When Amazon first brought Citadel to Prime Video, it did so with the promise (or hope) of building out a whole cinemative universe around the show, taking spycraft into the near future with a slight sci-fi twist and making a mega-franchise that could sustain spin-offs and many seasons to come. Suffice to say, things haven't gone quite the way it was hoping.
Sure, we've had a couple of interesting spinoffs, but the main show has been waiting for a second season since its first in early 2023, leading some people to suspect that it might have been quietly canned. Not so, though, since we just got a trailer for its second season some three years later, with some extremely striking tonal differences from the first.
As you can see in the trailer embedded above, Stanley Tucci is returning to the part of Bernard Orlick, the handler who had a slightly more background role in the last season, and will in fact be taking part in at least a few big action set pieces himself. Where the last season was very much fronted by Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra, it looks like it's more of an event split this time.
In fact, going purely by how much airtime they get in the trailer, Tucci might just be the lead role, which is quite a big shift in focus. Equally striking is the way more lighthearted tone that the trailer strikes, from its choice of music to the prevalence of quips and jokes. Perhaps this is Amazon's way of trying to breathe new life into the Citadel franchise, which has previously been pretty po-faced.
It looks like the glitz and glamour is still retained, though, and doubtless those who enjoyed the mysteries of the first season will find a lot to grab hold of this time around, but I'm curious to see how the show fares from here. Will Amazon greenlight many more spinoffs if the main show doesn't become a genuine sensation?
Perhaps it's performed better than I realised, and the three-year gap between seasons was just down to scheduling and the scale of production. We might never get the lowdown on that side of things, but it's still fascinating to see a show that I thought was probably dead come roaring back to life like this. It'll arrive on Prime Video on 6 May, so you don't have long to wait.
