Citadel Season 1 Review and Recap (Episodes 1&2)

Citadel Season 1 on Amazon Prime Video takes viewers on a globe-trotting action-thriller mystery ride, as the world-protecting spy agency Citadel tries to recover from an epic fall, orchestrated by its syndicate nemesis, Manticore. As two of Citadel’s top agents (Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas) finally come out of memory-wiped “retirement” years after Citadel’s fall, the find themselves right back in the middle of a Manticore plot for world domination. 

Citadel Season 1 Review (Episodes 1-2) 

The premiere of Citadel certainly lives up to all the reports about the ambitious scale and budget that Amazon Studios was pumping into the series. The opening act of Episode 1, “The Human Enigma”, is an action setpiece spectacle that looks very much on par with a blockbuster movie – with much of that achievement coming from the directorial talent of longtime action cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (Extraction, The X-Men movies, Da 5 Bloods). No doubt, Citadel grips hard with its initial promise of big spy movie entertainment in TV series format, as both Madden and Chopra Jonas quickly delight, charm, and show they are willing to (at least pretend to) get gritty, bloody, and dirty in the process. 

That all said, once Citadel gets past its impressive opening interlude, and sets the actual narrative of the series in motion (a time-jump to a new present with memory-wiped protagonists) things quickly begin to feel a lot more on the level of television. The beats of Citadel’s first episode are pretty standard as far as these kinds of espionage stories go. Madden’s character Mason Kane (alias Kyle Conroy) is the tortured domestic family man who doesn’t know he’s James Bond; Chopra Jonas is a heroic femme fatale, and Stanley Tucci is James Bond’s Q with more wit and flare. The bad guys are just as standard, with some evil twin psycho hitmen (both played by Rolan Møller) and a sinister aristocrat/political operator as the face of Manticore management. 

The beats play almost the opposite way in Episode 2, “Spikes Appear in Night Time”: We get standard and dull opening and middle acts of “Kyle” adjusting to the revelation that he’s Mason Kane, super-spy, and stumbling his way back into fighting prowess. The end of Episode 2 kicks up a gear when Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s character Nadia Sinh (alias Charlotte Vernon) gets her re-introduction, as the hard-hitting action sequences once again make up for the somewhat cliched story beats. 

But while the actual beat-to-beat steps of Citadel may feel overly familiar, the larger mythos of the series has a sci-fi bend that does manage to distinguish it from the Bourne, Bond, or Mission: Impossible franchises. That’s a good sign, as Citadel plans to expand itself into spinoffs that follow other agents, produced in other countries starring international actors. An interesting core mythos is key. 

Citadel Season 1 is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. You can read full episode recaps, below. 

Citadel Episode 1 ‘The Human Enigma’ Recap

The series opens with Citadel agent Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) taking on a mission aboard a bullet train to retrieve a case from a nefarious courier, while guided by her handler, Bernard (Stanley Tucci). Things take a turn when Nadia spots her old flame and fellow agent Mason Kane (Richard Madden) on the train, realizing she hasn’t been sent in alone. Together agents Sinh and Kane approach their mark, only to discover it’s all a ruse: an evil syndicate organization called Manticore has been watching Citadel for years and is finally making the move to destroy it. The train car turns out to be full of enemy agents, forcing Sinh and Kane to fight their way out – which they nearly do, until the courier pulls a grenade and blows up the entire train. 

Mason Kane awakes in a hospital to find he has no memory of who he is; time-jump to eight years later and Mason is now “Kyle Conroy,” a mild-mannered husband/father living in Wyoming. Kyle is suffering cryptic dreams of the train crash and the woman he once loved – along with the existential agony about not being to tell his daughter more about their family history leads Kyle to take a more advanced DNA screening after previous failures – and this time, the results are pretty drastic. Bernard picks up on Mason Kane’s DNA being in the system, and extracts Kyle, his wife and daughter before Manticore puts a target on their backs. Meanwhile, we find that Manticore middle manager Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville) is after a case that has been missing for eight years – one that could give the villain syndicate full intel on Citadel’s workings, and nuclear codes to the entire global stockpile. 

Through some tough-love training (like throwing knives) and some video message assistance, Bernard manages to get “Kyle” to embrace the reality of being Mason Kane, offering a Total Recall-style method of regaining his memories, as well as solving the mystery of the woman from his dreams. 

A cliffhanger scene reveals that on the night of the train crash, Nadia Sinh also survived, washing up on a beach. 

Citadel Episode 2 ‘Spies Appear In Night Time’ Recap

It turns out that Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) washed up into a much darker fate than Mason Kane did, after the train explosion. Nadia ended up getting held hostage by a creepy man in the countryside, who definitely wanted to keep her around for some kind of serial killer nightmare. Fortunately, the creep grabbed Agent Sinh, and even injured and battle-worn, Nadia manages to turn the tables on her captor in a brutal fight to the death. Unfortunately, Nadia’s Citadel memory-wipe programming goes into effect just after she takes out her captor, and she collapses to the floor. 

Back in the present day, Mason Kane (Richard Madden) and Bernard (Stanley Tucci) get settled on the reality that Mason will have to leave his wife and daughter at a Citadel safe house and draw attention away from them. The first mission objective is to infiltrate the facility where Bernard has been keeping a case that contains injections that can restore the wiped memories of each Citadel agent. It’s a clunky first run attempt, but Mason’s old instincts kick in enough for him to get the case and get away. However, Manticore hitmen Anders and Davik (Roland Møller) Silje spot Mason making his escape, revealing that the famed spy is still alive to Manticore. Anders and Davik’s handler Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville) tasks them with tracking Mason and the case and capturing both, so the wolves get on the hunt. 

Right when Mason is set to inject himself and restore his memories, the Silje Brothers attack. Bernard is critically-wounded, and Mason is left going on the run to protect the case. He gets away, but the cost is high: the vial containing his memories is destroyed. Unable to go home, Mason chooses to lean into his old life and follows Bernard’s intel to Spain, where Nadia Sinh is now living as an upscale restaurant host named Charlotte Vernon. 

When Mason approaches “Charlotte” with the truth of their identities, she is understandably skeptical – until her facial features activate the case and reveal the truth. Nadia doesn’t get the moment needed to process the facts before one of the Silje Brothers (the one who REALLY hates Agent Sinh) clears out the restaurant and attacks. Mason and “Charlotte” are no match for the assassin – until “Nadia” is restored using the memory injection, and comes to the rescue. As Mason and Nadia head off to regroup, it’s also implied that Nadia has been holding some secret back from Mason since Citadel fell. 

The cliffhanger ending reveals that Bernard didn’t die as implied: he’s now the prisoner of Dahlia Archer, who boasts that her expertise is breaking and turning Citadel agents.