It’s been an eventful season on Nikita. I thought last year was intense, but with a full band of rebels outside Division, Alex playing free agent, and Amanda, Percy and Oversight angling for power, there are so many twists and turns to keep track of! It’s a lot to cover, so I’ll try to stick to the juicy stuff 😉 Here’s what’s happened in the last 4 episodes.
“343 Walnut Lane”
We’ve seen Nikita become more emotionally open and vulnerable as the season progresses, but this was the episode where she really let down her walls … and got socked right in the gut as a reward! Birkhoff uncovers her birth certificate while poking around in the Black Box and learns the identity of her real father, ex-CIA agent Richard Ellison. Nikita tracks him down and pays him a surprise visit. He’s believed her to be dead all these years and is reluctant to get her know her. But he eventually ‘lets’ her get close and she confides in him, unburdening herself about Max’s true parentage.
But a happy father/daughter reunion on a show full of people this damaged? Not likely. Richard is actually a plant – a special gift from Percy, the king of sick mind games. Years ago, Percy fabricated a birth certificate and hired an agent to play the part of Nikita’s father, as a means of keeping her under control. It never came to that, but the information was still floating around for her to stumble upon.
When the truth comes out, Division agents ambush the gang, Nikita shoots Richard, and Birkhoff’s swanky safe house is a goner. Nikita finally recognizes the emotional damage caused by deception, especially when family is involved. She comes clean and tells Michael the truth about Max.
Great Moments:
We got some nice little snippets of Nikita’s early life at Division. She started off as a holy terror, refusing to acknowledge authority, starting fights with male trainers twice her size … and winning! But as scrappy as she was, she was too much of a loose cannon for an organization that thrives on blind obedience. Nikita was nearly terminated until Michael stepped into to tame her.
In a great parallel scene, Nikita loses it on her faux daddy after he’s unmasked – pounding him in the face repeatedly and regressing into the wild child from her younger years.
The best news? Alex and Nikita are on good terms again and it’s Alex who tips her off to the ruse. But Alex is in a tough spot because at some point she’s still going to have to go after the black box to fulfill her deal with Amanda.
“Clawback”
The return of Ryan Fletcher! He’s been stuck in prison on a false murder charge since the events of last season, but he hasn’t been wasting time pumping weights or brushing up on his intimidation skills. Ryan has been collecting clippings and articles and analyzing news reports, looking for hidden patterns that lead back to Oversight.
He manages to connect the threads and uncover the truth behind Oversight’s cash flow – a feat that would have been impossible for anyone less awesome! Oversight has been creating ‘unpredictable’ world events (fires, riots, CEO deaths) that affect the stock market. While ensuring that a company will fail, they rake in the profits by betting on the house to lose. Ryan uses a routine call with his mother to send Nikita a coded message, but Division intercepts and Oversight is alerted to the danger. They are, shall we say, less than thrilled about Ryan’s resourcefulness.
This is the episode where we start to see the gears behind Oversight. We get to meet a few of their uber creepy members: respected public figures who moonlight as evil puppet masters. There’s Jonathan Gaines, the former chairman of the SEC and Senator Madeline Pierce, who is just happens to be mommy dearest to our favourite oversight lackey, Sean Pierce.
And although Sean is reluctant to continue working for a company with non-existent morals he will do anything to protect his mother. Nikita’s investigation into Ryan’s claims leads her to Gaines. She corners him and he starts to babble (which by the way requires almost no ‘persuasion’ from Nikita. Seriously, what a sissy!). Sean shows up just in time to gun him down, but not before Gaines reveals Senator Pierce’s name to Nikita.
Ryan pays the ultimate price for his crazy deductive skills. He survives an assassination attempt by a fake guard, but is later poisoned in the prison infirmary while Nikita and Michael are a few feet away fighting to get to him.
