Since exiting the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Joe and Anthony Russo have shown plenty of ambition, but the execution hasn’t quite been to the same standard. They’ve found plenty of success in the world of streaming, though, but Prime Video’s Citadel could prove to be their most epic victory or most embarrassing failure yet.
Television has been awash with globetrotting spy stories for what feels like forever, but none of them have taken an approach anywhere near as fascinating as Citadel. Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra, Stanley Tucci, and more headline the first of what’s shaping up to many shows, each with a localized angle.
Of course, the one packed with Hollywood mainstays has been deemed as the flagship, but companion pieces set in India and Italy are already shooting, as the building blocks for the biggest-ever episodic shared universe the streaming sphere has ever seen begins to take shape. It could be awesome, or it could be a disaster, but we’re definitely curious to find out.
The Gray Man drew in a lot of eyeballs and already has a sequel and spinoff in the works, while Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction 2 is gearing up to release later this year. The sibling directors of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame clearly got bitten by the cinematic universe bug, then, and they’ve applied the formula to virtually every action-driven project they’ve touched since.
If the quality of the end product can come close to matching what the siblings have in their head, then we could be in store for a long-running saga that spans the entire globe and guarantees that each new offshoot should be deemed as essential viewing.
