u/CelestialDrift23

I mean, how dumb or blindsided are you supposed to be to still look at Müzeyyen and call her your mother after everything you’ve seen?

You KNOW what she has done to Mercan. You KNOW she was against the marriage. You KNOW she has never been fond of Mercan. You literally watched her lose her shit after Aslı’s death and blame Mercan for it.

And your response is to sit by her side, take care of her and still call her “mother”???

I mean, you actually bought that pathetic excuse when she said she was just blabbering because she was disoriented? Seriously?

This woman literally helped your sister escape and marry Hazar.

What more do you want to hear or see before you connect the dots?

Do you need to physically watch the video of her burning Eylül’s house down to kill her? Do you need to lose your baby? Do you need to lose Mercan too before it finally clicks that this woman is not your family and has been poisoning your life from the inside?

For two men like Cemal and Ateş, who are supposed to be sharp and who have personally seen how negative, manipulative and vicious Müzeyyen can be, their blindness towards her is honestly ridiculous.

It’s been almost 1.5 seasons.

How many more clues do these two need?

At this point, if Müzeyyen is the reason Ateş and Mercan lose their baby, I’m sorry but Ateş is going to have to live with the fact that he had warning signs right in front of his face and still chose not to see them.

What even happened to the essence and main storyline of Arafta, man???

I have to admit, I have completely lost interest in S2. Even Emin and İlsu are not able to pull me in anymore, and that says a LOT because I genuinely love watching both of them. At this point, it’s just painful watching their talent being wasted in a season like this.

I understand that they had to get rid of certain characters. I understand they had to bring in Eylül. I understand they couldn’t keep repeating Ateş’s revenge track forever.

But THIS???

Who from the team genuinely thought what this show needed was some random uncle coming into Ateş’s life with a blood feud based on an assumption and spending an entire season tormenting him?

Ateş has been shown so freaking weak and helpless this season that I barely recognise him anymore. This is not Ateş Karahan. This is Tahir.

Just to establish that the villain has the upper hand and is supposed to be “scary,” you completely downplay Ateş Karahan? Seriously? Do the writers even remember what Ateş was as a character?
Look at the complete mess the show is currently in. Ateş is going to jail every five minutes, the company is in shambles, every possible disaster is happening around them, and then we have Mercan pregnant in the middle of all this.

I mean, no sane person would actively choose to bring a child into this chaos when there is literally an entire tribe trying to kill the child’s father. Obviously the pregnancy is unplanned, but MerTeş of all people should’ve been more careful considering the kind of life they’re living right now. I know the writers did it to add more drama, but it’s honestly starting to feel like Ekta Kapoor-level chaos at this point.

And I am SO done with the same recycled MerTeş scenes.

Same kitchen scenes. Same Ateş lying against the headrest while Mercan hugs him and falls asleep. Same overly lovey-dovey dialogues. Same “you’re my prayer, my moon, my life” type conversations over and over again.

These dialogues are beautiful when they’re used occasionally. Not when you shove the same emotional declarations down the audience’s throat every episode until they start sounding cringe instead of romantic.

Then come the nightmares. If it isn’t Mercan waking up terrified, it’s Ateş. They are literally living in constant fear and threat. They don’t even know whether they’ll be alive the next day and somehow we’re also supposed to happily enjoy a pregnancy track in the middle of this mess?

Even Emin and İlsu cannot save writing this bad.
And Hazar as a villain is honestly a joke. I actually laughed when Müzeyyen tried attacking Mercan and Hazar stood there telling her to calm down.

His entire purpose in S2 is basically:

“No one gets to touch Ateş and Mercan. Only I will destroy them.”

Okay bro, THEN DO IT.

Instead he threatens them, flips his coin, screams “blood feud,” tells everyone no one else is allowed to hurt them, and then conveniently goes about his day. If you want to kill someone, just do it and save all of us from another 20 episodes of this nonsense.

And Eylül is another character I genuinely don’t understand anymore. She’s all words and no action. You KNOW your so-called husband is behind your brother. You KNOW what he’s doing to Ateş and Mercan. And yet… what exactly are you doing about it?

