The show returned September 26 with a fifteen-contestant lineup mixing television regulars, content creators and a political commentator, and social media wasted no time comparing it to Bigg Boss 20.
Rise And Fall Season 2 premiered on September 26, and the first thing everyone wanted to talk about wasn't the game. It was Virender Sehwag, cricketer turned first-time reality show host, standing in front of fifteen contestants who'd never shared a set before.
The reaction split down the middle, but not unkindly. Viewers on X flagged that Sehwag looked stiff in patches, which is fair for anyone's first outing behind a hosting mic. One user put it plainly: good job for a debut, not fully comfortable yet, interesting to watch him grow into it. That's about as generous a review as a first episode gets.
Where the show found its footing, according to the chatter, was casting. The lineup mixes names viewers already know from television with people who've built entire careers on being online. Gautam Gulati, who won Bigg Boss 8, is back in a house again. So is Karan Patel, long associated with Yeh Hai Mohabbatein, and Priyanka Chahar Choudhary, who came off Bigg Boss 16. Swara Bhasker brings her usual mix of Bollywood recognition and activist commentary. Political commentator Shehzad Poonawalla and content creator-journalist Manish Kashyap round out a cast that's noticeably heavier on public opinion-havers than most reality shows bother to cast.
The rest of the fifteen includes Irina Rudakova, Niharika Tiwari from Splitsvilla 16, Roadies and Splitsvilla veteran Siwet Tomar, and creator-comedian Raj Grover. Not every name from the full fifteen has surfaced in early reporting, but what's out there already gives the season a texture Bigg Boss hasn't had in a while.
And that's exactly the comparison viewers reached for. Several posts on X ranked Rise And Fall's casting above Bigg Boss 20 outright, calling the newer season's contestants more layered and the rival show's lineup one-sided and, in one viewer's word, boring. One person specifically said they're tuning in for Priyanka Chahar Choudhary and asked who else was watching for the same reason. Someone else pointed to Bigg Boss's manufactured fights as the thing Rise And Fall skips entirely, at least in episode one.
Not everyone's sold on the political mix, though. At least one viewer admitted they'd rather not sit through contestants' ideological positions playing out on a game show, even while praising the selection. Fair concern for a season that's put a political commentator and a political-content journalist in the same house as a Bigg Boss winner and a Splitsvilla alum.
What happens next depends on how Sehwag settles into the chair and whether the show can keep the political personalities from swallowing the game itself. Episode two lands with viewers already picking sides, and not just among the contestants.
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