For a short season Citadel does pack a lot of action in a Mission Impossible style, not the greatest actors and at times jokes from Stanley are not the best but still entertaining, the series is still in the phase of developing and knowing all the characters and their story before the train accident where Nadia and Mason lost their memory, in the previous episode we find out Abby who is currently Mason’s wife was one under cover and probably in love with Anders Silje who was developing a device that could hijack and entire nation systems but after her mission failed Mason decided to erase her memories and put her on a protection plan although everyone keep saying Nadia is the one who turn her back on Citadel and lead Manticore to take every one down with only a few left out like Carter who was force to keep moving looking for a place to hide, there is more to Abby’s mission failure its not that simple and it involves Nadia, in the present Mason is about to discover this since she got her memories back but he couldn’t as the injection that contain them broke and he is re learning to be Mason Kane again and find out what really happen to Citadel and if Nadia was the mole.
Citadel is one of those series I fall behind although its a very short one with the first season only with six episodes so I’m only two to go, I think this series has to be short in amount of chapter because will all this effects and places where the story happen it does feel like each chapter is part of a James Bond movie or Mission Impossible and I guess that’s not cheap also considering the first season is an experiment for a lot of TV series to figure out if it continues or stops, Citadel didn’t get much love from viewers with a low score of 6.1 on IMDB and each episode around that score too, I think its because how fake the story is, does feel at times like a GI Joe movie although people may score a GI Joe TV series higher just because of the brand, on this series there are a known actors like Richard Madden, Stanley Tucci, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Roland Møller, they all have done mid tier films nothing spectacular and that’s Citadel too a TV Series with good if not very good action scenes and I think people fail to understand that.
Nadia and Mason goes to Morocco to a Manticore Black Site, a fancy name for a place where they run operations, they think Carter is there, we can tell Nadia is back on full spy mode while Mason is lagging behind, he is brave and is recovering that muscle memory but still not at Nadia’s level and this him in disadvantage as she can take down enemies like a fucking ninja he still figuring out how not to panic during a shooting, there is a scene where she cuts a guy arm and then when the knife is falling she kicks it Ibrahimović Zlatan style and stab the guys partner on the neck with the knife she kick in the middle of the air, this are some of the things people might find too big of a lie but that’s the charm of the series, come up with this fight scenes that are close to impossible but can happen, that’s why I mention Zlatan, have you see one of this high kick near impossible goals, the guy is a beast so is Nadia.
They were right, Carter was held in that location but right when he sees Mason and Nadia ask them to stay away, Mason look confuse and ask what did he do but then Carter clear things up on the same scene at the end of the episode, “Not you….Her” , there still to be explain if Nadia did all this to keep Citadel alive or it was at a personal interest level, depending on a situation a strategy could be to let the enemy think everything is over and keep the organization alive close to eradicated but with the right agents to rebuild it, they were probably out number and in disadvantage and she was the only who saw it, I still don’t think she betrayed Mason.
Nadia brings in Abby to work with Citadel on a new mission, the mission is to go undercover, find out where is the Oz Key and stole it from the Silje brothers. Mason starts to explain Abby a true spy tells the truth since she needs to get in the role and believe it, believe she is the person she is looking at the mirror in this case Anders Silje girl friend, fall in love with him but just to get close enough to the Oz Key he is working on, stole it and be gone, this is where Mason separates from Nadia, he seem to be the spy that goes by the book and doesn’t trust anyone always living a lie but it looks like at the end between them it doesn’t matter since Nadia out play him bringing down Citadel or at least that’s the side of the story its known until this episode, so Abby was brought in by Nadia then fall in love with Anders Silje to stole the Oz Key and is now Mason’s wife, talk about going in circles.
Abby did everything well, she got Anders to fall in love with her enough to get close to the Oz Key, steal it and replace it with a fake one but Anders brother Davik saw her, follow her and beat her up but Mason already send an Ops team to track her down and figure out what was going on since she went offline for a few weeks and the deal was to keep communication every few weeks with Mason to keep him on the loop of what was going on.
When the Ops team arrive captures Davik and brings Abby back, the most obvious thing happen, they couldn’t find the Oz Key only a fake that was on Abby’s bag, Mason doesn’t trust Abby for her behavior prior as she remain without communication but Nadia keeps saying they can trust Abby, Mason has a higher position within Citadel than Nadia and decides to erase Abby’s memories with they excuse they putting her on a protection plan but he avoid the erase memories part from Nadia, he asks for Bernard help on this, at the time it was a new procedure untested.
Probably the only one with the time and access level to figure out what really happen with the Oz Key and also why he is still alive even though he was capture by Manticore, Carter figure out that the real reason why they couldn’t get the Oz Key when the Ops team came back is because Nadia gave the order to deliver it to her directly, on Citadel they have this encrypted chat where the one receiving the message doesn’t know who is sending, that’s sounds stupid but that’s how it looks on Mason phone, he got a message “CONFIDENTIAL she took the case” probably meaning Nadia took the case, also why Carter either knew this or assume it was Nadia and Mason knew it, Mason is playing double agent here but his heart is with Nadia, he also thinks he got everything under control but we already know at the end he didn’t.
Despite of what the internet says about this series I really enjoy watching it but there are a few actors I didn’t like their performance for example Dahlia as Lesley, worst villain and there are times I cant stand Bernard jokes and how Stanley perform the character, everything else looks good to me, I love series where you have to pause, read the characters computer screen or phone to figure out whats going on those details that you cant let pass by, this episode I would give it a solid 7+ since it was pure action for the most part even when it slow down during Abby’s interrogation it was intense when Mason was about to kill her brother to get her to talk and better toward the end when Carter join the dots and assume Nadia is behind the missing Oz Key.
Episode 1: https://peakd.com/hive-121744/@skiptvads/citadel-the-human-enigma-season
Episode 2: https://peakd.com/hive-121744/@skiptvads/citadel-spies-appear-in-night
Episode 3: https://peakd.com/hive-121744/@skiptvads/citadel-infinite-shadows-season-1
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