Posted by In just six episodes, Season 1 of Citadel presented a lot of plot elements that need to be explained. The ending closes the season pretty quickly, Mason Kane’s gaze is full of meaning, and people wonder what he’s thinking in the last scene. This article will recap Mason’s story after he gets his memories back, trying to explore his thoughts.
You can watch the official trailer for Citadel here on Youtube.
Citadel ending explained: Mason Kane’s memories & story
We get to know Mason Kane since the very first episode of Citadel. He’s one of the key roles of the spy organization, and he has made decisions in the interest of Citadel for a long time. We see him on that train in the opening scene of Season 1, where he meets Nadia, surprising her. Nadia was called for that mission, but Mason had a reason to be there. Before the train derailed, both Nadia and Mason said to each other: “I lied to you.”
During the whole plot, we try to understand what happened to Mason and Nadia. We know a mole exists, but we must go through many episodes to realize who it is. We know Dahlia is leading Manticore, the antagonist organization born to take Citadel down. However, the motives behind all actions are revealed in the season finale, after Mason Kane gets his memories back.
After the last episode, we know the whole story of Mason Kane. When he was a little kid, his father was killed, and he was abandoned by her mother. He grew up with his grandparents, without a real identity. Then, growing up, he entered Citadel, the spy organization that “finally saw him.” However, as he has explained in the plot of Citadel, it’s when he meets Nadia that Mason really finds out who he is.
Mason falls in love with Nadia. The two work together on several missions. He looks more involved than her; he wants to marry Nadia. But at some point, Nadia starts behaving mysteriously. He doesn’t know why, but he’s surely aware that her behavior will raise concerns. That’s why when the Oz-Key disappears after Brielle’s mission, Mason blames Brielle and orders the backstop procedure on her: he does that so everyone will suspect Brielle of being a mole, and nobody will ever have doubts about Nadia. It’s a controversial action done only because of his love for Nadia.
Nadia is not the mole, though. She’s behaving weirdly only because she’s having a baby from Mason and wants to raise it. That’s why she makes the controversial decision to leave Mason Kane, quit Citadel, and live in Valencia, where she can raise her daughter. This leaves Mason totally puzzled, though. He must know where Nadia is to go on. And since Citadel doesn’t reveal it, he goes to the only person who can help him: Dahlia, who’s Mason Kane’s mother, as we discover at the ending of Citadel.
As we discover after Mason Kane gets his memories back, Dahlia left Mason with his grandparents and disappeared after the bombing that killed her husband, Mason’s father. And she discovers later that the bombing was executed by Citadel; it was a failed attack that killed many UN employees instead of the terroristic cell that was the original target. Dahlia reveals this truth to Mason when he asks for her help to find Nadia. That’s where Mason becomes the mole who helps Dahlia to take down Citadel. Somehow, both Mason and Dahlia lost the people they loved because of Citadel and have reasons for revenge.
So Mason Kane becomes a mole, passing the information about Citatel’s agents to Dahlia, and nobody suspects him: neither Bernard nor Nadia. Mason discovers that Nadia is in Valencia raising his daughter and refuses to go and confront her: instead, he follows his revenge plan on Citadel. Citadel goes down, and most of the agents get killed. However, in one of the last missions, Nadia is asked to jump on a train and kill a member of the antagonist organization Manticore. That’s where Mason Kane decides to intervene. Although he’s helping Dahlia to take down Citadel, he’s still in love with Nadia and wants to save her. These are the lies they wanted to reveal to each other before the train derailed: Nadia tried to tell him she had his daughter (she didn’t think Mason already knew that), and Mason wanted to confess he’s the mole and why.
But the train derails, and the backstop procedure is activated for Mason and Nadia. Mason returns to the United States and marries Brielle, now Celeste after she lost her memories. Nadia comes back to Valencia and keeps raising her daughter. Mason is contacted again by Bernard, and he starts working for him again, even though he has no memory. Nadia will regain her memories, and they will work together to stop Dahlia, with no one suspecting that Dahlia is Mason’s mother and Mason helped her before losing his memories.
They will succeed. Mason, Nadia, and Bernard return to the United States. Mason can hug his wife Celeste and his daughter again, although he now knows he has another daughter with Nadia. Then Mason gets all memories back, and remembers he was the one helping Dahlia take down Citadel.
The ending scene of Citadel has explained what Mason is thinking: he knows Celeste, his wife, is actually Brielle, the Citadel spy who lost her memories because of Mason’s order. He loved two women in his life, and he had a daughter with each of them. But with Celeste, he has a family that lives happily together. In contrast, Nadia decided to leave him and go on alone, hiding his daughter from him. He knows he’s the mole; he has feelings for Nadia but hates her for what she did with his daughter. At the same time, he has a life with Celeste, now knowing she’s a former spy without memory: Mason and Brielle/Celeste would never like each other if they hadn’t lost their memories; they are together only because of what happened after the backstop procedure.
All this will fuel the events of Season 2 of Citadel: Diana. The sequel introduced a new spy, and we still need to figure out how the plot will fit into Citadel universe. Still, if Mason Kane is part of it, we will surely understand his plans after knowing everything we explained in this article about the plot and the ending of Citadel.
