the dark side because the stakes will be higher, and the people in power will be tougher and meaner than before.
Where Is The Buzz spoke with only Pachara Chirativat, who plays the character Game, about the heavier emotions experienced in season two, the moments the actors almost shattered, and why the conclusion made Pachara think the character had lost something irreplaceable forever.
“The Script Left Me With Longing and Sadness”
Pachara remembers reading the script for the second season and realizing that this part of the story was going to be unforgiving:
He reveals that season two is dark, but it’s also complex. The relationships in season two are much more complicated, the bonds are tighter, and the emotional investment is higher right off the bat.
The thing that impressed him most was the greater detail involved. The relationships within the family, the political pressure, and the delicate balance among Win, Dear, and Game are all made clear. When he was through reading, he didn’t feel excitement. Instead, he experienced longing and sadness.
“It’s more vivid,” he continues. “By the end of the reading, I felt longing and sadness. That was my honest reaction.”
This emotional insight is evident in the film.
The Scenes That Nearly Broke Them
Season two tries to pull Game through emotional struggles, but for Pachara, it was more than a scene that traumatized him.
“It was the ending.”
The scenes in the hospitals and flashbacks lingered in his mind throughout the entire shooting process. Pachara believed that he owed the trio a proper farewell, and this applied to Dear in particular.
One day is particularly significant. It is the day the characters receive the news of Dear’s death from the police.
This day was unlike any other day in the sense that there was no casual talk and no banter. Pachara and James Teeradon Supapunpinyo bore the responsibility in silence.
After the shoot, they left the crew and went to the car park to process their emotions. It was then that James vomited because things were just too much.
“It was brutal for us,” Pachara reveals. “We just wanted to make it good. Make it right.”
The flashback scene was even more challenging to watch. This was the only instance in the season in which Win, Game, and Dear were in the same setting, speaking to each other the way they used to. Pachara wants the flashback to be more extended and include more instances, much like the flashback itself.
Instead, it left him with a painful realization.
“When I think about that scene, I feel something forever lost.”
Twelve Years of Friendship Made It Hurt More
The Believers has always contained the emotional truth in a relationship involving Win, Game, and Dear. Pachara attributes the importance of the scenes to the actual relationships that occurred off-screen.
He has known James for twelve years, since he was about twenty. This meant that he and James had a long friendship and working relationship, and thus their scenes already had an emotional shortcut. There was no need to struggle with grief and loyalty in their relationship because those emotions already existed.
The relationship with Ally Achiraya Nitibhon developed naturally because they worked on the series for four to five years. Off-set, they hang out and behave like a real family.
This gave the emotional moments more punch.
“If I just think about something emotional about them, I could get in the zone right away,” Pachara continues. “We really care about each other.”
All that attention comes through in the film as a multi-layered mix of grief, love, guilt, and helplessness. The scenes ring true because they’re built on genuine affection, and that makes the emotional experience feel real, too.
Faith, Corruption, and Survival at Any Cost
The second season propels the storyline in frightful directions. It begins as a lucrative merit-based trading scheme and eventually metamorphoses into a much more perilous activity.
Win, Game, and Dear experience success at Phumram Temple, but find themselves in a nightmare when Ae, a corrupt politician, convinces them to undertake a massive merit project at Nong Khal Temple. Nong Khal Temple turns out to be an enormous facade for a money-laundering religious scam that attracts greed and violence from the underworld.
The trio is more than hustlers striving to make a way out. They’re pawns caught in a web of faith and fear, loyalty and deceit, where each decision made will wreck their lives.
A ‘fix’ in the making becomes a fight to survive.
A Season That Won’t Let Go
The Believers’ season two is not comfort viewing. It is emotionally and morally taxing and designed to be. It is evident in Pachara’s acting because Game is not simply reacting. He is falling apart.
And, finally, there is no clean victory at the end. There is only grief and the memory that something cannot be revived. It persists long after the credits finish rolling, too. Just as it has for Pachara ever since the cameras stopped rolling. The Believers’ Season two is currently available to stream on Netflix following its release on December 4th.
