TL;DR – A stronger start, but the jury is still out if it can rebound from a very mixed first outing.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this series.

Citadel Review Introduction

Back in 2023, one of the few ambitious projects in the streaming era started. I mean, what is the point of having a global streaming conglomerate if you are not going to do something with it? Citadel and its Spyverse were going to be a worldwide streaming universe where different countries would add to the growing lore. Conceptionally fascinating, practically quite a mess, with Season One devolving into massive expensive reshoots, which didn’t help the promotion of the spin-offs Diana & Honey Bunny. But the series has been improving with each iteration, so it is time to see if the original series can continue the charge, or if this is the last hurrah.

So, to set the scene, everyone has gone into hiding after the events of Season One. But the reach of Manticore is large, and soon, nowhere is safe to hide. In England, a smuggler is enjoying a party only to have his entire security taken out by Hutch (Jack Reynor), for he is hunting for Paolo Braga (Gabriel Leone), who didn’t suspect that the item that was being smuggled was none other than Bernard (Stanley Tucci). Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

The Narrative

To say that Season One was overly convoluted would be an understatement. Still, it was also quite shallow, given how they could very easily sum up all the important parts in under 3 minutes, though when you get Stanley Tucci to narrate, he could bring gold to anything. So, one of the main jobs this first episode needed to do was to reestablish the narrative credentials for the series. On that front, I think there was some solid improvement. We have a strong narrative throughline with the secret assassins, though I think the better cultural touchstone was Zoolander rather than The Manchurian Candidate. There is also very clear character tensions based on credible rationales, and the removal of some of the sillier lingering intrigues from the first season.  

The Action

Where the show does shine is in the action scenes, of which we get at least three, depending on your definition, in the first episode. The first gives us our entry of Hutch, and I have to admit that Jack Reynor does bring the cool in that moment with a kind of effervescent charm. He is a good pairing with the slightly more stuck-up Bernard. The next was a pretty standard brawl featuring Nadia, where Priyanka Chopra Jonas gets to show off her action chops that you also saw recently in The Bluff. The final sequence involved Bernard breaking out of his containment, and this was the most interesting because it was the most John Wick-like. It almost had a video game 3^rd-person feel to it. These action scenes are a good foundation for the show, and I hope they get even better from here.

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Citadel? It is a solid foundation, but then we have been there before, which does temper my optimism somewhat. However, parts of this world, such as Honey Bunny, have shown there is strength to be had here, and I am interested to see if the main series can show that going forward. Have you seen Citadel yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.         

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Citadel
Directed by – Joe Russo
Written by – David Weil
Created by – Josh Appelbaum, Bryan Oh & David Weil
Production/Distribution Companies – AGBO Productions, Midnight Radio, PKM, Potboiler, Amazon MGM Studios & Amazon Prime
Starring – Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Ashleigh Cummings, Jack Reynor, & Stanley Tucci
With – Matt Berry, Merle Dandridge, Rayna Vallandingham, & Gabriel Leone
And – Elena Lee, Aca Russo, David Liam, Jack Brett Anderson, Kendal Olivia Barrett, Felipe Araujo, Diego Andres, Tai Hilernik, Jolan Parpillat, Lynda Kinkade, & Ivan Marevich