Citadel Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Abby is the weapon, Bernard breaks the plan, and Nadia walks away

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Citadel* Season 2 Episode 7 turns the previous cliffhanger into a finale built on ugly corrections. Abby did kill Mason and Sinh, and the backstop chip in her head makes her the assassin Joana wants to send into the G8. But the episode does not stop there. Dahlia strips Paulo Braga's fortune out of Malcolm, the summit hit becomes something larger than Abby, Bernard and Orlick reveal a hidden plan, and Nadia chooses exile over another life inside someone else's war.

Abby survives, and Joana turns her back toward Aronov

The finale opens by refusing to soften the Episode 6 cliffhanger. Abby has a pulse, but Mason does not get the same grace. The team gets her inside, and the answer arrives fast: Abby did it. The episode states the mechanism plainly enough without polishing it. They used the backstop chip already in her head, which makes her the assassin.

That answer makes Mason’s last choice even crueler. Abby was not only pulled into violence near him. She became the body that killed him. Sinh is dead too, and Joana treats both deaths as proof that the plan can still continue. Nobody gets a clean grief scene because the G8 is hours away and Abby is alive, controlled, and still usable.

Joana then summons Catherine Wolcott and turns the failed earlier attempt into a threat. Kane’s wife killed Kane and Sinh, Joana says, and Catherine’s failure is why Paulo is not there to see the moment. The order is simple: Abby must assassinate President Aronov, and Catherine must kill the Citadel team when they arrive to stop her.

That gives the finale its clock. The G8 is in two hours. Orlick believes Joana will be nearby with the transmitter, so he goes after her to power it down and turn Abby off. Nadia, Celine, and Hutch have to get into Hallgarten Castle before Abby reaches Aronov.

Dahlia takes Paulo’s fortune while the summit starts

While Joana is moving Abby, Dahlia makes her own play. Sharpe gives her the Glenbrook Hotel, where Joana checked in the night before, and Dahlia admits the guilt she is carrying. She says she killed Mason, killed his father, and brought him into the agency. She is going to kill Joana, and if she does not get out, Sharpe is to finish it as discussed and look after her family.

Before that revenge can land, Dahlia goes through Malcolm. The phone call with his daughter is one of the episode’s colder moves because it is not dressed up as spy cleverness. Dahlia puts the child’s safety on the line and asks for Paulo Braga’s fortune, all of it. Malcolm protests that the amount is almost the GDP of a small nation, but the pressure point is obvious. Dahlia knows he is the trustee of Paulo’s estate, and she knows what a parent will do when a daughter is threatened.

The amount matters later, but the scene already tells us where Dahlia is operating. Joana is trying to complete Paulo’s mission. Dahlia is building a financial weapon out of Paulo’s death.

Hallgarten Castle becomes a moving target

News reports place the summit at Hallgarten Castle in the Scottish countryside, with world leaders arriving and Russian President Aronov returning after ten years. The place is all checkpoints, badges, press, diplomats, guards, and public ceremony.

Hutch stalls at the fence with fake outrage about land, family property, and an Irn-Bru, then the team works past the ID checkpoint with help from electronic interference. Inside, Abby is moving toward the roof, and a gold badge becomes the next obstacle. Celine’s line in French about the solution not always being a kick in the balls is almost instantly answered by the episode proving that sometimes it is.

Catherine intercepts the team. Celine tells the others to get Abby. Hutch and Celine fight through stairs, guards, and Catherine’s resistance while the summit keeps moving below them. Ceremony and violence keep cutting across each other until Aronov arrives and Abby is close enough to matter.

Nadia stops Abby, but the assassination still happens

Nadia’s confrontation with Abby is the finale’s most painful scene because it uses family as the only weapon left. Abby, still under the effect of the tech, asks if Nadia is going to kill her and names the emotional mess under the fight: Nadia would be killing the wife of the man she loves. Abby pushes harder by bringing up Hendrix, then Asha. What will Nadia tell those daughters?

That reaches something. Abby comes back enough to ask what is happening and whether Nadia shot her. She cries for help. Nadia begs her not to do it. For a second, the mission looks as if it has narrowed back to the person in front of Nadia: stop Abby, save Aronov, end Joana’s play.

Then the episode breaks that assumption. Orlick reaches Joana, but Joana says there is no stopping it now. The tech works, and the assassination is happening. When she says she wants it to happen, the episode reveals the more important fact: Abby is no longer the only route to Aronov. A device is triggered, people scream, and the later news report calls it a car bomb explosion at the G8 summit. Nadia can stop Abby and still lose the event. That is the finale’s nastiest trick, because it makes the rescue real without making it enough.

