As a fan of globe-trotting spy series, one of my most anticipated shows of 2025 is Citadel season 2 (which, I should point out, hasn't actually been confirmed to be releasing this year, but it seems likely). However it needs to make some changes from the first season.
The world of Citadel is expanding rapidly, with Citadel: Diana and Citadel: Honey Bunny exploring the Italian and Indian sides of the spy universe respectively, but Citadel season 2 is the next big release expected for Prime Video's burgeoning spy franchise.
Despite Amazon pouring huge amounts of money into the show, it's had a lukewarm reception so far: the main series has only 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, though the spin-offs fared better with 82% for Diana and 75% for Honey Bunny. If you were to ask me why Citadel hasn't been a smash hit so far, I'd boil it down to one key reason, that all three series had but the main one suffered from the most. It's the over-use of a certain trope which I hate, that was partiularly egregious in Citadel.
Back and forth
The trope that nearly put me off Citadel was the sheer number of flash-backs which the show used to tell its story. Every episode saw us jumping between different timelines as we watched the fall of Citadel in the past and followed our main characters piecing things together in the present.
I'm not a fan of flashbacks at the best of times. I much prefer stories that find smart ways to convey the information of the past without us having to waste loads of time seeing exactly how things panned out. In fact it's gotten to the point where I can feel myself losing interest in a series if we flash back more than a handful of times.
It's even worse in spy stories, where we're meant to be focusing on the plot or conspiracy at hand, instead of dwelling on unimportant character details from the past. How many of the good James Bond movies are 50% flashback?!
To be clear, I'm not talking about stories that play out over multiple timelines. I didn't mind Bodies jumping between four different periods and, while I haven't seen it, Yellowjackets seems the kind of show that wouldn't irk me either. But these are stories that give equal weighting to the past and present, and the real story is the relationship between the two timelines. I also don't mind stories with light flashbacks now and then, but many streaming shows you see nowadays use them way too much.
In something like Citadel, there's one main story we're watching: the quest of Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh to reunite and revive Citadel. Yet it felt like 50% of what I watched was set in the past, without justifying it.
We get to see the entire chain of events building up to the fall of Citadel, through action set-pieces and romantic trysts, even though few of these are really important to the story. Plus, for about 90% of the flashbacks, the information they share has already been shown or at least implied in another way.
The worst part of this incessant cutting to flashbacks is that it really hurt the pacing of the story, as for every two steps into adventure and excitement we took, we took one step back into the past. And the present-day events of Citadel were by far the most interesting for a fan of spy thrillers, like with submarine heists and the survivors picking through the ruins of a secret base in Utah. That's what I want to see more of, but by the end of the first season, I felt like the characters had gotten to the point that they should have been at after two episodes.
Less of a spin-off problem
I should put my hands up: I didn't finish either Citadel: Diana or Citadel: Honey Bunny. That's not a testament to their quality, just how busy the TV season was when they came out!
Both of these spin-offs had quite flagrant use of timeline-hopping, but I didn't find it as egregious as in the main series.
In Citadel: Diana, the main story is about the titular operative trying to break out of Manticore in the modern day, but we see lots of flashbacks about how she joined Citadel and got herself into Manticore. This was forgivable since the show has a smaller scope: it's about one character, and so flashbacks setting up her past and quest are more fitting. Moreover, they were relatively sporadic, and the main series had a swift enough pace that the flashbacks never distracted for too long.
Citadel: Honey Bunny, on the other hand, was one of those shows that's all about the interplay between two timelines. On the one hand, it's a romantic drama about two lovers joining Citadel, and on the other it's an action thriller as they try to protect their daughter (who's Nadia Sinh, one of the main characters of the core show). It felt like the whole point of the series was to have these two timelines, so again the use of the trope is justifiable... although judging by the series' low RT audience score of 58%, not everyone was as forgiving as I was.
Why I'm hopeful for Citadel season 2
If I found the flashbacks in Citadel so annoying, then why am I so excited for Citadel season 2? Well, that's because I don't think they'll be used so much.
Citadel felt, to me, like an entire season-long set-up for more exciting action to come. We learnt about Citadel and Manticore, as well as the main characters on both sides of the conflict, and many side characters had secrets or conflicts set up ready to play a major role going forward.
Now that all the important information is set up, we simply don't need flashbacks to provide more information: it's all there already. Now we can stick in the present as the two sides do battle.
Prime Video is no stranger to season-long set-ups. The entire first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power felt like it was there to teach us about the characters and world before season 2 actually gave them something to do, and say what you will about the quality of the series, it definitely flexed those muscles with its character work in the sophomore run. Fallout was the same: despite being a fan of the games, I didn't love the first season, but it's put all the pieces in place for Fallout season 2 to be fantastic.
It used to be common that TV shows would have to weather an iffy first season, with the creators finding their footing, before getting better over time. But in a streaming world where popular shows are cancelled left, right and center, we often see series ended before they're given a chance to shine.
That's why I'm glad Amazon has given Citadel leeway despite the mixed response to season 1: there's some real potential for it now that we're all prepared for its story. I just hope there aren't any more flashbacks!
