I loved the opening scene of “Rogue”. Percy is back and more brutal than ever! He casually ambushes a Newark Police Detective outside a bar. He lets the guy rant at him for being in his way …. and then calls in the murder BEFORE Roan blows the guy’s brains all over his fancy car. Damn. Percy is also rockin’ pimp fedoras now, so clearly he means business.
After all of the recent chaos, Michael and Nikita are taking time off for some sexy sparring – which would have got me all hot and bothered in the past, but Michael is still tarnished in my eyes. Alex meets them at the beach house with a status report on Division. Amanda is definitely in complete control now. “She’s strutting around the place like she just won Top Model.” That’s funny, but also HEY cheap network plug! But with all her newfound power, Amanda is doing … nothing. She’s not running any missions and is rebranding Division as a ‘boutique agency’ – which will perform only the most vial missions. The question is, for whom?
But Amanda still wants to help Alex extract her mother from Russia. Michael wants her to turn down the mission, but Nikita understands that Alex can’t say no. She needs to get her mother away from Semack for her own peace of mind. If Division is the only way to do it … then so be it. But they all know that Amanda’s end game is control of Zetrov industries. When that doesn’t happen there will be hell to pay.
Amanda may be laying low, but Percy certainly isn’t. His cop murder turns out to be a message to Nikita. Ten years ago she was jailed and ‘executed’ for killing Officer Eric Daros. Percy murdered his partner Peter Edmonds and spray painted ‘For Nikita’ on his car. The local news starts reporting that Nikita must have some twisted fans who carried out the crime. Using Madeline Pierce as a reluctant go-between, Percy gets Nikita on the phone and declares his intentions to seriously f*ck with her. She destroyed his plan to quietly reclaim Division and now he’s going to take away something, SOMEONE she loves. “Bring it on. All people I love carry guns.” “Not Carla Bennett.” Nikita freezes. Carla was the woman who cleaned her up years ago, but she disappeared after Nikita was arrested. Percy promises to focus all his energy on tracking her down and killing her. “You wanted Daddy’s attention? You got it.”
Nikita is distraught and confessed the truth to Michael. Carla was a loving person who believed in Nikita when no one else would, encouraged her to strive for her dreams and called her a wildflower – a person who could survive in the desert. But when Nikita landed a job, the pressure broke her down and she relapsed. She ended up shooting a cop at Carla’s halfway house. Carla, a former addict herself, had a drug charge in another state and was forced to run again. Carla never abandoned her. Nikita let her down.
Nikita needs to get to Carla before Percy so she slips a message into Senator Madeline Pierce’s speech – using Carla’s own philosophy about Wildflowers. When Carla calls the Senator’s office, Nikita arranges to meet her in Baltimore.
When Nikita comes face to face with Carla for the first time in 10 years, she’s shocked to find her living in a van by the railroad tracks. And here comes Nikita with her hair in a gorgeous up-do, wearing a snazzy trench coat – looking like the cover of a Vogue magazine. I was embarrassed just watching! After Nikita shot the cop, Carla fled to Mexico and although she managed to work her way back to the States, she hasn’t been able to stay above water. Ugh. I kinda thought this would be one of those situations where Nikita has been torturing herself for years, only to learn that she should have faced her fears because it’s not all her fault. But … she actually ruined this woman’s life!
But Carla wasn’t the only one tipped off by the Wildflower words. While Alex is at Division preparing her re-emergence as a lost heiress, an alert is triggered by the Senator’s speech. It turns out that Carla Bennett is at the top of Amanda’s personal task list – above Percy, above Nikita! Alex calls Nikita to warn her. And here’s where things go into bizzaro land – where, let’s face it, they pretty much always end up on this show. Why would a former drug addict be a high profile Division target? Oh I’m so glad you asked. Because Carla is a former Division Agent – although “they didn’t call it that when I was there.” Nikita is still reeling and waiting for an explanation when Percy shows up with a guns a blazing. Carla gives herself up to keep Nikita safe. She gets into Percy’s car and drives away.
Percy wasn’t using Carla to get to Nikita. He was using Nikita to get to Carla! Nikita is in complete shock. The woman who nurtured her and changed her life was actually in Division. Oh, Nikita – you should have seen that coming! Don’t you know that everyone in a TV spy’s life is somehow connected to a huge conspiracy? Have you not been watching Alias and Chuck?!?