I genuinely can’t with this show anymore.

Somewhere in the process of watching S2, I feel like I lost the Ateş and Mercan I loved too.

Nothing beats S1. Even with all its flaws, it had essence, anticipation, tension, chemistry, aura, something that made you WANT to know what happened next.

S2 just feels like chaos for the sake of chaos.

What in the Bob the Builder nonsense are they doing to Ateş Karahan?

Were the makers genuinely high while writing some of these S2 tracks?

I’m SO done with S2 at this point. It has gotten to a stage where even Emin and İlsu can’t save it for me.
You’re telling me this is the same Ateş Karahan who entered Mercan’s life around 1.5 years ago, paid off all her debts, had an entire army of people working for him, had a huge-ass bungalow and very obviously had some sort of business and money of his own… and now he’s working as a labourer????

The same man who bought Durmuş uncle’s house practically overnight, bought land for the student dormitory overnight, took Mercan on an extravagant honeymoon, drives around in a fancy car and STILL seems to have an army of people working for him?

So how exactly has his entire financial existence suddenly become Mercan, her house and her company?

What even is this nonsense plotline?

And even if I try to convince myself that maybe he’s just helping the workers, then WHERE are all the people who literally work for him? Why does Ateş himself suddenly need to do everything? It even makes Cemal look useless if Ateş is out there doing every random job himself.

It’s such a pointless downgrade of his character.

They could’ve shown Ateş becoming softer ONLY with Mercan while still keeping him ruthless, sharp, intimidating and full of aura with everyone else. Like those Wattpad stories. I would’ve completely bought that development.

But S2 has just stripped him of half the things that made Ateş Karahan interesting in the first place.

S1 really was the only time this man had aura, money, strategy AND functioning brain cells because S2 Ateş is just pure clownery at this point.

Why does Eylül keep looking at Hazar’s lips while she’s supposed to be furious with him?

I genuinely don’t understand why nobody ever stopped Aleyna from doing this because once you notice it, you literally cannot unsee it.

Eylül will come raging into Hazar’s face, yelling at him and delivering dialogues that are clearly supposed to convey anger, hatred or frustration… and then spend half the scene looking directly at his lips instead of his eyes.

And she does it AGAIN AND AGAIN.

It completely defeats the purpose of those scenes for me. If Eylül is supposed to be furious with this man, I want her staring him straight in the eyes while delivering those lines. Give me the anger, the confrontation, the “I genuinely cannot stand you” energy. Looking at his lips every few seconds gives the scene a completely different energy from what the dialogue is trying to convey.

And I’m not even blaming Aleyna entirely because where was the direction? If an actor repeatedly does something that changes how a scene comes across, surely somebody behind the monitor notices it and tells them to adjust their eye-line?

Maybe it’s just something Aleyna naturally does while acting in close proximity to someone, but somebody should have corrected it because it’s become SO noticeable in HazLül scenes.

Now every time Eylül gets two inches away from Hazar’s face and starts yelling, instead of concentrating on what she’s saying, I’m just sitting there thinking, girl PLEASE look at his eyes because the scenes look so weird when she is that close to his face.

We’ve seen angst scenes with both MerTeş and CeMet. No one went raging into each other’s personal space while staring at their lips and delivering hate speeches or showing anger 😭 Even MerTeş, who literally had the hots for each other from day one, looked each other in the EYES during their angry confrontations.

After that live with the makers, I’m even more convinced that the miscarriage is inevitable.

During the live, they gave a pretty major spoiler about Müzeyyen. They said that she’s going to do something extremely evil soon and that this time Ateş will find out that it has been Müzeyyen behind everything all along.

And honestly… what could she possibly do at this point that would be evil enough to finally expose her entire true face to Ateş and Mercan?

My immediate thought was the baby.

We’ve already seen Müzeyyen plotting against Mercan’s pregnancy, so I genuinely think she’s going to do something that causes MerTeş to lose the baby. And THAT will finally be the thing that blows everything open.

