Citadel: Honey Bunny, the ending explained, is KD dead or alive?

Image Credit: Prime Video

The ending of Citadel: Honey Bunny focused on the survival of the main duo and their daughter Nadia. The latest spin-off/prequel set in the Prime Video spy franchise Citadel took place in two different periods: 1992 and 2000. In 1992, Honey (or Princess Hanimandakini) abandons her dream of becoming an actress and joins the spy agency that her friend Bunny (or Rahi) works for, called Foundation. The agency was led by a former Citadel agent, who went by the names Vishwa, Guru, and Baba, and was joined by many other aspiring criminals from around the world. Baba had tasked Bunny, Chacko, Ludo, Honey, and KD with acquiring a device called Armada from Dr. Raghu, who was meeting with a man named Pavel in Belgrade.

Bunny and his team managed to acquire the Armada before the Citadel agents, but the deaths of Raghu and Pavel and the knowledge that Baba intended to use the Armada for his own nefarious purposes caused Honey to defect. She informed Citadel, which was led by Zooni and his trusted aide Shaan, of Baba and his team’s location, resulting in a massive shootout. Honey was presumed dead along with Bunny’s unborn child. Bunny betrayed Baba by shooting KD and Baba was arrested by Citadel. 8 years later, Baba, KD, Nakul, and their men are chasing Honey and her daughter Nadia. Bunny reunites with Chacko and Ludo to reach Honey and Nadia before they are actually killed. Did they succeed? Let’s find out. Spoiler alert

KD tracks down Honey and Bunny.

Vishwa indeed wanted revenge on Honey for botching the Belgrade operation by stealing the Armada. It was believed that she gave the Armada to the Citadel because it was of no use to them. But that wasn’t the truth. During her time at the Foundation, Honey had learned that no one could be trusted. So, she kept it in her possession without knowing that Vishwa would return for it. Honey had trusted Zooni to put an end to Vishwa and the Foundation. However, Zooni secretly turned against the Citadel after hearing Vishwa’s sob story about why he had once sided against the Citadel, along with Zooni’s husband Rinzy (who was also presumably Vishwa’s brother), and that it was the Citadel that had Rinzy killed, not Vishwa. She freed Vishwa and continued to feed him all the information he needed to continue building an organization that could rival Citadel.

Unbeknownst to Honey, she was being followed by both the Foundation and the Citadel, with a team led by KD, and at the nick of time they attacked her and her daughter. To save them from further harm, Bunny confronted Vishwa and destroyed the Armada before his eyes, so that Vishwa would have no reason to harm him and his family anymore. Despite his general disappointment with Bunny's "devolution", Vishwa told KD to step aside and leave Honey and Bunny alone. However, KD was too willing to back down from his initial promise to kill Honey and Bunny and hand over the Armada to him. He stated that Vishwa, of all people, had become weak and that he had to continue his mission with or without his father figure. Nakul, who was apparently KD's secret lover on his team, decided to side with him, thus challenging Vishwa's command. The two tracked Honey and Bunny to their ancestral home in “South India” and attacked them viciously.

Image Credit: Prime Video

Zooni arrested in Citadel: Honey Bunny

Citadel’s Indian wing arrested Vishwa in Belgrade, but the operation (known as Project Talwar) was personal to Zooni because Vishwa was supposedly the killer of Citadel’s former head and Zooni’s husband, Rinzy. Aside from a blurry photograph, I don’t think you can see what Rinzy looked like. However, while Vishwa was held by Citadel for several years, Zooni kept talking to him to find out why he killed Rinzy. Vishwa said that the accusation was a lie invented by Citadel. The truth is that Vishwa and Rinzy had understood the fascist teachings of Citadel and were done with it.

They wanted to create a parallel organization that had the world's best interests in mind, not just their own. During their tenure at the Citadel, they used its resources to create the Foundation. I believe Citadel found out about this and sent the brothers (not sure if they are blood brothers or "brothers") on a suicide mission. They didn't expect Vishwa to survive, so they blamed him for Rinzy's death. All this rant and some "evidence" of Citadel's failure as an organization (which we don't see on screen, by the way) apparently turned Zooni against Citadel.

Ludo's analysis and research revealed that Zooni had been in contact with Vishwa for a long time after she freed him from the Citadel detention center, and Bunny and his team concluded that she was Citadel's mole. Honey passed this information on to Shaan, Zooni's right-hand man at Citadel, who arrested her without asking questions. Now, the fact that Zooni’s apparent betrayal of Citadel is not shown on screen could be a failure of the writers of Citadel: Honey Bunny, who failed to fit it into the 6 episodes of the series. Or maybe Zooni is not the mole and was just pretending to be one to learn more about the Foundation that Vishwa was building. In that case, Zooni has to prove to Citadel that she was not helping Vishwa, but trying to put an end to his terrorism, or she’s done for.

Vishwa is gone

Vishwa is one of the worst antagonists I’ve ever seen in the spy thriller genre, because throughout Citadel: Honey Bunny he kept babbling about Citadel’s failure as an intelligence agency, its fascist teachings, and so on. But we, as the audience, didn’t see that side of Citadel. We only saw his fascist ways of controlling the Foundation. Even when Bunny destroyed the only thing he needed to create his weapons program, the Armada, his speech didn’t change. He kept saying the same thing, that he wanted to use the Foundation for good and end the Citadel. However, he didn’t kill Bunny for his transgressions, and Bunny didn’t kill Vishwa because he wanted to start acting differently and not killing people.