Meanwhile, Alex is trying to stay alive with a huge target on her back. She comes up against a more formidable opponent than a faceless assassin. One of her childhood friends, Yuri, tries to gun her down in the park and calls her a traitor. When she interrogates him, she discovers that Zetrov is playing dirty and has seized control of the narrative. They’ve put the word out that Alexandra Udinov was captured by American agents as a child and groomed as their puppet. On their orders, she plans to overtake Zetrov and rule over her birthright while Division pulls the strings. Alex is completely heartbroken and reduced to tears when nothing will convince Yuri that it’s a lie. Alex has been propelled by the fact that she’s on a righteous mission. And there were plenty of underground Udinov supporters who would come out of hiding to support her. But by tainting her legacy and accusing her of collusion with the enemy Zetrov stole her moral advantage and positioned her as the bad guy. That hits Alex right where it hurts.
Except … is it really such a lie? Alex keeps slipping deeper into Division and it’s getting harder to see where the line is. The more she relies on Amanda for help, the more entwined she become with them. Years ago, Sergei used Division as the muscle to take out the Udinov and now Alex is doing the very same thing. Does it really matter what her motivation is, when the end result is the same?
Great Moments
A. Jaw. Dropping. Twist … and there is no exaggeration here. I did not see this coming at all! The ‘dead’ Ryan Fletcher wakes up … inside a Division holding cell. Amanda wants to use his skills to take down Oversight herself. Guess it’s not fun being Queen of the Castle when a higher power is still bossing you around. All I can say is, thank GOD! Not that I want Amanda to succeed at anything, but Ryan is such a great character and I’m more than happy to have him stick around.
“London Calling”
Michael finally travels to London to confront Cassandra and spend some time with Max, but he barely has time to bond with his son before disaster strikes … yet again. General Tupelov, one of Cassandra’s husband’s former cabinet members blames her for his death and believes she stole $200 million from him. He abducts her and demands that Michael locate the money and pay him.
Michael is convinced that Cassandra is bluffing about taking the money to buy more time, but Nikita doesn’t trust her. The big reveal? Cassandra is actually an ass kicking secret agent herself – a member of British Intelligence. She was undercover in Belarus the entire time. So … let me get this straight: an American agent slept with a British agent who was pretending to be Belarusian then revealed his identity while she pretended to be shocked even though she knew the whole time. O-kay.
Cassandra has a long-time handler named Nigel who is revealed as the real $200 million thief. He shoots Tupelov and tries to silence Cassandra, but Michael plays the hero once again.
Back at Division, Alex is starting to feel really icky about the position she’s put herself in. She can’t get the resources to take out Sergei without Amanda’s help, but she can’t get Amanda’s help without betraying Nikita. And it seems no matter what she does, she’s beholden to Division. But Percy presents her with an unusual proposal that could solve her problems. He offers her $100,000 if she transfers money out of one of his accounts. With an influx of cash she could plan her own attack and wouldn’t be chained to Division.
He also drops a new piece of information on Alex that has her seeing red. After her childhood estate was burned down during her family’s murder, Sergei rebuilt it and moved in, making it his home base.
I have a small bone to pick with the Percy situation. Why would they not have him bugged?!? This is a guy so dangerous that you’re keeping him in a plastic prison at the bottom of a giant secluded passageway and you don’t bother to monitor his communications? I find it highly unlikely that he would be able to plot freely right under Division’s nose.
Alex takes the bait, which means breaking into an off-limits Division area to retrieve the information she needs. Sean Pierce catches her in the act, but doesn’t give her up. Sean, genius that he is, is planning to flirt his way into Alex’s trust circle and use her to get to Nikita. Oh brother.
But Alex’s money transfer might not be what it seems. She has activated one of Percy’s Guardians through some type of code, which cannot be good news. I couldn’t have cared less about Percy last year, but now that he has to work his evil magic from his cage, I’m really intrigued by his actions.
