Prime Video‘s new show Citadel: Honey Bunny takes its peculiar name from its irrepressible leading lady Honey (Samantha) and her love interest, Rahi Gambhir, known to friends simply as “Bunny” (Varun Ghawar). The series, split between two timelines in 1992 and 2000, reveals how Honey and Bunny fell in love while working undercover as agents only to fall out when the reality of their work became clear. Eight years later, Honey is on the run with their daughter Nadia (Kashvi Majmundar) while Bunny hurries to find them before their enemies do.
Citadel: Honey Bunny is an intoxicating blend of action, romance, humor, and humanity. It also features one of the most twisted heroines we’ve ever seen on television. As kind-hearted, courageous, and spunky as Honey is, we soon learn she’s got a vicious streak. It plays out when she’s single-handedly mowing down a team of soldiers attacking her and her daughter in a remote Indian safe house. It pops up when she advises her little girl to always through the first punch in a fight. Oh, and it definitely shines through when we learn through flashbacks that Honey had already killed a man long before Bunny recruited her to be a spy.
In Citadel: Honey Bunny Episode 2 “Talwar,” we get flashbacks to Honey’s early life, growing up as a literal princess (albeit an illegitimate one) in a gorgeous southern Indian palace. There, she dreamed of being an action star, like her idol, the Australian stunt woman Fearless Nadia, and taught herself to shoot her father’s guns in secret. When she’s eventually married off to an older man, her dreams appear to be dead. That is…until she conveniently kills her husband by flicking a grape into his mouth, choking him.
When Decider brought up this major life event — which is otherwise swept under the rug by Citadel: Honey Bunny — during an interview with Honey, herself, Samantha, and the show’s directors, Raj & DK, all three of them found it darkly hilarious.
“She, I think, lives with it pretty well,” Samantha said, bursting into laughter. “I don’t know what would I do if I had killed someone in the past.”
Raj Nidimoru noted, “That one point actually defines her.”
“Defines her character,” Samantha agreed with a nod.
“Like it’s almost it’s done so quickly that you’re not even thinking about it, the audience, right? But you know that this girl is off.” Raj said.
“And she’s so indifferent to death,” Krishna DK said.
“What?!?” Samantha exclaimed, feigning shock. “I played myself. What are you guys talking about?”
“So indifferent to death,” DK said. She, like, practically murdered the guy. I mean, unintentionally, maybe. But she did it.”
“Half intentionally,” Raj said, and again Samantha agreed.
“Yeah,” DK said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, well.’”
“Oh, well,” Samantha said.
In Citadel: Honey Bunny Episode 3 “Spy Game,” Honey kills again. This time, she single-handedly massacres an entire squad of agents attacking her and Nadia in a cabin off Nainital. When Bunny finally arrives to survey the aftermath, he grimly notes that this is not the Honey he knew as a bright-eyed junior spy back in 1992. Samantha agreed.
“I think that Honey is naturally gifted with a gun, and when she’s fighting to protect her team and herself, that’s a different kind of Honey,” Samantha said. “But when she’s fighting to protect her child, now, that’s a different kind of Honey.”
“That’s a tigress you don’t want to mess with. That superhuman strength when it comes to protecting your child…I think she probably wouldn’t have been able to do that if she wasn’t protecting her child.”
Raj then pointed out that even though we know Honey taught herself how to shoot a gun as a child, the 1992 version of the character never points a gun at another person. Honey only shoots to kill when “she has to protect her daughter in 2000.”
According to Samantha, Honey’s truest self isn’t being an actress, a princess or even a spy.
“I think being a mother is the truest version of her,” Samantha said. “That is probably what she would end up defining her herself as, as a protector, a mother.”
“And I think that’s beautiful. It took quite a while [for her] to get there.”
