The first spin-off of Amazon's big-budget spy franchise is here: Citadel: Diana is the Italian branch-out from the 2023 action series and it landed on Prime Video on Thursday, October 10.
Citadel: Diana tells the story of Citadel agent Diana who was working undercover at their rival agency, Manticore, when it destroyed Citadel several years prior (all explained in Citadel). Her identity not rumbled, she maintains cover, until she finds an opportunity to escape.
Like all good spy shows Citadel: Diana has action, gadgets and plenty of deception, and this latter one might lose you if you don't pay attention. To stop that from happening, this Citadel: Diana episode 1 recap will help you follow along and not miss a beat.
So here's what happened in the first episode of Citadel: Diana, and beware that spoilers ensue.
A meeting of super-spies
The first thing we see is Diana (Matilda De Angelis) standing in the clearing of a forest, shooting something on the ground. She catches her breath, then proceeds to shoot herself in the arm and scream, before using her scarf as a tourniquet and walking to a car. Don't worry if you're confused, this will all make sense later.
After the title sequence we're in Milan in 2030, full of military people with guns. As Diana drives through the city we hear a radio news discussion on riots and protests in the country due to the president's plans to legalize firearms. Diana enters an office building and in the elevator her eye is scanned, giving her access to a secret level. This is the headquarters of Manticore Italia, and everyone there is doing top-secret work on massive diagrams.
Diana meets her partner, code-named 301, and they're briefed by Matteo (Daniele Paoloni) on their new mission. A jamboree of Manticore's European contingents is happening but at the same time, two agents from Manticore France and Germany are meeting in secret, and Diana and her partner need to find out what's going on. They are told not to intervene and head to Lugano in Switzerland, and on the trip they discuss 308's love life.
At a weapons manufacturing lab owned by the Zani family, head honcho Ettore Zani (Maurizio Lombardi) and his son Edo Zani (Lorenzo Cervasio) examine a new shotgun that they've cooked up which can fold down into a baton-shaped implement that is undetectable by scanners. Ettore is about to head to that big meeting and he invites his son along.
At the meeting Ettore and Edo meet representatives from Manticore's French and German divisions. After Manticore Italy's role in the fall of Citadel (and, by the sounds of it, its acting out of line), the overarching agency put sanctions on the Italian branch, and Ettore and Edo are informed that these have been extended for a further few years due to the Zanis' overreach of their powers.
The Zanis aren't happy, and on the way out the representative of Manticore France, Cécile Martin (Julia Piaton) asks Edo to marry her in order to cement their power and create a larger Manticore team. He asks for one day to consider it, and on the drive home he rumbles that his father is the mastermind behind the proposal.
A shootout in Switzerland
In Lugano, Diana and her partner spy on the meeting between the two agents. They're exchanging important-looking artifacts... so Diana pulls out her gun and opens fire on the agents, despite their order. Diana retrieves one of the artifacts during a gunfight across a public square, but one of the agents escapes, and the two Manticore agents flee.
In a clearing in some woods, Diana and her partner get out of the car to argue, as he's not happy that she opened fire and broke their orders, but she points out that the artifacts are Citadel technology and these agents were likely exchanging it to use against Manticore Italy. He thinks that the only way he can return to Manticore after they broke their orders is by killing her, but she beats him in a fight and shoots him. This is how the episode started.
Back at Manticore HQ, Diana is interrogated by Matteo and she lies that the shootout was 301's idea, and that he's run away with a girl. She doesn't tell him that 301 is dead, so Matteo begins a manhunt for the man and the artifact. On her way home, Diana gets dizzy as she uses her eye implant to search for the agent who got away.
Throughout the episode, we see a few flashbacks to 13 years prior, when Diana and her sister Sara (Giordana Faggiano) are waiting for their parents to visit. However they learn that their parents' flight went down in the Alps. Over the next four years Diana becomes obsessed with understanding the tragedy, and she realizes that there was a cover-up involved. A strange man overhears her telling her sister this, and introduces himself as someone who's also investigating the cover-up. He works for Citadel and he wants Diana to help him by investigating Manticore.
Ear problems
In the modern day, when Diana gets home, Sara is there... but the former promptly collapses. She's taken to hospital by her worried sibling where we learn something that Diana already knew: she has Ménière's disease, an inner ear disorder that can cause vertigo. The last bout was eight years ago (when Citadel fell, coincidentally...) but she rejects a doctor's offer of an experimental cure.
Sara tells Diana that she's moving away from Italy due to the increasing oppression and monitoring in the country, but Diana doesn't leave with her. As they talk, the agent that Diana is tracking is finally spotted by security cameras, so Diana knows his location.
Edo talks to his mother about the marriage proposal, and he doesn't seem keen since he wants to make his own version of Manticore rather than hers or his fathers'. Ettore is worried that Cecile will find out that Manticore Italy killed her agent, before Edo accepts the proposal.
Diana tracks the agent to a warehouse and offers to sell the artifact for €20 million but he wants to meet the next day instead. Diana then breaks into Zani's apartment complex to talk to Edo; she has the French artifact and wants to talk to him about... something.