Great (and yet irritating) Moments:
During a shootout with the Belarusians, Michael gets trapped in a burning building but orders Nikita to save Cassandra instead of trying to free him. Naturally she ignores that and covers him as he flees from the flames. Michael believes Cassandra has gone over a cliff in her car and he’s furious at Nikita. Double standard much? In “Clawback”, he berated her for running off solo to face Gaines, while he nursed a gunshot wound. He couldn’t face losing her and told her they were through if she pulled a stunt like that again. But now Nikita is supposed to let him battle walls of fire and showers of bullets while she runs off to save someone else??? MEN!
NOOOOOOO!
Throughout the episode, Nikita silently (and sadly) acknowledges the bond blossoming between Michael and Cassandra. They share Max and that’s something she can’t touch. Still, I was hoping that nothing would come of it … at least not anytime soon.
But Nikita forces the issue. As they are preparing to leave London, she stops in her tracks and tells Michael that he needs to stay. He needs to be with Max and his mother otherwise he will always be left with a ‘what if’.
Michael protests ONCE … and it is weak. Then he almost freakin’ smiles when he decides she’s right. Ugh, I wanted to smack him across the face in that moment. The woman that you supposedly love is pushing you away and you just accept it so easily? Maybe you’re not worth it buddy! All he can say is, “I didn’t plan for this.” But it feels like he knew all along that it would come down to this and it pisses me off that he waited until she brought it up. Jerk. He’s on my bad side right now.
New Favourite Word
Birkhoff calls Nigel a Doucheboat. HA! I’m so using that one.
“Fair Trade”
With Michael out of the picture, Nikita is on the warpath, obsessively hunting down Oversight. Birkhoff is concerned … but knows better than to piss off a warrior woman with a broken heart. She gets too reckless and Birkhoff is captured by Division while on a recon mission.
Amanda has a special place in her black, black heart for traitors who use their skills against their former employer. Seriously, she is the coldest bitch EVER! She picks up a mallet and bashes up Birkhoff’s hand without even blinking. And when he still doesn’t break, she starts to shove this god-awful contraption up his nose to pierce his frontal lobe.
But Nikita contacts Division and agrees to trade the Black Box for Birkhoff. She wants Sean Pierce (who she has connected to his Senator mother) to make the trade. In the end, Birkhoff is safely handed over (although much worse for wear) and Sean puts a bullet through the Black Box. It’s interesting that he’s really only in the game for his mother’s safety. He doesn’t care that Oversight and Division wanted the Black Box in tact, as long as his mom’s secrets are safe. Nikita isn’t deterred. She packs her bags and heads off to find Owen who is on the trail of another Black Box. That should put her right in Gogol’s path – which hopefully will bring her and Alex back together.
Alex got her solo mission underway, heading to Russia the same way she left – disguised as a sex slave. She encounters some unforeseen complications along the way and ends up rescuing a group of sex workers and giving them money to start a new life. But it’s mostly superfluous to the main storyline. It IS important to note that Sean Pierce has managed to put a tracker on her and is following her every move as she travels through Russia.
Great Moments:
Nikita’s freak out to Michael on the phone – holy hell was that good. When she realizes Birkhoff has been snatched by Division, she panics. Big time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Nikita come unhinged like that. She had no idea what to do. She calls Michael in London and basically starts pleading with him to fix it. He’s trying to calm her down and she’s kicking things and shouting. Finally she just yells “Why aren’t you here?” which just killed me. If this was last year, Nikita could totally have handled the situation on her own. She always remained in control because she knew she had to keep Alex safe as well as herself. But this year she’s allowed herself to lean on Michael. She didn’t always have to keep it together because he was her backup. And now she’s angry with him because he made her need him … and then disappeared on her.
There was a really cute scene in the beginning of the episode where Birkhoff marvels at how impressive it is that Nikita has managed to spend so much of his cash already. She shrugs and says straight-faced, “Not really. I’m a girl.” HA! For some chicks, it’s purses and shoes. For Nikita, it’s handguns and high-tech weaponry. What’s important is that we ladies love to flash the cash! LOL.
So now I’m caught up and eager for new episodes! What does everyone else think of how this season of Nikita has been unfolding?
Photos Courtesy of The CW