Ahead of a new film about the Ramayana comes an animated web series based on Karna from the Mahabharata. The Legend of Karna, out on Sony LIV, focuses on one of the Mahabharata’s most fascinating characters.The first of the Pandava brothers, who is denied his inheritance because of his illegitimate birth and adoption by a low-caste charioteer, Karna has inspired close study. Yuganta, Irawati Karve’s magisterial analysis of the Mahabharata, devotes a chapter to Karna, who is perennially dogged by the question “Who am I?”“He struggled all his life to gain what he thought was his rightful status and his bitterness lay in not having got it,” writes Karve.Contemporary screen versions of the Mahabharata (Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug, Mani Ratnam’s Thalapathi) also emphasise Karna’s frustration and sorrow over his unjust treatment.The Legend of Karna, created by Sharad Devarajan and Jeevan J Kang, and directed by Kang and Navin John, is more upbeat, imagining Karna as a self-made warrior battling an established order alongside his enemies. Karna is now a rugged, muscular disruptor with a 5 o’clock shadow and formidable martial skills.The show begins with the Kaurava patriarch Bhishma lying on a bed of arrows on the battleground of Kurukshetra. Bhishma (voiced by Shaktee Singh) is filled with regret. Had he acted sooner, especially over the question of Karna’s legitimacy, he might have changed the course of the war, he laments.The circumstances of Karna’s birth fix him as an outsider to the Kshatriya code. Karna (voiced by Anup Soni) is forever being put down for not being high-born. But the secret son of Kunti and the sun god carries an inner light, unashamed of his adoptive family and always willing to lash out at his detractors.The Kaurava prince Duryodhana (voiced by Shahid Zafar) is in Karna’s corner, seeing him as his best weapon against his Pandava cousins, especially Arjun (voiced by Kumud Soney). Although Duryodhana is often identified as one of the Mahabharata’s villains, The Legend of Karna portrays him as a loyal friend and the chief champion of Karna’s efforts to shimmy up the social ladder.Duryodhana’s blind father Dhritarashtra (voiced by Sumonto Roy) also feels for Karna. Belittled for his disability, the sightless king finds parallels between his situation and the young warrior’s struggle for self-assertion.Only five episodes are out, just about enough to lay out Karna’s broad arc but not enough to indicate whether Karna’s questionable actions in later portions of the Mahabharata will be examined. Since The Legend of Karna has already picked a side, it’s anybody guess how the subsequent seasons will unfold. Whatever is on offer thus far is a combination of action sequences and semi-serious verbal exchanges between Karna and his father Adhirath (voiced by Paritosh Sand), Kunti (voiced by Dishi Duggal) and Duryodhana.Like the Netflix series Kurukshetra (2025), The Legend of Karna sets out to convert a deeply layered exploration of power, ambition and greed into a spectacle, only to run into the unavoidable complexities of its source material. Despite the comic book treatment and stiff dialogue, the focus on Karna’s story over the Pandavas is refreshing in itself.The 3D animation style yields rubbery faces with animatronic doll eyes that assume a bit of a human quality in the close-ups. Karna wears an armour not unlike the one worn by Prabhas’s Baahubali. (There’s another connection to the Rajamouli films: the show’s music composer, Kaala Bhairava, is the son of Baahubali’s MM Keeravani).Dhritarashtra’s seat of power is creatively depicted – he sits under a huge tree, with plenty of light, rather than in a stuffy palace. Dabs of fluoroscent colours with extra lashings of yellow and gold create striking visuals on occasion.