Citadel Season 2 Episode 1 Review: "Baked Alaskas" - Braga Builds an Assassin, Nadia Goes to Ground, and Mason Fights Kyle for the Wheel

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Citadel* returns by making its old identity trick uglier and more practical. "Baked Alaskas" splits the hour between a prototype mind-control weapon, a mother-daughter hideout that cannot stay hidden, and a marriage where Kyle Conroy has to argue against the man whose memories now live in his head. The machinery is sleek, expensive, and grimly funny; the question underneath is blunt: if memory can be erased, restored, copied, or overwritten, who gets blamed for what the body does?

Bernard’s recap names Mason as the mole, and a party shakedown points Hutch toward Orlick

The premiere opens with Bernard Orlick doing ruthless housekeeping. Citadel was built as the spy network that would do good where CIA, MI6, and KGB could not. Manticore, funded by the world’s richest families, butchered nearly all of it with help from a mole. Mason Kane survived as Kyle Conroy because Bernard’s backstop chip wiped him clean. Nadia Sinh recovered her memory, then helped Mason recover his. The nasty punchline lands early: Dahlia Archer is Mason’s mother, and she tricked him into handing over the Citadel agent list that became Manticore’s kill sheet.

The first live operation is not glamorous hero work. A stranger gets into Maxwell Montaine’s party under the name Maxwell Montaine, knocks his way through the room, and interrogates him about cargo smuggled for Paulo Braga. Montaine gives up the location outside Marseilles and the cargo type: Orlick. Bernard is not missing from the board. He is a product in transit, and someone else wants the same package.

Braga makes Bernard test a receiver on Arnaud Durant and turns three brothers into proof of concept

Braga’s operation stops playing coy about the new season’s weapon. Bernard is forced to walk Arnaud Durant through personal questions while a receiver is implanted in Arnaud’s head. Name, birthplace, brothers: Raphael, Mael, and Louis. The point is calibration. Braga wants something written onto a human brain.

The demonstration is cruel in the specific way good spy trash should be cruel. Braga claims Arnaud and his brothers stole oranges from his farm, then casually reveals later that he does not even grow oranges there. Arnaud is synced, commanded, handed a gun, and made to shoot his brothers. When the control breaks, Braga kills him too, then realizes Bernard is right: the chip was in Arnaud’s head.

It is a clean villain introduction because Braga’s incompetence is as frightening as his ambition. He wants precision without discipline. He wants a miracle weapon but cannot resist firing into the prototype’s skull.

Nadia hides Asha in a storm, loses the safehouse, and hears her daughter ask to be trained to kill

Nadia is in a cramped hideout with bad weather outside, a crying baby nearby, a wig Asha hates, and mango offered as comfort food to a furious child who wants chocolate or pizza. Asha is angry that Bernard, whom she calls Grandpa, has not been found yet. Nadia’s answer is practical and painful. Finding him puts Asha at risk. Keeping her safe is the job.

The safehouse almost immediately proves how thin that promise is. A distant thud, a scream, footfalls, gunfire, an explosion, and then close combat in the dark: the sequence is mostly motion and breath. After Nadia wins, Asha apologizes and says she could kill the attacker next time if Nadia teaches her.

That line is the hour’s coldest domestic beat. Nadia wanted to protect her daughter from the life. The life has already started making recruitment pitches in Asha’s own voice.

Kyle and Abby argue over Hendrix, Manticore, and whether Mason is now inside the marriage

The Kyle/Abby material refuses to treat restored memory as a simple upgrade. They are hiding in what should become a home for Hendrix someday. Abby imagines summers, art space, and a camera. Kyle keeps the perimeter logic running: no contact, no communication, Manticore everywhere, Hendrix safest with Orlick’s family.

Abby hears something else. Nadia has Asha with her. Abby does not have Hendrix. Kyle says that is safety; Abby sees a man using operational certainty to keep a mother from her child. When she asks whether he is the man she married or “him,” the show finally names the psychological mess without sanding it down. Kyle has Mason’s memories, dreams, instincts, desires, impulses, and pain. He does not know whether he coached Little League or slit throats.

That is the franchise’s best problem, and it is still potent. The backstop chip once made Kyle innocent by subtraction. Restored memory now makes him contaminated by addition. Abby is not being unfair when she doubts him. Kyle is not lying when he says he loves her and Hendrix. Both things can be true.

Braga gives Bernard ten days, threatens his daughter, and leaves just enough room for an escape

Back in Braga’s compound, the news gives the clock its shape. Russian President Dmitry Aronov is set to attend the G8 Summit at Hallgarten Castle in Scotland on the 11th. Braga turns “ten days” into a deadline: Bernard must build him a programmable assassin by next week.

