Citadel: Honey Bunny is a spin-off from Citadel, but its Season 1 ending suggests more to come from this specific story before it connects any more overtly to the flagship show. The clue’s in the title, so the six episodes of the Prime Video drama from Sita R. Menon and Indian filmmaking duo Raj & DK focuses on the titular characters in their efforts to save their daughter, Nadia (a grade-school version of Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s character from the main show) from agents of their chequered past.
And it builds to something of a cliffhanger that would be worth returning to. Despite us knowing who Nadia eventually grows up to be, there’s more to this story worth depicting in a potential Season 2 if Amazon goes for it, though the fact they’re doing their franchise-building ass-backward doesn’t inspire much confidence.
Anyway, let’s get on with it.
Zooni Is A Mole
A lot of Honey Bunny revolves around two spy agencies – the familiar Citadel, and another known as the Foundation, which Honey and Bunny initially work for. One of the key revelations towards the end of the season is that Zooni is working as a mole within Citadel and has a longstanding relationship with Baba (aka Vishwa and Guru).
Baba was initially blamed for the murder of Rinzy, Zooni’s husband, but during his containment following the Belgrade mission, Baba had revealed that Rinzy was killed by Citadel itself after he and Baba had conspired to use its resources to develop their own rival organization, Foundation, which Baba did following Rinzy’s death. Through his revelations, he turned Zooni to his cause, and she helped him escape from containment and has been in communication with him ever since.
After figuring this out, Honey relays the information to Zooni’s right-hand man, Shaan.
Bunny Destroys the Armada
The typical espionage MacGuffin at the center of a lot of this is a surveillance device known as Armada, designed to monitor every individual on the planet. In a crucial moment in the earlier timeline, Honey, disillusioned with Baba’s methods, had tipped Citadel off about the Armada’s location. She faked her own death and disappeared with the Armada, leading to her being pursued years later.
The Armada is also integral to the resolution of this manhunt subplot, providing a neat device – literally and narratively – to resolve the conflict between Bunny and Baba, and thus Baba and Honey. Bunny’s complicated surrogate father-son relationship with his employer comes to a head when Bunny destroys the device in front of him in the hopes of appealing to his better nature, of talking to the man who took in orphan children as his own.
I thought it was nice that part of the ending of Citadel: Honey Bunny was coming to terms with the idea of one’s own obsession, realizing how far we can fall and how much we can lose sight of what matters.
Kedar Takes Matters Into His Own Hands
Despite Bunny being able to talk Baba down, Kedar takes his ceasefire as a weakness and continues to pursue Honey and Nadia. This stems from lifelong resentment over Bunny’s preferential treatment as an agent, but on a facile level, it prompts the season’s best action sequences by far.
It also leads to a final confrontation between Kedar and Bunny, a close fight that gives way to an open conversation about their similar lives of loss and then manipulation at Baba’s hands. With both men badly injured, Kedar allows Bunny to go, but he’ll have to fight his way through a veritable army of goons to reunite with Honey and Nadia, whose escape he facilitated earlier by essentially sacrificing himself.
Bunny’s fate is left undetermined at the end of Citadel: Honey Bunny, leaving things open for another season or, alternatively, leaving them on a poignantly ambiguous note.
