The penultimate episode of Amazon's blockbuster spy show Citadel has aired, with Prime Video offering episode 5 on Friday, May 19.
You're going to need to have to read our Citadel episode 4 recap to be able to make heads or tails of this episode, as well as our coverage of episode 3, episode 2 and episode 1, because episode 5 drops plot points left, right and center, and each brings twists and turns.
At this point in the story Mason Kane (Richard Madden) and Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) have rescued Carter Spence (Osy Ikhile) from the black site of their nemesis, Manticore, however the bedraggled captive is spilling the beans on Sinh's sordid past, making it sound like she's the mole who brought down Citadel eight years prior.
The fifth episode of Citadel jumps between the past and the present countless times, so just as a note, we've sometimes lumped together plot points that were shown in consecutive flashbacks, to stop this article being utterly confusing.
Not watched the episode yet? Here's how to watch Citadel if you need help working out where to stream it.
*Spoilers for Citadel episode 5 follow*
Relationship troubles
Episode 5 of Citadel picks up where the fourth ended, with Sinh and Kane breaking Spence out of the Moroccan black site where he was imprisoned, only for him to accuse Nadia of being the mole who brought down Citadel.
We see a flashback to nine years prior — that is, a year before Citadel fell. Mason and Nadia are preparing for a mission, and he proposes to her. She accepts the ring.
However soon afterward Sinh finds out that Celeste has had her memory wiped (from the previous episode), and upon confronting Mason about it, he admits it. He says he did it because he knows she stole the Oz Key, and so is probably the mole, but because he loves her he doesn't want her to get into trouble.
Sinh says that she isn't a mole, and she stole the Oz Key to destroy it to keep it out of everyone's hands. When Kane asks if she loves him, she says she doesn't and returns his ring.
Later we see Nadia talking to a mysterious stranger on a park bench. He talks of getting her to Valencia, but she mentions she has some loose ends to tie up first.
Archer has some nasty plans
Back to Citadel's tech expert Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci) who's a prisoner of Manticore agent Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville), and we pick up immediately after episode 3 here. Orlick is promising to bring Anders Silje (Roland Møller) to his long-lost love Brielle (otherwise known as Celeste, or Abby Conroy, played by Ashleigh Cummings), but when Anders is about to free Orlick, Archer shoots him dead.
Archer is insistent that her motivation to bring down Citadel is because it's the agency of chaos and that Manticore is good, which feels slightly hard to believe when she once again asks Orlick for the codes to Citadel's nuclear weapons.
This time Archer has more of an incentive though, as she's tracked down Kane and Orlick's families, hidden in Wyoming, and she threatens a missile strike of Orlick doesn't provide the codes. He does, much to his chagrin, but Archer reveals she's going to attack anyway.
On the phone, Archer tells Davik Silje (also Roland Møller) to order someone to the Moroccan black site, having found out about the break-in. But she tells him to go to Valencia, having intercepted Sinh's text the day prior to someone there.
Over in Wyoming, the families have a scanner that tells them that planes are on the way, so they beat a hasty retreat.
Even more secrets from the past
We're not done learning about secrets from the past. Spence knows lots of what we've seen from flashbacks and more — he knows that, a year before Citadel fell, she ran off to Valencia to work with a known terrorist on a project.
However Sinh has a pretty good excuse. She wasn't working on a project, she was looking after a secret child, who no one was allowed to know about. The park bench stranger was the terrorist but is also her father, who is now looking after the kid.
Sinh hasn't seen this kid in eight years, and also it's Mason's of course. The child is currently being looked after by Sinh's father in Valencia.
Archer is driving somewhere, in a car with a representative of something called The Families, who says they're very happy with her progress. However Archer says there's one thing they need before they can launch the nukes — biometric information from Mason.
Kane, Sinh and Spence flee from the Moroccan black site, but are quickly tracked down by a load of men with guns. Instead of shooting the trio though, they hand Kane an earpiece, which has Archer on the other side. Archer says that she needs Kane's help to enable the nuclear submarine, and gives him an incentive to help — she's kidnapped his daughter. Cue the penultimate episode cliffhanger!
