Prime Video's 'Citadel' First Spinoff to be Titled 'Citadel: Diana'

Citadel, Amazon's first major global series for flagship streaming service Prime Video, was not the critical hit the parent company hoped for when it debuted at the end of April, landing a 54% splat from critics. (Our own Rory Doherty called the show an afterthought to the more significant corporate motives.) However, the "parent show," as everyone keeps insisting on calling it, was already renewed for a second season two weeks before the premiere, and the "localized" spinoff series aimed at emerging streaming markets like India and Mexico were already in production, so there was always going to be more where that came from.

The series started by playing it safe, set in Italy, and starring Matilda De Angelis, an Italian actor familiar to American and U.K. audiences from her turns in Leonardo, The Undoing, and The Law According to Lidia Poët. The series was produced by Prominent Italian studio Cattleya, the Italian arm of the U.K.'s ITV Studios – and has a proven track record of hits like Gomorrah. While the shows aimed at the most valuable emerging markets are still in production, Amazon got the Italian one into post-production fast enough to release a first-look photo of De Angelis alongside Citadel's finale premiere on Friday, May 26, 2023.

Titled Citadel: Diana, De Angelis plays the title character, who, one assumes, will also come out of her sleeper mode and start spycraft in her home country.

There is no synopsis as yet for Citadel: Diana, but fans can guess from the plot of the main show that all of these spinoff series will basically be variations of origin stories as each of the different lost spies of the Citadel ring have their memories return and start fitting back against nebulous bad guys doing terrible things at the behest of the evil syndicate Manticore.

De Angelis with start alongside an Italian cast made up of local major stars who have not broken out of Europe as yet, though Walter Presents fans may recognize a few of them. The cast includes Lorenzo Cervasio (Paradise), Maurizio Lombardi (The Young Pope), Julia Piaton (Profilage), Thekla Reuten (Warrior Nun), Daniele Paoloni (Marilyn's Eyes), Bernhard Schütz (World on Fire), and Filippo Nigro (Medici). Cattleya’s Gina Gardini served as showrunner and executive producer on Citadel: Diana along with the Russo Brothers. All episodes were directed by Arnaldo Catinari (Suburra: Blood on Rome), with scripts from Alessandro Fabbri (1992). 

All episodes of Citadel Season 1 are streaming on Prime Video. Season 2 is already greenlit and expected out in 2025. Citadel: Diana is expected to debut in between them, in 2024.