General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Maarigallu

Maarigallu (ಮಾರಿಗಲ್ಲು) is a 2025 Indian Kannada-language suspense thriller web series directed and written by Devraj Poojary, produced by PRK Productions in collaboration with ZEE5, and released on ZEE5 on 31 October 2025¹^•²^•³. Set in the 1990s in a village near Sirsi in Karnataka's Uttara Kannada district, it follows a group of villagers who search for a treasure said to have been buried by the Kadamba dynasty and guarded by the deity Maari⁴. It is the first Kannada web series from the banner of the late actor Puneeth Rajkumar⁵.

Key fact	Detail
Title	Maarigallu (ಮಾರಿಗಲ್ಲು), a Kannada suspense thriller web series¹
Release	31 October 2025, streaming on ZEE5 (also via OTTplay Premium)¹^•⁵
Season 1	7 episodes, runtimes from 15 to 32 minutes⁶^•⁷
Director and writer	Devraj Poojary²
Production	PRK Productions (producer Ashwini Puneeth Rajkumar) with ZEE5³
Main cast	Praveen Tej, Rangayana Raghu, Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Prashanth Siddi, Suraj¹
Setting	A fictional village near Sirsi, Uttara Kannada district, in the 1990s⁴^•⁸
IMDb rating	6.9/10 from 199 user ratings⁹

Spoilers

Premise and story

The series is set in a fictional village called Maarigallu, surrounded by dense forests, where local belief holds that the Kadamba dynasty buried a treasure in the forest and that the goddess Maari punishes anyone who tries to seize it⁸^•³. The story draws on the legacy of Mayura Sharma, the first king of the Kadamba dynasty, whose fourth-century rule is the historical backdrop for the treasure legend¹⁰^•¹¹.

Plot. Varadha (Praveen Tej), a Bedara Vesha (A Kannada ritual folk dance; hero's profession drives the plot) performer who needs money for his sister's marriage, stumbles upon a Kadamba-era inscription that could be the key to the treasure¹. He and his Bedaravesha friends discover a secret treasure hunt in their village and find themselves racing a mysterious entity to find the clues and secure the treasure¹². The hunt also draws in an archaeologist, Mari Gowda (Rangayana Raghu), and the village landlord (Gopal Krishna Deshpande), with characters driven variously by obsession, greed, and circumstance³. According to the Times of India synopsis, an archaeological excavation sets faith, greed, and superstition colliding, blurring the line between myth and reality⁴.

Episodes

Season 1 consists of seven episodes, all released on 31 October 2025: "Welcome to Maarigallu" (32 minutes), "Lakshmi Rahasya" (20 minutes), "Kadamba Nidhi" (16 minutes), "Bali Kuri" (22 minutes), "No More A Secret" (22 minutes), "Bedara Vesha" (15 minutes), and "The Showdown" (20 minutes)⁶^•⁷. One pre-release report described the season as six episodes⁵, but the ZEE5 episode listing shows seven⁶.

Production and release

ZEE5 and PRK Productions announced the series in October 2025, with streaming set for 31 October 2025¹⁰. It was the third Kannada original made for Zee Network, after Ayyana Mane and Shodha, which came out earlier in 2025⁵. Producer Ashwini Puneeth Rajkumar, wife of the late actor Puneeth Rajkumar, described the series as reflecting one of her late husband's dreams of bringing stories rooted in Karnataka's soil to the web series format¹⁰.

The teaser, released in early October 2025, opens with a voiceover by actor Daali Dhananjaya and features an AI-generated version of Puneeth Rajkumar as Mayura Sharma (also referred to as Mayuravarma), the founder of the Kadamba dynasty, a role made famous by his father, the actor Dr Rajkumar¹⁰^•⁵.

The crew includes cinematographer S.K. Rao, composer L.V. Muthu Ganesh, editor Kevin Mascarenhas, and sound designer Ravi Hiremath². The series is in Kannada with English subtitles¹.

Reception

On IMDb the series holds a rating of 6.9/10 based on 199 user ratings⁹. India Today's review rated it 2.5 out of 5, describing it as an engaging yet uneven mystical drama with shades of Kantara, noting that it explores human vices such as obsession and greed that meet divine intervention, but with a treasure hunt added³. A TV9 Kannada review wrote that the story opens up only after the first two episodes and becomes more gripping thereafter, and that the treatment of the deity recalls the film Kantara⁸.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Indian and South Asian web series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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