If Müzeyyen deliberately harms Mercan and causes them to lose their child, I think that’s when everything she’s done until now will finally come to light. All the lies, manipulation, murders and everything else she’s managed to hide while pretending to be family. Her entire true face will finally be exposed in front of Ateş, Mercan and Cemal, and there will be absolutely no coming back from it.

And I’m sorry because this is going to sound evil 😭 but if the miscarriage is what FINALLY gets this woman’s true face exposed, then so be it.

Müzeyyen has been escaping consequences since practically episode 1. I’m TIRED 😭 How many horrible things can one woman do while Ateş and Cemal continue having absolutely no idea what kind of snake is sitting right under their noses?

Throw that lady in jail with her daughter for murder and call it a day.

Obviously I don’t want Ateş and Mercan to lose their baby. That would be devastating, especially after seeing how happy they are about the pregnancy. But purely from a storytelling perspective, I can see why the writers might use something this huge and personal as the final trigger for Müzeyyen’s downfall.

And honestly, I cannot WAIT for Ateş and Cemal to finally find out what she’s actually been doing this entire time. Especially Ateş. The moment he realises that Müzeyyen has been behind everything while pretending to be family is going to be INSANE.

If the makers really meant it when they said she’s about to do something extremely evil and finally get exposed, I genuinely think Baby Karahan is going to be the catalyst for her downfall.

I kinda liked this episode? For the first time in a while, it actually felt like the story was moving somewhere.

First things first, I FINALLY liked how MerTeş handled each other this episode. Even though they were fighting, they still kept falling back on each other for support and care. I feel like even they’re slowly realising that ultimately, it’s them against Hazar and whatever else is coming their way. Being together is their strength, and for the first time in a while, I actually saw that again.

Saliha is finally dead ⁉️😭 I wasn’t expecting it to happen NOW, but I always had a feeling she would eventually either be killed or somehow written out. And Müzeyyen… what a shitty person, man. She just randomly killed Saliha like it was another Tuesday.

I’ve actually noticed something from the end of S1 until now. They’re randomly killing off or removing characters from the story. It started with Nezir being killed. We still don’t properly know whether Haydar is alive or dead. Aslı ended up in jail, so her character was essentially written off. Malik randomly disappeared. And now Saliha is dead.

It makes me feel like S2 might not be nearly as predictable as S1. Things are also being revealed and happening much faster compared to S1, and that makes me slightly nervous about where they’re going with all of this.

I just hope we’re not heading towards them actually killing off one of the main characters or doing something equally traumatic. Turkish series are NOTORIOUS for this shit 😭 I’ve watched enough Turkish shows to have trust issues because they’ll randomly kill a lead, separate the main couple or pull some devastating ending out of nowhere. Please spare Arafta. I just want all the main characters alive and happy by the end.

And for a change, I didn’t cringe at the HazLül scenes. Their bickering in the room was actually funny. There was no purposeful grabbing of Eylül, THANK GOD. Even at the dinner table, Hazar wasn’t touching or messing around with Eylül just to rile Ateş up. I actually liked their scenes for once. Please continue like this and retire the weird creepy grabbing permanently.

I also feel like the story is finally building towards something now. Saliha left that letter behind, and God knows who is going to find it. I just REALLY hope it isn’t Müzeyyen. Please let literally anybody else find that damn letter before she gets her hands on it.

And the GUTS of Müzeyyen to tell Demet that she’s going to refuse Cemal’s proposal??? Woman, mind your own fucking business for ONCE. I really hope Demet doesn’t pull a Mercan and actually refuses to listen to Müzeyyen’s nonsense.

Then there’s Mercan’s pregnancy, which we’ll probably know more about in the coming week. I still have this weird feeling that the pregnancy might eventually end in a miscarriage. I don’t necessarily think Hazar will deliberately cause it because he keeps talking about how men from his tribe don’t hurt women, although considering we’ve also watched him grab and drag Eylül around, who knows anymore. But if something does happen, my guess would be either complications related to Mercan’s health or Müzeyyen doing something because that woman has completely lost the plot at this point.