So did Carla select Nikita for Division? Was she set up? But if Carla was already an enemy of Division, she wouldn’t be sending them recruits. Nikita racks her brain and can only come up with one answer – the gun from the night she shot the cop. Carla was being hassled for running a halfway house without a license and one of her charges, Sammy, was protecting her when Nikita came in high as a kite. The cops started pushing her around, Sammy interfered, and was shot by a cop who mistakenly thought he was trying to pull a gun. The cops tried to cover it up by putting a gun in Sammy’s hand. But Nikita grabbed the gun and shot one of the cops. Carla took the gun from her to stop her from shooting the 2nd cop and both their fingerprints ended up on the weapon. That was all it took to put Carla back on Division’s radar and alert them to the pretty young felon on death row who’d make a perfect addition to their team.
Percy takes Carla back to the industrial warehouse he’s been squatting in and her past is revealed in bits and pieces. Apparently 12 years ago, Carla was blindsided when Division agents showed up at her house and tried to kill her. Amanda accused her of planning to expose the program, but Carla swears it was never true. She didn’t feel she could trust Percy or anyone else, so she went on the run. Percy wants to know WHY Amanda is so desperate to kill Carla. You know, other than the fact that she’s generally a vindictive beyotch. To occupy the top spot on Amanda’s personal hit list, Carla must really have pissed a sista off! Did she see or hear something that she shouldn’t have? Carla swears she’s never been able to figure out why Amanda has it out for her.
Nikita needs to retrieve Carla to get more answers. She comes up with a plan to reverse ping Percy’s dead man’s switch to pinpoint his location. But will only work from inside Operations at Division, so Alex once again becomes the guinea pig. Amanda is also itching to get her hands on Percy … especially now that he’s spending time with Carla! When Alex presents the reverse pinging idea, she jumps all over it. Alex keeps her cell phone on so that Nikita and Michael are alerted to Percy’s location as well.
Nikita and Michael bust into the warehouse at the same time as a Division kill team. Between Roan, Patrick Miller, Michael, and Nikita, they make quick work of the Division Agents before turning on each other. When the dust settles, Percy and his henchmen escape in their SUV. Nikita and Michael stay behind to tend to Carla who was knocked unconscious when Percy tossed her against a metal railing.
When Carla wakes up she’s at the beach house and Nikita has a lot of questions for her. But the only thing Carla wants to talk about is how impressed she is at the ‘new Nikita’. She went from being a scared, messed up, dreadlocked addict to a commanding, powerful woman. “What’s so crazy is that you didn’t just survive in the dessert, you thrived. Everything that has happened to you is a gift. No more than that I believe it’s destiny. Our destiny.” She’s shaking Nikita up pretty badly, and I can see why. Yes, Division probably did force Nikita to become a dynamite woman, but you can’t tell someone that all the pain and suffering in their life is a gift! That’s like telling an abuse victim that it made them stronger.
Michael goes into protective move and confronts Carla. He calls her a liar. He was at Division for 10 years and he’s never even heard of her. Percy told him that Nikita was the first agent to ever escape Division. So Carla drops this bomb – “That’s true. I wasn’t in the program. I created the program.” Wha?????
I got so many chills watching this episode! I am beyond impressed with the way things have been progressing since the Christmas hiatus. It’s such a great mix of action and mythology without becoming overwhelming. Sometimes Alias would get so far up its own Rimbaldi Rear End that the confusion wasn’t worth the effort. Nikita is walking that fine line beautifully; delivering shocking twists and incredible plot developments that are complex, but never nonsensical.
I can’t wait to find out Carla’s story and I hope she’s sticking around for awhile. She created Division AND has a mysterious beef with Amanda? That’s a lot of juicy material to mine.
Random Loves:
-It was nice that Carla used to tell Nikita that the reason she nursed her off drugs and got her back on her feet was because one day she would to the same thing for someone else. And she did. Alex was just as strung out and self destructive when Nikita rescued her and took her under her wing.
-There’s a cool dynamic between Percy and Carla. She’s the only person seen him treat like an equal. It feels like there’s actually respect there. If Carla created Division, they were obviously peers and cohorts. Percy put a gun to Carla’s head when Nikita advanced on him in the warehouse, but she called that he wouldn’t actually shoot. He did toss Carla to the side like a rag doll, but he didn’t pull the trigger. And Percy is not a man who shrinks from brutal violence. I’d like to learn more about their relationship.
Random Beefs:
-Why do they keep leaving Birkhoff out of episodes? Would it really be so hard to include him in a few scenes? Are they worried they have too many players or something?
Photo Courtesy of The CW