I mean, Bunny killed a bunch of people who were just “following orders” right after this conversation to protect his family, but I guess the plot armor was thick enough to protect Vishwa from any real harm. The last we saw or heard of Vishwa was when he ordered KD to stop hunting Bunny because he destroyed the Armada (I’m not sure if the Armada was actually destroyed, and maybe the device Bunny shot was a decoy and its data was stored elsewhere). That said, after learning that KD had hunted Bunny anyway, Vishwa apparently sent an entire army to ensure that Bunny didn’t kill KD. This means that even though Vishwa failed to hand the Armada over to the Foundation twice, he had his resources at his disposal and the board of directors didn’t kick him out.

Or maybe the Foundation didn’t know about Vishwa’s failure, and Vishwa took advantage of their ignorance to make one last show of strength. I don’t know how Vishwa continued to lead the Foundation after escaping the Citadel, because he had nothing to prove he was worthy of being a leader. I guess he was good with words and the other members of the Foundation were easily swayed by his speeches. So what now? This is the second time he’s failed with the stock market. How will he convince the Foundation to let him stay on the team now? With longer, more passionate speeches? Well, good luck to him.

Image Credit: Prime Video

Chacko Discovers His Family

Throughout Citadel: Honey Bunny, we see Chacko constantly communicating with his son and his wife Dinah. But it wasn’t until the final episode of Citadel: Honey Bunny that we saw them in the flesh, albeit through KD’s eyes. KD was there to track down Chacko because if he found him, he could reach the rest of the team. Dinah finds out that KD was just pretending to be friends with Chacko and that his intentions weren’t noble. We didn’t see if KD killed Dinah and her son after this revelation. When Chacko returned home, the soccer ball his son was playing with was lying unattended on the ground, and he and Dinah were nowhere to be found.

So, yeah, that’s another thread running through the series. Chacko’s family could be dead or alive; we have no way of knowing. Now, if KD survived the fight with Honey and Bunny that he started by defying Vishwa’s orders, then Chacko will have someone to unleash his anger on. But if KD is dead, along with Chacko’s family, then Chacko will become a lost soul. If KD is dead and Chacko’s family is alive, I think he will give up his job as an agent and focus entirely on his family. He also needs to shift his family’s location, because if someone like KD could reach them, others could too. By the way, I don’t think KD killed Chacko’s family. I know he was a bit of a maniac, but he wasn’t that heartless. At one point, Vishwa said that they shouldn’t carry the burden of collateral damage. If that part of Vishwa’s teachings has stuck in KD’s head, well, then things aren’t looking good for Chacko and his family.

Ludo is on the run

I don’t know how Ludo made it to the end of Citadel: Honey Bunny, but he did it despite being a very nerdy tech guy. He mostly operated from his secret lair in Mumbai, but when he was discovered by KD, Nakul, and the rest of the team, he fried every piece of technology there and then made a daring escape. He set up another makeshift base of operations in a hotel room, from where he kept an eye on Honey and Nadia through the satellite tracking phones he had built for them. When KD’s team somehow hacked into those phones, Ludo received an alarm and told Bunny that the villain was about to arrive at their hideout. That was the last we saw of Ludo.

Now, given Ludo’s love for Bunny (which he showed in his own way), I hope Ludo didn’t betray him and his family. I say this because the way Ludo’s ex-colleague managed to track down the satellite phones he gave Honey was a little suspicious. Sure, the guy was a good technician, but I think Ludo was better. So, it’s possible that Ludo was secretly working for the Foundation, Vishwa, or KD, and created a story that he was loyal to Bunny so he could deliver the Armada. Maybe the side of Ludo we see in the 2000s was a complete lie and he was still on Vishwa’s side. We never saw what happened to him after the Belgrade mission. He was in contact with Bunny through a chatroom, but we never saw who was pulling the strings. He simply existed to work against the Foundation from within. If that seems plausible, well, maybe Ludo was a good friend of Bunny’s and did his job well by giving Bunny and Honey the time they needed to deal with KD. If not, I think everyone is in for a rude awakening.

Bunny fails to catch up with Honey and Nadia.

While facing KD and his army, Honey had told Nadia to stay with her half-brother Pratapa Rudra and their sidekick, Uncle Seshadri. In case you were worried about their fate, as far as I know, they are alive. After taking out a portion of KD’s platoon, Honey, Bunny, and Nadia split up with Rudra and Seshadri and head to the docks to put some distance between themselves and KD. Enraged by Nakul’s death, KD chases after Bunny and his family and manages to stop them from reaching the docks, at least for a while. Bunny stayed behind to fight KD and told Honey and Nadia to head to the rendezvous point where he would meet them after making sure no one was following them. Despite initial hesitation, Honey and Nadia left Bunny to fend for himself, who went into beast mode to deal with KD and his men. Both Bunny and KD were badly injured when they finished each other off.

In the Citadel: Honey Bunny finale, both Bunny and KD realize that they failed Vishwa and his teachings. That said, even though Vishwa did his best to turn KD and Bunny into mindless soldiers, Bunny pointed out that they went against their “father” in their own way. Bunny did it for Honey and KD for his self-worth (I think). Additionally, Bunny pointed out the fallacies of Vishwa’s indoctrination methods and how his “wife” and cooking were a mirage he used to make his “children” feel loved. This was an eye-opener for KD, who told Bunny to go to his family before an army of agents (Citadel or Foundation) descended on him.

Although Bunny started to walk towards where Honey and Nadia were waiting, he stopped, probably because he knew his wife and son wouldn’t get too far if he didn’t confront the agents. So, Bunny is either going to launch another attack on the army or surrender so they can be busy interrogating him instead of chasing Honey and Nadia. But, yeah, he won’t be meeting his family for a while. Also, in case you’re worried about KD’s fate, I think he makes it out alive. Yes, he was bleeding to death, but so was Bunny. Since KD is such a compelling character and Saqib Saleem is such a talented actor, I don’t think his role will be limited to this season.