And I genuinely CANNOT WAIT for Ateş to finally find out everything Müzeyyen has done. I need that confrontation more than anything. I need him to finally connect every single dot and drag her ass out of that mansion, preferably with Cemal right there beside him after finding out how much she has interfered in his life too.

At this point, Müzeyyen’s downfall better be SPECTACULAR. After everything she’s done to Ateş, Mercan, Eylül, Cemal and Demet, simply asking her to leave the mansion isn’t going to satisfy me anymore 😭

Overall, Episode 19 actually made me curious about what happens next, which is something I haven’t felt consistently during S2.

Just please, writers, let the story move forward without traumatising us in the process and do something so that Ateş finally finds out about Muzzeyen.

So Emin confirmed that there won’t be an S3 of Arafta, and as much as I’ve wanted this show to end after everything they’ve done with S2… suddenly I’m sad 😞

Don’t get me wrong. The script has been pathetic, they’ve stretched and messed up so many things, and I genuinely don’t think they even had enough material left for another season. I’ve complained about S2 endlessly and have literally said multiple times that they should just end Arafta.

But somehow, hearing that there actually won’t be an S3 made it hit differently.

Because no S3 doesn’t just mean no more shitty storylines or HazLül nonsense. It also means no more MerTeş. No more Ateş and Mercan. No more Emin and İlsu together on our screens.

And THAT makes me genuinely sad.

MerTeş are still my happy place despite everything. I wait for Mondays and Fridays just to watch them. Half the time I’m sitting through the rest of the episode waiting for their scenes, and even when the writing annoys me, seeing Ateş and Mercan together still makes me happy.

Now the thought that in another 2-3 months, that’s just going to stop feels so strange. No more waiting for Arafta day. No more new MerTeş scenes. No more watching Emin and İlsu bring these two idiots named "Ateş Mercan" to life. The show that gave us them together will simply be over.

Of course, I want Emin and İlsu to move on to bigger and MUCH better projects. With the kind of performances and chemistry they have, they deserve scripts that actually utilise their potential. And I would absolutely LOVE to see them paired together again in another show someday.

But realistically, I don’t know how likely it is that we’ll ever get Emin and İlsu together in the same show again. So maybe this really is all we’ve got.

It’s funny because I’ve spent half of S2 screaming “END THIS SHOW ALREADY”, and now that Emin has basically confirmed that it IS ending, my heart is like… wait, not MerTeş though 💔

I don’t want S3.

I just wish saying goodbye to MerTeş didn’t come with it ♥️

How many chances are they eventually going to give Sanju Samson?

There was absolute chaos on social media whenever Sanju wasn’t getting opportunities. People constantly complained that he wasn’t being backed enough, wasn’t being given a proper run and would perform if the management simply showed some faith in him.

Well, he got the backing.

Shubman was eventually dropped to accommodate Sanju after social media went batshit crazy about Sanju not getting enough chances. But looking at the number of opportunities Sanju has received since then, Shubman would’ve probably gotten his form back by this point and scored some really good runs. Meanwhile, Sanju has been given that extended run everyone demanded for him and is still struggling to find any consistency.

How long are we going to keep bringing up those 2-3 good innings from the World Cup while conveniently ignoring the number of matches in which he hasn’t delivered? You cannot keep justifying someone’s place indefinitely using a handful of past performances while current failures continue piling up.

And if you’re struggling to make an impact even against Afghanistan, then surely it’s fair to start questioning how much longer this rope should be.
This isn’t even about hating Sanju or denying that he’s talented. It’s about accountability for performances.

There are several talented players waiting for opportunities themselves. At some point, continuously backing one player means denying another player a chance.

Sanju got exactly what everyone spent years demanding for him: consistent opportunities and backing. Now he has to justify that faith with runs. Otherwise, it’s genuinely time to rethink his place in the squad.

I didn’t even bother watching most of the kitchen scenes, but I did follow Malik and Çiçek’s story because I actually liked their relationship. So what the hell are they doing with them in S2?

Malik literally went to Egypt, called Çiçek and broke up with her over a phone call because apparently he’s now engaged to someone else. Çiçek cried a few tears here and there and then… that’s it? She’s just completely NORMAL now?