The lunch scene is grotesque by design. Braga feeds Bernard food from a three-Michelin-star chef, insists no one does their best work on an empty stomach, and then slides from wellness-host charm into extinction-talk philosophy. Humanity, he says, has an expiration date. His purpose is to extend that date for his son. If Bernard fails, Braga will find his daughter and peel her “like a… fucking orange.”

Bernard waits until Braga leaves for Paris, then moves. The escape is blunt, messy, and more old-man rage than elegant spycraft, with guards down, alarms up, and Bernard trying to get out before Braga’s system closes again.

Hutch rescues Bernard, ruins the getaway car, and admits he is hunting Braga without the CIA

Hutch enters like a bad solution to a worse problem. He kills the guard Bernard missed, shoots the tire on Bernard’s car, and announces another vehicle nearby. The useful part: Hutch is there to kill Braga, and he knows Bernard wants Braga dead too, even if Bernard would rather keep running.

Their car argument is knowingly ridiculous, right down to beer-as-hydration logic, but it also extracts the key intel. Bernard explains the microchip: implant it in a brain, transmit instructions, take away free will. Braga wants an “instant assassin.” Hutch calls it The Manchurian Candidate; Bernard’s correction is simpler and better: now it is not a movie.

The partnership is a con. Hutch sells Bernard on the full weight of the CIA, then admits he does not have a team at Langley. He is dark, maybe burned, and personally after Braga because Braga was funneling millions to terror cells in Europe and tried to have a colleague killed. Bernard needs resources. Hutch needs purpose. The alliance makes sense even when every sentence between them argues against it.

Nadia corners Frank Sharpe for new identities and learns Mason’s betrayal has reached her marriage

The Frank Sharpe sequence is the slickest bit of old-world spy excess in the hour. A lecture on ortolan birds, napkins hiding shame from the gods, wealthy guests, gunfire outside, then Nadia already inside the locked room with a dry “Hiya, Frankie.” Sharpe’s decadence collapses instantly. His security is bad. His confidence is worse.

Nadia wants every Manticore agent’s name so she can kill them, then narrows the ask into something more urgent: wipe her and Asha’s identities, disappear them properly, or get shot. Sharpe cannot deliver. He is radioactive, on the wrong list, reduced to working marks at an Airbnb. Then he turns the gun around without touching it. Nadia had a mole inside Citadel. Sharpe knows who it is because the mole’s mother told him. He thinks Nadia knows too, because she married him.

The reveal cuts against fragments of Mason and Nadia’s past: marriage, trust, the Citadel attack, Nadia saying she remembers everything. Nadia came to Sharpe looking for a way to erase herself from Manticore’s map. Instead, she gets a reminder that the betrayal was already inside the family.

Tiny details worth clocking

• The title’s baked-Alaska elegance fits the episode’s food motif: Braga’s chef-plated meal, the ortolan ritual, mango in the safehouse, and oranges as a lie that becomes a threat.
• Asha calling Bernard “Grandpa” gives the rescue plot a family charge without stopping to explain the bond.
• Braga’s “ten days” deadline is tied directly to Aronov’s G8 trip, which keeps the villain plan legible.
• Abby and Nadia mirror each other without meeting: one mother is separated from her daughter for safety, the other keeps her daughter close and watches safety fail.
• Hutch’s “you have too many” gun bit is silly, but it also tells you exactly what kind of team Bernard is about to be forced into.

Final verdict

“Baked Alaskas” is strongest when it treats espionage as identity damage. Bernard’s old backstop tech once erased people to protect secrets; Braga’s version writes commands into people to spend them. Mason’s memory restoration does not restore order. It gives Kyle enough Mason to make Abby wonder which man is making decisions in their kitchen. Nadia can change Asha’s hair and name, but she cannot keep the job from entering her daughter’s body.

The weaker parts are the same ones Citadel has always carried: some of the banter pushes past sharp into noisy, and Hutch’s entrance nearly elbows the episode into a different show. Still, the premiere has cleaner architecture than the recap-heavy opening suggests. Every lane points at the same machine: who controls the self, who pays for the body’s actions, and which spies can still be trusted after the word “trust” has been made useless.

Rating: 8.0/10 - A sharp, busy reset with a strong mind-control hook, a grim Nadia-Asha turn, and just enough glossy excess to make the new team-up feel dangerous instead of tidy.

More episodes from Citadel S2 — Spy fallout and family secrets, episode by episode. Jump to any episode in the season:

Reviewed by Mira Vance · QuizFandom Editor & Lead Reviewer. Every rating is an honest per-watch assessment from the desk that also writes the quizzes — not a press release rehash.

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