Dahlia kills Joana and Bernard admits the hidden plan

Joana tries to survive by explaining that Nadia is not the only person who wanted Aronov dead. She says she made a compelling financial offer to the prime minister and asks Dahlia to let her help. Dahlia’s answer is narrower and more personal. Joana killed Mason Kane. If someone hurts a person Dahlia loves, the consequence is death. Joana dies, and Abby’s breathing stops soon after.

Back with the team, the confusion gets worse. Hutch demands to know what happened. Nadia says they stopped Abby and that it was not her. Orlick says he knows. It was us. The room is told that the murder of Aronov was part of a plan that could not be shared with everyone. The explanation is brutal in its own way: with Aronov dead, the prime minister takes office, the dangerous satellites stay out of the families’ hands, and the prime minister can be negotiated with.

Nadia hears the real moral failure underneath that logic. Mason and Abby were not accidents outside the plan. Bernard knew Abby was the assassin when she came back to them. The transcript does not turn that into a long courtroom confession. It lets the silence answer enough. Bernard was willing to risk people the others loved because he did not trust them to make the sacrifice.

Bernard buys the satellites, then destroys them

The money chain snaps into place after Joana’s death. Dahlia returns with thirty-two billion. A call comes in, and she steps in for Joana, telling the prime minister that Joana made a mess. Joana had offered twelve billion. Dahlia offers twenty-four. The deal continues with a steadier hand and a larger number.

What looks like the final corruption deal becomes something else. Bernard is sorry, Orlick is in, and the order is given. The satellites are bought and then destroyed. Hutch’s reaction says the obvious thing: Bernard bought all those satellites just to blow them up. Billions evaporate into the atmosphere.

Bernard’s answer is the closest the finale gets to a clean thesis. Nobody should have that kind of power. Nobody. It does not erase what he has done to get there. Mason is dead. Abby is dead. Aronov is dead. The prime minister was bribed. The team was lied to. But the satellites do not become a new Citadel prize, a Manticore prize, or a Russian prize. Bernard wins by making sure no one can win with them.

Nadia refuses the next war

Nadia and Bernard get the final argument. Bernard expects the mission to continue. He says everything they do is to protect people. Nadia asks who that protection is really for when entire families have been wiped out while Bernard’s own family sits in a safe house. Bernard says his daughter has a target on her head, and he may never see her again so other people’s children can be safe.

Nadia will not accept that bargain. Bernard says she is not supposed to retire and asks her to work with them, even framing it around her daughter. Nadia answers that not working with him is for Asha. If she stays, Asha becomes another pawn, and Nadia refuses to do to her what her mother did to her.

Still, she leaves him a way forward. There are others who can help kill the Manticore families. They are not the only ones who survived the fall of Citadel. Then Nadia walks away before Bernard can turn her grief into another assignment.

Tiny details worth clocking

• The episode names Catherine Wolcott in Joana’s room, then uses her as the obstacle between the team and Abby.
• Orlick’s transmitter plan is stated conservatively: find Joana nearby, power it down, and turn Abby off.
• The summit is identified as Hallgarten Castle, with Russia returning after ten years.
• Charlotte confirms escrow is active before Joana heads toward an airfield at 1300 hours.
• Dahlia asks Sharpe to take care of her family if she does not make it out.
• Abby names both Hendrix and Asha while trying to break through Nadia’s willingness to shoot.
• Bernard’s satellite move depends on Dahlia raising the offer from twelve billion to twenty-four.

Final verdict

Episode 7 is a sharper finale than the season’s tangled mechanics suggested it might be. The chip, transmitter, satellites, escrow, and summit politics are all busy, but the hour keeps returning to plain consequences: Mason is dead, Abby was used, Joana is gone, Aronov is killed, and Bernard’s victory costs almost everything.

The best choice is making Abby’s stoppage matter without making it solve the assassination. Nadia saves the person in front of her and still cannot prevent the larger plan. Bernard can call that plan protection. Dahlia can call her side revenge. Nadia sees the machinery turning children, spouses, and agents into pieces, and she chooses not to feed Asha into it.

Rating: 8.5/10 - A ruthless, crowded finale that makes every victory look expensive and lets Nadia finally refuse the machine.

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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