Nobody in the kitchen even talks about what happened. We haven’t really seen Çiçek grieving the relationship, struggling with the breakup or even processing the fact that the man she loved and was ENGAGED to suddenly left and got engaged to somebody else. It’s like one phone call happened and the entire relationship was deleted from everyone’s memory.

How do you end a storyline that abruptly? Malik didn’t have some random two-episode flirtation with Çiçek. They had an actual relationship. They were in love. They were engaged. And now the show behaves like Malik never existed in these people’s lives and Çiçek was never planning a future with him.

And what bothers me most is that this doesn’t even feel like Çiçek. You’re telling me this woman lost the man she was supposed to marry under such shitty circumstances and barely seemed affected afterwards?

It’s just such lazy writing. I understand they’re side characters and maybe the writers wanted to write Malik out of the show. Fine. Then give the relationship a proper ending. Give Çiçek a few scenes where she actually processes what happened, let the kitchen staff acknowledge it, and then let her eventually move forward.

Instead, they basically wiped Malik out of the story and expected us to pretend the relationship never happened. Even for side characters, that’s ridiculously bad continuity.

No one can convince me that Ateş was worse than Hazar. What Ateş did was wrong. What Mercan was put through was wrong. I’m not going to defend his actions just because I love MerTeş.

But Hazar is on some completely different level for me. The way he treats Eylül is genuinely becoming difficult to even watch. Today’s episode especially irritated me because the way he was talking to her felt so fucking sadak-chaap. He calls her around as if she’s some servant or butler of his who is supposed to sit, stand and move according to his liking. What even is this nonsense?

At least with Ateş, we KNEW he loved Mercan. We could see through his behaviour that he was constantly in a limbo between his revenge and his feelings for her. Even when they were enemies, there was some spark, some fire, some attraction between them from the beginning. You could see Ateş fighting his feelings because Mercan was becoming more important to him than the revenge he had built his entire life around.

I would have still bought this HazLül nonsense if they had shown that Hazar had even the slightest soft corner for Eylül underneath all this hatred. But where is it? Both of them genuinely look repelled by each other. There is no spark, no fire, no underlying attraction that makes me want to see where this goes. It’s just unpleasant to watch.

Ateş had an agenda and he was torn between revenge and love. Whenever he knew Mercan was in danger, he tried to safeguard her, whether it was from his own family or even hers. His jealousy and everything involving Nezir were absolutely wrong, but he never treated Mercan like his servant or some butler. Whatever their circumstances were, he always gave Mercan the status of his wife.

Hazar, on the other hand, is treating Eylül terribly and I’m somehow supposed to watch this eventually turn into romance. How? He still looks like a father figure next to her to me, and his behaviour towards her makes that entire dynamic even worse.

At this point, I genuinely hope Hazar dies or something by the end and Eylül gets a better partner because this shit is simply not working for me. If my husband kept yelling at me and treating me like his personal servant the way Hazar treats Eylül, I’d slap the shit out of him.

PS: People whose default response to literally every discussion is “Ateş was the worst human being to exist” or “Ateş was the worst husband”, kindly stay away from this post. We already know your opinion on Ateş because you repeat it under practically every discussion involving him. This post is about comparing Ateş-Mercan and Hazar-Eylül and how differently these dynamics play out. If your only contribution is going to be another essay about how horrible Ateş was, please save both of us the time. This discussion clearly isn’t meant for you.

I’ve seen theories about Hazar possibly being Mercan’s brother, but I genuinely don’t think that can happen. The ages simply don’t add up.

These are the birth dates shown on their marriage registers:

Ateş Karahan: 10th December 1996
Mercan Karahan: 12th February 2000
Hazar Bozbey: 18th November 1991
Eylül Bozbey: 22nd June 2000

So Hazar is shown to be around 5 years older than Ateş, while Ateş is more than 3 years older than both Mercan and Eylül.

