Citadel, Season 2: Here's What You Might Want to Know I Think About It

The wife and I binged Season 2 of Citadel the past few nights.  I think it's a great scalding piece of science fiction spycraft with somehow some nearly slapstick comedy woven in via a new rogue CIA operative.  As I was watching it, I thought that if Alfred Hitchcock were alive and kicking today, Citadel might well be the kind of streaming TV series he would make.  

Citadel -- both seasons -- is also a special kind of love story, chocked full of insights into the way love plays in all of our lives, off-screen.  There's a conversation in almost every episode in which Nadia or an equivalent character says to Mason or an equivalent character, you don't really love me, "you loved the thought that I loved you."  That's pretty astute stuff, in a spy or any narrative, because it comes straight out of real lives.

Because of what we found out at the end of season 1 -- I'm trying to avoid spoilers here -- there's also a lot compelling and provocative family drama, probing the relationship between parents and their adult children.   Since we're dealing with daily life-and-death relationships, the regular pressure points that we find in everyday life take on cutting-edge importance.

The importance of chips in the brain -- the key science fictional lever in season one -- is expanded in season two into a capacity to remotely turn anyone with an implanted chip into a murder machine.   If this sounds like an update of The Manchurian Candidate, you'd be right, and that's indeed what one of the characters says in Citadel season 2.

Lots of people get killed, including some major characters, including one I'm whose death I'm very unhappy about -- but hey, this is science fiction, maybe a soul can be embedded in a chip, and I hope there's a third season in which some version of that happens.

See also:  Citadel 1.1-1.2: Memories and Questions ... 1.3: Jedi ... 1.4-1.6: The Arch Anti-Hero

lots of chips in this novel

Citadel 1.4-1.6: The Arch Anti-Hero

Well, I held off reviewing the final three episodes of the first season of Citadel (on Amazon Prime Video) until I'd seen the sixth and final episode -- which I just did -- because events were moving so fast in these episodes that I realized I wouldn't know what was going on, at least not well enough to write a coherent review, until I'd seen the final episode.

And, yeah, was I right.

[Huge spoilers ahead ... ]

So the big stunning reveal in the final episode of this season tells us how and why the mole in Citadel brought it down.  And along with that -- who the mole was.   It's none other than Mason Kane, who turns out to be Dahlia's son.   Dahlia of course is the head of what we thought was the nefarious organization Manticore that brought Citadel down.  The revelation that Kane was the instrument of Citadel's destruction is the equivalent of James Bond being Blofeld's son, and he helped his father bring down MI6.

And before that beyond-shocker, we get a quick series of just slightly less profound reveals.  We meet Nadia's daughter, who, unsurprisingly is also Mason's.  This is followed almost immediately with Mason/Kyle being reunited with his new family (we found out a few episodes ago that his wife, whom we met in the first episode, is actually another Citadel agent, who also had her memories wiped and replaced, due to Mason's insistence!).  In a memorable sequences of scenes, we see Mason/Kyle's two families meeting each other for the first time.

And this, as I said, happens right before Mason, his memories restored, discovers that he is the villain he has been searching for and we have been wondering about this whole short season.  If I wanted to get literary about all of this, I'd say this makes Mason an arch anti-hero.  But I'll confine myself to saying these six episodes were fine fictional spycraft indeed, and good science fiction, as well.  I'll be sure to watch and review whatever new Citadel stories become available.

See also:  Citadel 1.1-1.2: Memories and Questions ... 1.3: Jedi

Citadel 1.3: Jedi

So, I said in my review of The Diplomat that it had elements of James Bond.  Citadel, an outright spy thriller, set in the future, of course has elements of Bond, too.  And tonight, watching the third episode, I was struck by the vibe of Star Wars it conveys, too:  Citadel which fell, with just a few disparate agents left, is a lot like the Jedi, and the few of them that remained in the darkest days of the fall and then rise of the Force.

