Warning: Spoilers Below For Citadel Episodes 1-4!With only two episodes remaining in Citadel's first season, it's starting to feel like the story would have been better served as a movie instead. Amazon has high hopes for spy thriller Citadel, which is poised as the beginning of a shared universe of shows. The series has been met with largely mixed to negative reviews thus far, but at the very least it appears to be a success for the streamer.

Citadel season 1 made headlines during production when it was revealed that, at $300 million, it would become one of the most expensive shows ever produced. This was largely due to reshoots being carried out when the original showrunners exited due to creative differences, and producers the Russos worked with a new showrunner to overhaul the story. There's something refreshing about Citadel's pacing, as each episode runs around 35 minutes and the first season is only six episodes total. That said, this brevity begs the question of whether it needed to be a series at all.

Related: Citadel Cast & Characters Guide

Citadel Didn't Really Need To Be A TV Show

Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas holding weapons in Citadel

Citadel wears its influences on its sleeve, nodding to everything from Inception to Total Recall. The show follows Mason (Richard Madden) and Nadia (Priyanka Chopra), two agents of a global spy organization called Citadel, who reunite eight years after the agency was destroyed. Citadel is zipping along at a quick pace, with the present-day story being intercut with flashbacks to Mason and Nadia's past romance. While there are central mysteries driving the story - such as who betrayed Citadel and is Nadia a mole - it rarely stretches out its storylines the way other streaming thrillers do.

Citadel episode 4 "Tell Her Everything" featured another major revelation about how Mason/Kyle met his future wife Abby (Ashleigh Cummings) during his days at Citadel - and how he's responsible for her amnesia. Citadel's rapid pacing means it rarely pauses for breath - or allows viewers to question the logic of certain events - but it's easy to see that with a few trims, it could easily have been a movie. There's not really enough narrative meat on the bone for Citadel to be a TV series, and if anything, it probably should slow down and work on fleshing out its characters some more.

Citadel doesn't seem particularly interested in that approach though, as Mason and Nadia are always running to new locations or flashing back to various action setpieces. Had Citadel been produced as a movie, it could have produced the same basic result that Amazon is hoping for. A glossy blockbuster that introduces viewers to the characters and world, while setting up future spinoffs like Citadel: India. Citadel's cast and price tag alone would have gotten Prime subscribers to give it a look. As a series, it's stretching an already slim narrative.

Citadel's Franchise Gamble Might Not Pay Off

Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Nadia Sinh holding a gun in train Citadel

While Citadel is doing well, it doesn't appear to be generating much conversation either. Each episode should idly have social media buzzing over story reveals or how a given cliffhanger will be resolved, but it feels like it's not leaving much of a cultural mark so far. Like the Russos' The Gray Man before it, Citadel is a pricy project intended to launch a new franchise. However, The Gray Man was a streaming success that was soon forgotten, so Citadel season 1 must avoid the same fate if Amazon's expensive gamble is going to work; with only two episodes remaining, it needs to pull out something special for the ending.