We’ve already established that Ateş wasn’t even born when Hazar’s father was shot. And before dying, Hazar’s father specifically tells Hazar to take care of his mother and sister, which means Hazar’s sister had already been born at that point.

But if Ateş wasn’t even born yet, then neither Mercan nor Eylül could have been born because Ateş is older than both of them.

So unless the writers completely ignore the dates they themselves gave us, Mercan cannot be Hazar’s sister.

But now I’m thinking… what if Cemal and Mercan are actually siblings?

What if Nermin’s child never died? What if Cemal is that child?

I suddenly feel like this theory has a very real possibility of coming true because of how much focus they’re putting on Cemal’s family right now. Initially, they couldn’t find anything about his family, and now Cemal is looking into it again. Why bring this mystery back and put so much focus on it unless it’s eventually going to connect to something important?

If they’re actually planning to reveal who Cemal’s biological family was, I feel like it needs to have some impact on the larger story. And Cemal turning out to be Mercan’s brother would absolutely do that.

Cemal was shown to be around 30-31 years old when the show started, which also fits surprisingly well because Nermin’s supposedly dead child would be around 30-31 today if he had survived.

And honestly, Cemal and Mercan have been giving me sibling vibes since S1 😭 They’re probably the two characters in this show who are the most similar in terms of personality and energy. Even before there was any reason to theorise about them being related, they always gave me sibling vibes.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like this might actually be where the writers are going. Otherwise, why suddenly bring Cemal’s unknown family back into the plot?

And I would actually LOVE this reveal. Cemal and Mercan deserve to have their actual family and sibling too, just like Ateş and Eylül 🥹

At this point, I’m putting my money on Cemal-Mercan siblings 👀

Emin being married??? 😭😂

I’m genuinely laughing at this point. Along with Emin, even I wake up every day to some new nonsense news about his life, and I’m just amused by how people manage to drag him into something new every single day 😭

Like, don’t y’all know this man by now? Don’t y’all know how open and oversharing his nature is?

If he was getting married, he would be the first one standing on a table screaming to the entire world that he’s getting married to the love of his life 😂😭

This is Emin we’re talking about. If he was getting married, good luck getting him to shut up about it 😭

He’d probably invite the whole fandom to his wedding if he could. That’s how happy and open he’d be about the entire thing 😂

At this rate, the man probably needs to check social media every morning just to find out what major life event happened to him while he was sleeping 😭😂

So you’re telling me Mercan cannot break eggs properly and literally cooked the SHELLS along with the eggs while making menemen for Ateş..

But the same woman can convincingly break eggs and bake a whole-ass cake perfectly fine??? 😭😂

What even are the writers smoking?

And yes, I get it. Maybe Mercan simply can’t cook but likes baking and is actually good at it. That’s completely possible.

But that’s not even my question 😭

How does being bad at cooking suddenly make you incapable of BREAKING AN EGG?

She messed up the eggs so badly while making menemen that the shells ended up in the pan. But give her the exact same eggs for a cake and suddenly she knows exactly how to crack them properly? 😂

Cooking skills and baking skills can obviously be different, but egg-cracking skills are still egg-cracking skills.

Mercan while making menemen: 🥚💥☠️
Mercan while baking a cake: 👩🏻‍🍳✨🎂

Make it make sense to me because apparently her ability to break an egg depends on what dish she’s making 😭😂

Here is my theory after watching the new promo!

1. HazLül marriage happens first

I think we’ve pretty much established at this point that HazLül are going to get married.

So I feel the next few episodes will primarily focus on that and how MerTeş deal with Eylül marrying Hazar, especially Ateş considering everything that has happened between him and Hazar.

Then after that, we’ll probably move into the MerTeş pregnancy track.

2. Neither Ateş nor Hazar is dying

I don’t think either Ateş or Hazar is supposed to die this season.

Both are basically “hero” level characters in the show. Hazar isn’t equivalent to Nezir where they can simply finish his revenge track and kill him off. And Ateş is obviously THE hero of the show, so he’s not dying either.

Which means somehow this Ateş-Hazar revenge situation has to evolve into something else.

