Two days away from the premiere of Nikita‘s fourth season, star Maggie Q teases the final arc.
Nikita’s return
Nikita returns to the fold almost immediately when the season opens, as a product of the six-episode run. “She’s ‘unable’ to stay away. She’s once again gotten herself into a situation where she finds herself not realizing that the team is upset that she left,” Q tells TVLine.
“They’ve been tracking her and supporting her and waiting for this moment to reconnect with her. In that moment she really doesn’t have any other choice; she’s gotten herself in a bind yet again.”
Reuniting with Michael
But things won’t be easy when the team reunites, particularly with Michael. “He’s not healed,” Q explains. “He’s still in a place where he can’t understand her decision [to leave].”
We learned previously that it will take an outside influence from a character we’ve met before to help Michael let go of his hurt. According to Q, that third party is Ramon.
“It’s interesting how you can love someone but not really see it for what it is until a third party comes in and says that this is what it is,” she explains.
“He does that and gives Michael a lot more perspective. It becomes less internal for him and less about how hurt he is; it becomes more about what she sacrificed, which wasn’t easy.”
Team Nikita reunion
Besides Michael, Nikita first reconnects with Birkhoff and Ryan, who have been operating from their new airborne command center.
“They’re just relieved to see her,” Q previews. “Birkhoff makes some comments about her leaving, offhandedly, but when he sees her, he’s thrilled.”
According to Q, we can also expect episode 4 to be Birkhoff and Nikita-centric. “When Aaron [Stanford] and I were shooting that episode, it was funny how little things just came out, little nuanced things.
“There’s a moment at the end of an episode this season where Birkhoff’s been through a lot and Nikita comes to try to comfort him. They’re just alone and there’s this subtle, physical way that they are together where you see this really great friendship that started so long ago.”
She adds, “Everybody’s always so focused on romantic love that sometimes we underestimate how moving friendship love can be on-screen.”
The shape of the final season
As for the shape the final season will take, Q says that while they considered a clean ending “where it’s revealed that she didn’t do it and we wrap it up and Nikita walks into the light and we all feel yummy and good inside,” that’s not who the show is.
That type of ending would not work because, not only is it not particularly interesting, but the conclusion of the Amanda-Nikita relationship also needed more complexity.
“[W]e needed that dominant relationship in both [Amanda and Nikita’s] lives to play out — not in a big-battle, physical way. It’s really all about if Nikita and Amanda don’t have closure with one another, neither of them is ever going to be okay,” Q says.
“Nikita needs that relationship to come to something — either come to fruition or come to an end.”
What does that mean for the season? According to Q, “[W]e actually find out that Nikita didn’t [kill the president] earlier on than you think, and then it starts to unfold into something different halfway through the season.”
Amanda versus Nikita
“Amanda’s web is so large that she actually starts to take on these [high-level] people who you haven’t even seen or experienced yet,” Q previews, likely referring to the episode 2 synopsis involving doubles of VIPs.
“These are the people who fund The Group, [who make her] capable of doing all the things she’s been doing. She wants to go so deep so that her control is real and permanent.”
A major casualty
Also according to Q, we will lose one of the core members of Team Nikita before the end. “I watched that episode and it killed me,” Q teases. “We lose someone pretty big, but the sacrifice in it is so touching.
“[W]henever somebody dies it’s sad and touching,” she adds, “but this is more about the sacrifice and how big that really is when someone makes the decision to take one for the team, so to speak, and what that means for Nikita’s heart.”
To really hammer in the emotional impact, “we flipped scenes around and took dialogue from one scene and threw it into another, we did montages — we did stuff that wasn’t even on the page because we knew that it was going to matter emotionally to the audience and we knew that we owed them that.
“It was really organic and I think you’re going to love it. It’s not your average ‘this person died’ thing, not at all.”
Happily ever after?
“What we wanted to do at the end of the season was give people a glimpse of what could be for these characters, so that fans can also use their own imaginations to go, ‘Well, I think that even though Birkhoff ended up here, he may ultimately end up here.’ So we don’t completely wrap it up — Nikita’s not holding her first-born in the last shot of the show,” Q laughs.
“What I liked about how we ended it is that Nikita does not change. It’s not like you see her as a different person who wants to settle down and be happy… You’ll see. It slows down for her, but she’s Nikita! So, the end is a little bit playful as well, which is cool.”
Nikita season 4 premieres Friday, November 22 at 9:00 p.m. ET on The CW.
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