Citadel Star Ashleigh Cummings Responds to Her Character’s Big Twist in Episode 4 (Exclusive)

Citadel Episode 4 through some new big twists into the story of its titular agency and its super-spy agents, by revealing that the characters we think we’ve gotten to know after three episodes aren’t who we thought they were, at all.

(CITADEL SPOILERS FOLLOW)

 In “Tell Her Everything” we find out more about the cliffhanger ending which revealed that Mason Kane’s (Richard Madden) mundane new life as “Kyle Conroy” was an even bigger front than we thought. Kyle’s “wife” Abby (Ashleigh Cummings) is not a housewife at all – she’s one of Mason’s fellow Citadel agents, named “Celeste.” Moreover, Celeste is not just any agent: she’s an agent that Mason and his lover, agent Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) brought in and trained to go deep undercover, to get close to Manticore’s twin hitmen Anders and Davik Silje (Roland Møller). 

The final twist in Citadel Episode 4 is us learning that Mason ultimately betrayed Celeste when her loyalty to Citadel was put in doubt. He used her as the guinea pig for the “Backdoor” program, erasing her memories and setting her up in the kind of life he would eventually end up trapped in with her. Now “Celeste” is on the run and in very real danger as “Abby,” with no knowledge of her past and skills as a spy. 

ComicBook.com got the chance to sit down with Citadel actress Ashleigh Cummings to talk about the pivotal turn in her role during Episode 4. 

“I hadn’t auditioned for [Citadel], but didn’t know anything about the story or the characters,” Cummings explained. “I guess I received kind of like a blind offer, which I’m so grateful for. And I thought it really was going to be a one-liner, a little appearance because I’d auditioned for the Russo’s before but we couldn’t work it out schedule-wise. So I thought they were just trying to be really generous and considerate and give me a little pat on the back and… then to receive a complex, multi-tiered character? It was so unexpected.”

Citadel fans understandably have a whole new set of questions, now that it’s been revealed that Abby is also Celeste. One of the biggest questions is the one of convenience – namely, why did Mason Kane end up with Celeste (of all people) as his wife in his new life? Cummings teases that while Citadel Season 1 will provide answers like that – there are some things that fans need  to prepare to wait multiple seasons to discover: 

“I think there are some more answers, but I think there are also a lot of questions that remain, to be honest. I hope we get a second season so you can keep exploring that. Yeah, I think it is an interesting conundrum that they are together and that they’ve both ended up in the same memory center, at the same time, I think it’s plausible, because if Citadel had to go to the Memory Center for Backstop, and Mason’s done it without it being sanctioned and everything…”

The reveals of Citadel Episode 4 have fans also anticipating one awkward dramatic moment that’s sure to come: Abbey discovering her past and realizing her “husband” is the one who took away her old life. Cummings teases that for Abbey/Celeste (and the viewers) it will be a complicated question of whether or not “Kyle” can be held accountable for how “Mason” betrayed her: 

“It’s a big question, right? Because it’s no longer Mason, it’s Kyle. And so, yeah, it’s a big question, right? How do you… hold the perpetrator accountable for something when they’re no longer here? Because it happens all the time when people, you know, when they’re … passed away or when they’ve done a lot of work to improve themselves, equating to that grief and anger.”

Citadel is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.