All six episodes of Citadel: Diana stream on Prime Video as the first franchisee in the action series universe established with Citadel, which premiered on the streamer last year. (This November brings the third series in the franchise, Citadel: Honey Bunny.) It’s 2030, and in a Milan, Italy under rigid state control, Diana Cavalieri (Matilda De Angelis) is an agent of the all-powerful agency Manticore. Or is she? As Diana’s true aims become clear, she’ll engage in futuristic gunfights, protect her sister Sara (Giordana Faggiano), work with the mysterious Gabriele (Filippo Nigro), and tap into the circles of power inhabited by people like Edo Zani (Lorenzo Cervasio), his father Ettore (Maurizio Lombardi), and Cécile Martin (Julia Piaton). Citadel: Diana is developed and co-written by Alessandro Fabbri.
Opening Shot: A woman with an asymmetrical bob and slick, future-fied duds picks up a pistol and positions its barrel. Without hesitation, she shoots herself in the arm.
The Gist: That’s Diana (De Angelis) doing the shooting. It’s part of her plan to cover up her real intentions, which go directly against Manticore, her demanding employer. In 2030, eight years after Manticore destroyed rival agency Citadel, its Italian faction is at odds with Cécile (Piaton), who controls Manticore France, and Wolfgang Klein (Bernhard Schütz), the leader of Manticore Germany. Diana’s direct boss Matteo (Daniele Paoloni) has her tracking secret meetings between French and German agents at the behest of Ettore Zani (Lombardi), who not only runs Manticore’s Italian branch but is also the country’s leading weapons manufacturer. And as Ettore’s son Edo (Cervasio) prepares to inherit the Zani empire, he’s also in open disagreement with Ettore’s methods.
So there’s trouble at the top, even as an agent like Diana is expected to follow orders or face deadly consequences. (In that regard, Manticore is sort of like the faceless “hi hi” entity from Mr. & Mrs. Smith.) The meeting Diana witnessed was all about uniting two halves of an unnamed device, a weapon with the kind of power nobody’s supposed to have anymore because it dates from the days of an active Citadel. When Diana intercepts one portion, it’s to broker a deal that will help her counteract the moves of Manticore and the all-powerful Zani family.
The Zanis are already developing small arms that shapeshift incredibly into other physical forms. And mounting political violence in Italy and around the world indicates upheaval in the global power dynamic, something that’s sure to play into whatever Diana’s up to. But for her, all of this is also personal. Flashbacks reveal a younger Diana of nine years before, after her parents died in an unexplained air disaster but before she was a spy. “I’m part of an agency that tries to stop people who make the world a worse place,” Gabriele (Nigro) tells Diana in the past. “You are talented, strong, intelligent, and angry. Join us, and we’ll get the people who killed your parents.”
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Matilda De Angelis also stars in the title role of the humorous, occasionally saucy Netflix period drama The Law According to Lidia Poët. (Season 2 appears at the end of this month.) And while the arrival of Diana and the pending Honey Bunny officially makes Citadel a franchise, it’s worth comparing to other shows that feature lots of spy stuff. Like The Recruit, or The Night Agent, which returns with its own second season in 2025.
Our Take: There’s a kill-or-be-killed tone to Citadel: Diana that immediately establishes the stakes of its near future world. It’s also impressive visually, with multi-dimensional holographic screens appearing at every turn, robots that suture gunshot wounds with laser-guided efficiency, and Diana’s aural and optical devices, which do things like enhance sound, perform instant facial recognition, and can even help her pick locks and hotwire cars. So Citadel: Diana walks the walk of a sleek action series with all of the technological toys and cool guns. But it talks the talk, too. As flashbacks reveal the emotions and desire for answers that drive Diana’s motivations, we’re intrigued with who she is underneath the carefully-maintained Manticore veneer.
And don’t worry about trying to catch up with Citadel if you’re going into Diana blind. It’s evident that people in power are playing Manticore’s growth against what Citadel established, even if the latter is supposed to be long gone. And with the aforementioned tech and a clutch of well-choreographed chase sequences that push their way through scenic European locations, Citadel: Diana has more than enough spy world features to stand on its own. The tie-ins to a larger Citadel-verse are interesting, as is the big money being spent on these shows. But that stuff doesn’t have to represent Diana, which in the moment can just be a tense, good-looking, and easy to watch spycraft yarn.
Sex and Skin: The first episode sticks mostly to intrigue and gunplay, but that could change!
Parting Shot: There are lots of shootouts in the scenes shown from future episodes of Diana. We hope some of those incidents reveal more about the Zanis’ mysterious shape-shifting weapons technology. Is that a hairbrush in your bag, or is it a loaded shotgun?
Sleeper Star: Filippo Nigro, who appears here as a kind of spy biz handler, co-starred in the second season of Medici on Netflix, which like Citadel: Diana was an international production: its first season starred Richard Madden, who also stars in the original Citadel.
Most Pilot-y Line: Citadel: Diana is just hinting at context in the early going, but it’s also having characters say things that sound really important. Such as:
“It’s a weapon. They rebuilt the Citadel technology. And if they’re doing it in secret, they want to use it against us.”
Our Call: STREAM IT! As the first spinoff from Citadel, Citadel: Diana carries over and adds to that show’s world-building, establishes its own international flavor, and maintains an urgency driven by Diana’s double agent intentions.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.