Spoilers for Citadel Season 1, Episode 5 (“Time Renders Us Enemies”) are below.
Amazon Prime Video’s Citadel series, starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, is now five episodes into the first season, with the latest episode offering far more answers as to what’s going on by revealing a new shocking detail every 5 minutes.
‘Citadel’ Season 1, Episode 5: What Happens?
This is just a quick recap rundown of events that happen in Season 1, Episode 5 of Amazon Prime Video’s spy thriller Citadel, starring Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Stanley Tucci, among others.
The episode kicks off where the last ended, with Nadia and Mason saving Osy Ikhile’s Carter Spence from the Manticore black site prison cell, and similar to the previous episode, the date and time setting are quickly flashed back by almost a decade to dive into Mason and Nadia’s past, pre-Citadel being brought down and the two losing their memories for years.
The first big reveal is Mason proposing to Nadia, in the past, which is called off a few scenes later due to Nadia finding out Mason had a part to play in wiping her friend’s memories using advanced technology, the same tech that was used on them, ironically.
Roland Møller plays twins in Citadel, however, during the early moments of Season 1, Episode 5, one of the twin brothers that he stars as gets shot in the head by Lesley Manville’s Dahlia Archer who has Stanley Tucci’s Bernard Orlick held hostage, all in effort to obtain the codes to nuclear weapons.
Dahlia reveals that she has located the safehouse in which Bernard and Mason’s families are hiding, which forces Bernard to give in and hand over the nuclear codes to Manticore – this doesn’t stop Dahlia from ordering a death sentence on Bernard’s family. Dahlia then discovers that she will need more than just the codes, as it is revealed that Mason is the only soldier who can open what she needs.
Going back to the flashback scenes, Nadia continues to investigate the disappearance of her friend and fellow Citadel agent played by Ashleigh Cummings, which ultimately ends up causing her to lose all trust in Citadel, their agents, and most importantly Mason.
Nadia chooses to turn her back on Citadel and leave the spy life behind, which is later revealed to have been due to her falling pregnant with Mason’s baby, with another flashback revealing that Nadia fled to Spain to hide her pregnancy and the birth of their child in secret. However, Nadia chooses to leave her daughter behind in order to protect her.
Now back to the present day, Nadia reveals everything to Mason and Carter, who are both in the belief that she was a mole and responsible for the downfall of Citadel, which she debunks by explaining the whole story about fleeing to Spain for a year to have a secret child.
This all gets cut short as Manticore finds them to force Mason to help Dahlia retrieve the nuclear weapons that she wants, which he refuses until one soldier reveals that Nadia and Mason’s secret daughter has been kidnapped by Manticore, the last reveal of the episode.
‘Citadel’ Season 1, Episode 5 Review
This episode feels a lot slower-paced compared to the previous four, which is compensated by saturating almost every scene with a new surprising revelation that starts to feel almost silly after a while, not that the reveals are silly, just the amount that is presented in the 30 minutes or so of runtime.
Episode 5 jumps into the past to explore more of the protagonists’ backstories, with Mason now being the only main protagonist who has no idea as to what’s going on, besides Ashleigh Cummings’ Abby Conroy, however, she doesn’t have much of a presence this time round.
Citadel‘s constant diving into backstories and jumping into the past does become a little tedious after a while, as it leaves you craving to jump back into the present-day situation, but makes sense relative to the number of surprises and twisty reveals made throughout the episode.
The chemistry between Madden and Chopra still seems to be a little flat, making it hard to fully invest yourself in their characters, what their characters are going through, and how their characters are supposed to be feeling, but there are still some good moments that pull you in.
Season 1, Episode 5 of Citadel slows the pace down while overloading itself with twist reveals that just don’t quite trigger the emotional response they intended to, making the overall episode feel a bit dull and dry, however, the story continues to remain interesting enough to want to watch the next episode.
3 out of 5 Stars.
Citadel Season 1, Episode 5 is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