3. HazLül’s marriage completely changes the Ateş-Hazar equation

Once Hazar marries Eylül, things become MUCH more complicated.

Ateş obviously isn’t going to casually kill his sister’s husband and make Eylül a widow.

And on the other side, I feel Hazar will eventually develop genuine feelings for Eylül. Once that happens, would he really want to kill her brother and destroy her?

Suddenly neither man can continue this revenge war without hurting Eylül.

And that’s where I think the actual “Arafta” situation begins.

4. What if Mercan is somehow connected to Hazar too?

Okay, I KNOW Mercan and Hazar somehow turning out to be siblings is extremely far-fetched.

But these writers smoke weed, so honestly, you never know what they’ll randomly come up with.

If Mercan somehow turns out to be Hazar’s sister or they have some similar family connection, it would make this whole situation even more tangled.

Hazar wouldn’t want to kill his sister’s husband, and Ateş wouldn’t want to kill his sister’s husband.

Both men would basically be trapped by the exact same relationship from opposite sides.

5. This could be the actual meaning of “Arafta” in S2

I feel like this show has always played around with the meaning of Arafta, being stuck in limbo.

In S1, Ateş was the one in limbo between revenge and love.

S2 could basically put BOTH Ateş and Hazar in that position.

Ateş wants revenge against Hazar but can’t destroy his sister’s husband without destroying Eylül.

Hazar wants revenge against Ateş but eventually may not be able to destroy the brother of the woman he loves.

And if the Mercan-Hazar connection somehow happens, it becomes even messier.

So this time, instead of only Ateş being “Arafta,” all of them are.

Their lives are becoming completely entangled because of relationships they’ve formed, and possibly even relationships that already existed without them knowing about them.

6. I think Ateş and Hazar eventually become “okay”

After seeing the new promo, I genuinely feel Ateş and Hazar will eventually reach some kind of understanding.

Not necessarily besties but at least reach a point where they’re no longer actively trying to destroy each other.

And that would explain why Hazar looks almost worried about Ateş getting shot in the promo.

7. Müzeyyen might actually be the main S2 conflict

This is where I think the bigger storyline comes in.

I feel the main plot of S2 will eventually become Müzeyyen and everything she has done.

And I still think the third man in that photograph, whose face we haven’t properly seen, could be Muzzy’s husband.

Eventually Ateş and Hazar might uncover the full truth together.

And THAT’S where I can see the story shifting from:

Ateş vs Hazar

to

Ateş + Hazar + Mercan + Eylül vs Müzeyyen

And possibly Aslı too, if her character ever decides to come back.

8. And then there’s Cemal’s family…

The fact that they keep foreshadowing Cemal’s family makes me think they’re going to be connected to this entire mess somehow too.

I don’t know whether they’ll turn out to be positive or negative characters, but I don’t think they’re bringing up his family repeatedly for absolutely no reason.

They could potentially be another missing piece connecting everything together.

So basically, my theory is that Hazar isn’t actually the endgame villain of S2.

HazLül’s marriage will force Ateş and Hazar’s lives together, MerTeş’s pregnancy will raise the stakes even further, more family connections will come out, Cemal’s past will enter the picture, and eventually Ateş and Hazar will realise that their actual enemy is somewhere else.

And considering this show is literally called Arafta, having all these characters stuck between revenge, love, marriage, siblings and family loyalty would actually make a LOT of sense.

People who want them to suddenly become green flags or expect them to behave like conventional, emotionally perfect leads probably need to rethink whether Arafta is the right show for them.

I keep seeing people blaming Ateş and Mercan for being exactly the kind of characters they have always been written as.

And I’m including myself here. I’ve done it in my own posts and comments on this sub.

There are times when Ateş pisses me off with his masculine ego, his temper and the way he snaps when he’s angry. Mercan pisses me off equally with her constant “I need to fix everything myself” attitude and her determination to defy Ateş every single time, even when the situation clearly requires her to stop and think.

Neither of these people is easy.

About Ateş in the recent episode

Yes, Ateş was all over the place. He said some really harsh things to Mercan and the way he spoke to her was unnecessarily rude at times.

