Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘Citadel’ builds the mythology of a secret service dedicated to saving the world. Mason and Nadia are its best of the best agents and are sent on a mission to avert another disaster. However, they are ambushed and discover that an organization named Manticore is behind it. Following this, Nadia and Mason are separated, losing their memories. Years later, when they reunite, they find themselves running from Manticore all over again. This time, it turns out that the evil organization has planned something much worse for the world. It is on Nadia and Mason to save the day. They need to figure out what Manticore is and what it wants. Here’s what you should know about it.
Manticore: The Antithesis of Citadel’s Heroism
Every hero needs a villain. In ‘Citadel,’ the eponymous organization is the hero, the savior that the world needs. It is the last stand that protects the world from dangers that lurk around every corner. Manticore is the danger that lurks around. It wants to destroy the world because that will make it more money.
Citadel is a secret organization that doesn’t cater to the needs of any nation. Almost a century ago, it was set up by the people who didn’t want the world to be torn apart by different countries, all with their own secret organization pushing their own agenda. In this tug of war to gain control over each other, the secret services of the individual countries didn’t refrain from doing horrible things without any concern for human life. Bombings, assassinations, terrorist attacks, wars— these are just a few things that the agencies dabbled in. Citadel was set up to rise above all of them.
The agents of Citadel wouldn’t belong to any country. They would focus solely on saving the world, which means that everyone was their enemy. The agents of Citadel foiled any plan that threatened peace in the world, even if it was carried out by a highly reputed secret service of a superpower with nuclear weapons. Citadel’s only goal was to look out for the common people, who were unaware of the strings being pulled behind the curtain to control or destroy their lives.
While Citadel considered countries waging wars against each other as a disservice to humanity, others profited from all of this. These people got rich through the chaos in the world, and they wanted to get wealthier and more powerful, which Citadel wouldn’t allow. So, to counter all the good that the secret organization was doing in the world, an anti-Citadel with the completely opposite philosophy and work ethic was formed named Manticore. This is everything that Citadel has been fighting against.
The founders of Manticore are some of the wealthiest people in the world. These men poured their money into Manticore, which explains how the organization evolved so much in such little time and stood against Citadel, which had been operational for so long. With the power of money, they burrowed a way into every government, placing their trusted agents in the politics of different governments. One such useful agent for them is Dahlia Archer.
The people running Manticore wanted Citadel out of the way, but more importantly, they wanted all of Citadel’s secrets. To root out an organization that was supposed to exist only in stories and to gain control of its inner workings meant they needed someone on the inside to help them. They need a Citadel agent to turn, which is where Dahlia comes in. She used her skill set to push the unnamed agent into submission and got them to reveal everything they knew about Citadel.
This agent gave Manticore information about every Citadel agent and told them about the Citadel X case, which has all of Citadel’s deepest darkest secrets. Bernard later tells Mason that the case contains the things that could completely bring down an entire country. Apart from information about Citadel agents, the case also had codes for every nuclear device in the world. Anyone who possessed the case would be the king of the world, and that’s what Manticore wants. They want to profit from all the evil things in the world. The worse things get, the better off the people of Manticore will be.
Read More: Where and When Does Citadel Take Place?