Of course, Star Wars takes place way way in the future, across the galaxy,  and Citadel is all in here on Earth.   But the Jedi excel in mind tricks, and the surviving Citadel crew exult in that, too.

Bernard as a prisoner put on a good show of that tonight in episode 1.3.  He's not just a prisoner, he's a captive on the verge of getting his brain cut into by a ruthless enemy intent on knowing what he knows.  And Bernard talks his way out it, or, at least manages to get his prime torturer to do his bidding by promising something very dear to this guy with a beard.

Meanwhile, we're earlier treated to a great Bondian Jedi scene some ten years earlier, when Nadia, a brand new agent, first meets Mason, and rescues him on a crucial mission.  Speaking of which, we've yet to understand how and why Citadel fell.  Mason is wondering about this, too, including if Nadia was the inside agent which Manticore deployed to deconstruct Citadel.  Of course she isn't, and neither Mason.  I also don't believe that Bernard is some kind of arch double agent.

But, if not one or more of these three, who?  Possibly Carter, whom Citadel was desperately trying to rescue years ago, but I sort of doubt that, too.  All of which is making for a good spy story, which, as I said before, I wish were already all out there for full season streaming.

See also:  Citadel 1.1-1.2: Memories and Questions

Citadel 1.1-1.2: Memories and Questions

Saw the first two episodes of Citadel on Amazon Prime Video -- all that are available this week.  Very good, recommended, and --

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The key ingredient in this series so far is: memory.  Or, more precisely, memories.  We see in the first episode that the memories of Citadel agents can be remotely erased.  (So, obviously, this takes place in the future.)  This erasure makes lots of sense if you're part of an international organization of good spies (Citadel) at war with an international organization of evil spies (Manticore), because if the bad guys capture you, your top-secret information can't be tortured out of you or otherwise taken.  And then we learn in the second episode that Citadel uploads and stores all the memories of their agents, and keeps them in vials which, when injected into their bodies, brings back the memories of the agent that were previously erased.  This makes lots of sense, too.

It also raises lots of questions, which may or may not be explored in the episodes ahead.  For example, if Agent X's memories are injected into Agent Y, or any other human being, will that recipient suddenly have Agent X's memories?  Or what happens if one person is injected with two or more sets of memories from other people?  Could there be a sage somewhere with a whole collection of memories from agents gone and still present?

But the story is just beginning, so we'll just have to see.  What we do know, by the end of the second episode, is that Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh's memories were at first erased, but only Nadia has recovered hers because, well, it looks like the vial with Mason's memories was damaged and some of the vital fluid leaked out when the bad guys attacked him and Bernard (see below), but who knows, which is to say, I don't really know, because maybe there's still enough of that fluid left in the vial for Mason to at some point recover his memories?  In other words, can just a droplet of memory be cultured to yield someone's full set of lost memories?

Which raises another question: is there any other way that lost memories can be recovered?  Mason and Sinh both seem to have bits in their heads of who they were, which come to them in brief flashes and dreams (which I assume are longer than the flashes, who knows).  And while we're at it, can memories in vials or otherwise be copied of cloned, so that we could actually have two Masons and two Nadias running around?  And/or, can memories be edited, so that only some of the memories can be edited?  And depending on how advanced this memory tech is, could new memories be created in the storage unit, so that when they were injected into the person, they had memories they didn't have in the first place?

Bernard (always good to see Stanley Tucci on the screen), who was in charge of Mason and Nadia before they lost their memories, and apparently still is, would likely know the answers to at least some of these questions.  But he has been wounded and captured by Manticore.  And, also, I'm not clear if he is the ultimate head of Citadel, or just Mason and Nadia's superior.

Anyway, lots to discover in this high octane, fast-moving futuristic spy series, and I'm all in, even if, as you may no doubt already know, I'm grumbling that it's being doled out to us on a less than bingeable basis.

***

If you like science fiction about memory on the screen, check out Remembrance, Rememory, and Mnemophrenia.