Diksha Sundriyal
The penultimate episode of Prime Video’s ‘Citadel’ sets the ground for the final conflict while clearing the air on some doubts that had been sown in the previous episode. Having lost his memories, super spy Mason Kane is now living the life of a normal man named Kyle Conroy. His past life has caught up with him, and he has no idea whom to trust. Just when he thinks he can trust Nadia Sinh, it turns out that she has been keeping secrets from her, which makes him wonder if she is behind the downfall of Citadel. He prods Nadia for the truth, but what he discovers changes everything between them. Here’s what the ending means for both of them. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Citadel Episode 5 Recap
In the previous episode, Mason had Celeste backstopped because he didn’t want anyone to discover that Nadia was the one to steal the Oz key. He lies to her, saying that Celeste has been sent to live in a safe house until they figure out the location of the Oz key. At a new mission in Greece, they are to pose as a married couple, but Mason proposes that they should turn this lie into a reality. He wants Nadia to marry him. Nadia agrees but then changes her mind after discovering what Mason did to Celeste.
A confrontation between Nadia and Mason leads to the revelation of secrets from both sides. She asks him about Celeste, and he asks her about the Oz key. Ultimately, they break up, and Nadia walks away from Citadel, going off-grid for over a year. When she returns, she is sent on a mission to Italy, following which Citadel falls.
In the present day, Bernard tries to escape captivity by telling Anders that his girlfriend is still alive. Anders agrees to free him in exchange for finding Brielle, but before he can do that, Dahlia shoots him. She reveals that she has located the safe house where Kane’s and Bernard’s family is hiding. She threatens to destroy the place if Bernard doesn’t give her the password to access the nuclear weapons. Bernard relents, but even when Dahlia gets the password, she doesn’t call off the attack.
Citadel Episode 5 Ending: What Secret Did Nadia Keep From Mason?
The plot of ‘Citadel’ is built on secrets. In every episode, the show throws a new twist, which rewrites our understanding of the events in its previous episodes. Everyone knew that a Citadel agent turned and helped Manticore bring down the agency. No one knows who that is, but Mason starts to wonder if it is Nadia. He knows she is not telling him everything and wonders if it might be because she is working for Manticore.
When Carter accuses Nadia of being the traitor, especially about the time when she stole the Oz key, Nadia is forced to defend herself by revealing the secret she’d been keeping for so long. It’s true that she stole the Oz key, but she didn’t do it because she was a traitor or because she wanted to make money by selling it to the highest bidder. She did it because she wanted to destroy the key. No one should have that kind of power, not even Citadel.
When Carter points out how she went off-grid and was last seen talking to Rahi, a known terrorist, Nadia reveals that it was because of something personal. Rahi is Nadia’s father, and she went off the grid because she was pregnant. Having been betrayed by Mason for what he did to Celeste, Nadia couldn’t trust him anymore. She also didn’t want Citadel to know about her pregnancy, so she disappeared. She wouldn’t have returned if it wasn’t for the mission.
Nadia left her daughter in her father’s care and intended to return. She even considered telling Mason about it, but the mission went awry before they could have that conversation, and their memories were wiped clean. While Nadia started a different life with no memory of who she was, her father raised her daughter in Valencia. When Nadia finally gets her memories back, she contacts her father to find out if her daughter is safe. This turns out to be a mistake because Manticore intercepts the communication, and Dahlia figures out that Nadia is keeping something important in Valencia.
Finding out that he had a daughter all this time shocks Mason. Before he can process this information, Manticore finds them. Mason, Nadia, and Carter are easily overpowered, but the Manticore agents don’t kill them. Instead, they reveal they already have an important card to make Mason do what they want. Even though Bernard gave the password to access the nuclear weapons across the world to Dahlia, there is another layer of security that needs to be cleared before accessing the weapons. Only one man in the world can do that: Mason Kane.
Dahlia needs Mason’s fingerprints to control the nuclear weapons. She knows he would never do it intentionally, so she has an incentive for him. From the intercepted chat between Nadia and Rahi, Dahlia discovered something of value in Valencia. She sent Davik to retrieve it when she found that it was Nadia and Mason’s daughter. As proof of holding her captive, the Manticore agent shows the bracelet Nadia had given her daughter.
Now that Dahlia has their daughter, she knows Mason and Nadia will do anything to keep her safe. However, she is not the only one in danger. Unbeknownst to Mason, Abby and Hendrix are also in danger as a missile is flying toward the safe house. Fortunately, the safe house is equipped to deal with such situations. An alarm sounds off, alerting the residents of the approaching missile. Joe leads everyone to the basement, which must be a bunker created to sit through situations like these. They will survive the attack, but still, Dahlia has a critical chess piece in her hand, forcing Nadia and Mason to do the very thing they were trying to stop when they were working for Citadel.
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