I’m not defending that.

But I can understand WHY he finally snapped.

How many times can you ask your partner not to do something, explain why you’re asking them not to do it, watch them do exactly that anyway and continue repeating the same cycle before you eventually lose your shit?

Ateş is not your conventional hero with cute boy-next-door characteristics.

He is ruthless. He is rough around the edges. He has an ego. He acts based on his emotions and anger.

We’ve known this since S1.

Mercan knows this better than anyone.

And right now, Ateş is already operating at his emotional limit.

Imagine his perspective for a second.

He has JUST discovered that his father was a murderer. He’s trying to process an entire family history he knew nothing about. There’s a man living next door who wants revenge against him for something his father did before Ateş was even born. He knows Hazar wants to either kill him or hurt the people closest to him.

And while he’s trying to wrap his head around ALL of that, Mercan keeps taking matters into her own hands.

Of course the man is losing his fucking mind.

And Mercan leaving is clearly still bothering him
People also seem to have forgotten that Mercan literally walked out on him.

She knew Hazar had motives against Ateş.

She knew Ateş’s life could be in danger.

She knew exactly what happened the last time she left him.

And yet she decided leaving was somehow the solution.

So where was this overwhelming fear for Ateş’s safety then?

Ateş clearly hasn’t gotten over that either. He has brought it up repeatedly in their conversations. The only reason the argument hasn’t remained centred around Mercan leaving is because ten other disasters happened immediately afterwards and took precedence.

Had none of this Hazar/family nonsense happened, I’m pretty sure Ateş would STILL be angry with her about leaving.

So from his perspective, his wife left him, came back, more or less acted like everything was normal, and then immediately started making unilateral decisions and putting herself in dangerous situations again.

Obviously he’s on edge with her.

Again, that doesn’t justify speaking disrespectfully to her. But understanding someone’s reaction isn’t the same as endorsing every word that came out of their mouth.

And frankly, if I were in Ateş’s position, I’d probably be losing my mind too because the man hasn’t had one peaceful fucking moment.

Mercan needs to change her approach

I completely understand Mercan being terrified.

She almost lost her husband. Now she knows there’s someone actively targeting him. Of course she’s scared. Anyone who loves their partner would be.

But sometimes supporting your partner doesn’t mean throwing yourself directly into the danger alongside them.

Sometimes emotional and moral support is what they actually need.

We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly with Mercan. She does something reckless because she wants to protect Ateş, Ateş immediately loses focus because now he’s worried about HER safety, and suddenly instead of dealing with the original problem, he’s dealing with two problems.

That’s not helping him.

And this is especially frustrating because we KNOW Mercan can be strong.

We’ve seen how brave she can be when Ateş or someone she loves is in danger.

THAT is the Mercan I want.

I want the woman who can stand beside Ateş, think rationally and face whatever is coming with him.

Instead, lately we’re getting a Mercan who panics, acts recklessly, leaves Ateş, comes back, puts herself in danger with Hazar, decides she should give away all the shares and keeps making massive decisions without properly thinking through the consequences.

Where is the logic?

I genuinely don’t understand what the writers are trying to do with her anymore.

Mercan has SO much potential to be that “mafia wife” standing beside Ateş Karahan energy.

Not behind him. Not helplessly waiting for him to save everything.

Beside him.

She doesn’t need to lose her softness or suddenly become ruthless like Ateş. She just needs to stop reacting to every crisis by either sacrificing herself, leaving, or coming up with another impulsive solution that creates an even bigger mess.

Let her use her brain.

Let her be strategic.

Let her be Ateş’s partner instead of constantly becoming another person Ateş needs to worry about while he’s already fighting everyone else.

Because right now, I unfortunately don’t see much logic in Mercan’s behaviour.

Ateş needs to control his anger and the way he speaks to her. Mercan needs to control her recklessness and stop treating every crisis like something she has to personally fix.

They’re both flawed. They’re both difficult. They’re both morally questionable.

And frankly, that’s MerTeş.

I don’t need either of them to become green flags.

I just need the writers to let their red flags make fucking sense.