Your Mission: Binge Citadel’s Six Action-Packed Episodes In One Sitting

For the past six weeks, millions and millions of viewers around the globe have been tuning into the first season of Amazon Prime’s and AGBO’s action-packed spy thriller, Citadel. Now that the finale is arriving on May 26, we thought it’d be helpful to provide a Binge-Watcher’s Guide to the show that everyone is talking about.

Packed with action sequences, heavy doses of international intrigue, and simmering romance, the series dives into the world of Citadel, a global spy agency whose mission is to keep the world’s power-seekers from creating disastrously nefarious plots. Its top elite agents, Mason Kane (Richard Madden) and Nadia Sinh (Pyiyanka Chopra Jonas) had their memories wiped eight years after an intricate plot to destroy the agency unfolded. The agency’s chief spy handler, Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci), helps them cover their memories and make up for lost time. But is it soon enough to foil Citadel’s far-reaching enemy, Manticore, that is being aided by the sinister and duplicitous British Ambassador, Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville)?

Read on to become fluent in Citadel lore, to learn the difference between the Oz Key and the X-Case, and to collect the expert intel you need to become a seasoned Citadel fan.

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BY THE NUMBERS

240: The number of countries and territories where Citadel is available to stream
8: The number of years that have passed since one of Citadel’s own betrayed them
4: The number of languages that Nadia and Mason use in dialogue within the first 10 minutes of the first episode.
100: The number of years that The Citadel has been in operation.
2,300: The altitude, in meters, of the ski resort in Slovenia where the Citadel snow and ski scenes were shot.
1998: The year that the futuristic museum called Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias opened in Valencia, Spain, where several Citadel storylines unfold throughout the series. Production took place both in the city itself and in its surrounding bucolic areas, like Villahermosa del Río.
2030: The year in which the Citadel story takes place.
5: The number of steps required to make Stanley Tucci’s epic martini from the comfort of your home.

CITADEL GLOSSARY

Citadel: An independent global spy agency. Elite Citadel agents Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh had their memories wiped when they narrowly escaped with their lives. Eight years later, Citadel’s sole surviving agent, Bernard Orlick, searches the globe for Mason and Nadia in the hopes that they can regain their memories and stop Manticore once and for all.

Manticore: A powerful syndicate manipulating the world from the shadows.

Oz Key: Invented by Anders Silje, the Oz Key is a piece of war technology that enables its user to hack into anything, including a nation’s entire infrastructure. With access to the Oz Key, an entire country can be captured.

Backstop: Bernard Orlick created the Backstop as a last resort for the fall of Citadel. Every Citadel agent has a chip placed in the temporal lobe of their brain. If a Citadel agent can no longer be traced, they get backstopped.

X Case: A multi-functional case containing all the nuclear weapon codes in the world. It’s also an agent tracker that stores the memory files for each of the backstopped agents.

KEY PLAYERS

Mason Kane: Richard Madden is Mason Kane, a highly skilled Tier-One agent for Citadel. After the fall of Citadel at the hands of Manticore, Kane narrowly escapes by having his memory wiped. When a trusted colleague from his past resurfaces with news of Manticore’s new deadly plot, Mason sets off to find his former partner, Nadia Sinh, to stop the villainous spy agency.

Nadia Sinh: Priyanka Chopra Jonas plays Nadia Sinh, an elite spy for Citadel, who is also a part of the Tier-One program alongside her former partner, Mason Kane. When Kane reconnects with Sinh eight years after the fall of Citadel, the two spies embark on a mission that takes them around the world in an effort to stop Manticore.

Bernard Orlick: Stanley Tucci plays Bernard Orlick, Citadel’s tech genius, who has developed systems and new technology to ensure the organization’s supremacy worldwide and to take down terrorist organizations and greedy state governments. Later in his life, Orlick grew close to Kane, forming a father/son bond with the younger spy.

Dahlia Archer: Lesley Manville plays Dahlia Archer, the British Ambassador to the United States, whose loyalties may lie elsewhere. She’s highly cunning and ambitious, making her both a valuable asset and a formidable foe.

Abby Conroy: Ashleigh Cummings plays Abby Conroy, who meets Mason Kane after the fall of Citadel at a memory therapy treatment center. Abby and Mason quickly fall in love, get married, and have a daughter named Hendrix. The two live a peaceful, ordinary life until the day Bernard Orlick shows up in the middle of the night, and their lives are turned upside down.

Anders Silje: The mastermind of Manticore who is also the inventor of the Oz Key (played by Rolland Møller).

Davik Silje: Anders’s twin brother and Manticore agent (played by Rolland Møller.)

‍Grace Helgoff: A senior Citadel agent and head (played by Nikki Amuka-Bird), who sends Mason on a secret mission to the Alborz Mountains in Iran.

Carter Spence: A Citadel agent (played by Osy Ikhile), who Mason and Nadia seek to rescue.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR CITADEL?

Finished with your viewing marathon for the first six episodes? We recommend going back and rewatching, because within each you’ll find clues about the upcoming international installments. Early next year, you’ll be introduced to Citadel agents in Italy and India, and the stories between them will all be deeply interconnected.

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