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Tom Bedford

Citadel episode 2 recap: Mason Kane re-learns how to be a spy

Citadel episode 2 recap: Richard Madden in Citadel

We're onto the second episode of Amazon's next major TV show, and Citadel episode 2 brings more spycraft, more action and more intrigue than the first episode. 

Following the amnesiac ex-agents of Citadel, an intelligence agency that was destroyed by its rival agency Manticore six years prior, Citadel centers on Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh as they try to keep Manticore from discovering Citadel's valuable intel.

Episode 2 of the six-episode season was released alongside the premiere on Friday, April 28 on Prime Video — here's how to watch Citadel if you need help working out where to stream it — but from here on out the rest of the season will be releasing weekly.

After the first episode set the stage, Citadel's second episode is where the story really begins.

*Spoilers for Citadel episode 2 follow*

Meet Nadia Sinh

Nadia Sinh in Citadel. (Image credit: Prime Video)

Citadel's second episode begins where the first ended — it returns us to the prologue, after the train crash, with Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) emerging from a lake. She does some emergency first aid on herself and calls Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci) to let him know that Citadel has been compromised. Orlick tells her that she's got two hours, but we don't know what for.

Sinh staggers to a road, and she's picked up by a driver. He doesn't take her to hospital but to his home, and although he does remove a bullet from her, it's clear that he has no intentions of taking her to the authorities. 

In fact, this 'rescuer' has nasty plans for Sinh, but when he attacks her, she defends herself and ends up killing him while she tries to escape.

As Sinh lays on the ground, a voice in her head tells her "deleting memories" — this is what Orlick was warning about. Sinh scribbles a note on her arm before passing out. When she reawakens with no memories, she sees the body and also the note on her arm, which tells her to go to Valencia.

Kane's first undercover mission

Anders Silje in Citadel. (Image credit: Prime Video)

Back in the present day, Orlick and his ex-wife are talking. He wants to tell Mason Kane (Richard Madden) and Kane's wife Abby (Ashleigh Cummings) something, but Orlick's ex threatens to reveal to the other couple something Orlick did in the past. So we've got two secrets in play, and we have no idea of what either is.

Kane reveals what he learnt in episode 1 about his identity to his wife, who is initially skeptical, but he doesn't get much time to do so before Orlick whisks him off to New York for his first assignment: retrieving the Citadel file that Manticore agents stole in the first episode, which is currently being decrypted in a secret lab.

With Orlick in a van to assist him emotionally, Kane sneaks into this tower block and retrieves the case just as it's being decrypted — he's confronted by a security guard but his forgotten combat training quickly comes back. 

The Silje brothers (Roland Møller) aren't too chuffed about the case being stolen from under their noses. After letting Manticore agent and UK ambassador to the US Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville) know that Mason Kane is back, they pursue an unaware Kane and Orlick.

Kane unlocks the case, and sets it to scan for other surviving Citadel agents. He also finds a vial with his name on it — injecting it would return all his memories. However, before he can inject it the Silje brothers attack, shooting and killing Orlick and destroying the vial. Kane only barely escapes with the case.

A reunion eight years in the making

(Image credit: Prime Video)

As Kane escapes, the case informs him that there is one other surviving Citidel agent, and it's none other than Nadia Sinh, who he's been seeing flashbacks of this whole time.

Kane travels to Valencia, and finds her working as a restaurant as a waitress. She's initially skeptical of Kane's claims that she's a secret agent, particularly when he tries many of the techniques that Orlick used to convince him in the last episode, but Kane clearly becomes more confident in his newfound identity in this attempt at persuasion.

Turns out that one of the Silje brothers followed Kane to Spain though, and he attacks the two former agents. As Kane and Sinh defend themselves, the latter finds her own vial from the Citadel case, and injects it, regaining all her old memories. With these, she can easily fend off the attacker, though Kane is shot in the process.

The episode ends in Virginia, in Dahlia Archer's house, as she takes another phone call. She's annoyed to find out that not only is Kane back, but Sinh is in the mix too. However she has a bargaining chip — we learn that Orlick wasn't killed as we thought, but simply injured, and now he's Archer's prisoner.

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