In the wake of the shocking twist in last night’s episode of Nikita, “Tipping Point,” Lyndsy Fonseca discusses Alex’s mindset and where Division goes from here (hint: it’s not up). Major spoilers ahead!
Alex has seemed a bit off ever since being rescued from Amanda’s clutches in South Ossetia, but it wasn’t until the end of “Tipping Point” that we realized just how off she really is when she was revealed as the leader of a mutiny within Division and shot Ryan to keep her secret.
Fonseca recently spoke with TV Line about Alex’s shocking betrayal and what comes next.
Amanda’s conditioning
In other words, “everything Alex is saying is stuff that she and Nikita have agreed on before and felt passionate about.” “But now she’s making connections and creating things that don’t really fit,” such as the connection between the Division agents and the women she left behind after leaving the sex trade.
“Some things are true,” Fonseca explains, “but she wouldn’t have gone about it in this way prior to Amanda doing that rewiring.” “It’s Alex being very Alex and Alex being very irrational” at the same time because the rewiring “kick[ed] her into overdrive.”
Alex’s awareness
“There’s something in her ‘getting kidnapped by Amanda’ fog that maybe she remembers, but it’s pushed down so deep into her subconscious that she’s not aware that Amanda has done something.”
This has led Alex to angrily confronting anyone who comments on her new attitude since her rescue, as she doesn’t seem to understand the changes others are seeing in her.
“In fact,” Fonseca adds, “it’s almost like she’s even more clear with the actions that are presently in front of her… Eventually, there are certain events that will prove to her that what’s happened before was not real. And when those things come out, she can’t deny it anymore. She’s going to have to start to face the facts.”
Alex as mission-oriented
Fonseca says Alex “believes truly that getting these people out is the right thing to do. It’s this emotional guilt that’s deeper than anyone else feels in Division. There are the girls she left behind in the brothel and her family that she left, so there are many of these recurring situations where she feels like she got to live and they didn’t.
“To continue on living, she has to save these people. That’s something that was in old Alex, but now with the rewiring it’s like she’s connecting the dots in an unrealistic way.” So when it comes to the shocking twist of Alex shooting Ryan, “he’s a threat” when he realizes Alex is behind the mutiny “and she’s not going to let anyone stop her,” Fonseca explains.
“It wasn’t a conscious ‘I want to kill you’ shoot; it was a ‘don’t stop me from doing this’ kind of thing.” Of course, Ryan and Alex are friends outside of having a working relationship, so the betrayal is huge.
Also, as long as Ryan is in a coma, he can’t betray her secret. If he wakes up, though, he’ll be able to identify her as the mole, putting Alex’s future on shaky footing.
Alex moving forward
“But all of these consequences are going to catch up to her. She can’t keep on doing all of these things, creating this team of mutineers to go against Division — it’s all going to come to a head.”
She goes on to add, “Eventually there are going to be certain things that come up where she’ll have to realize, ‘Holy s–t! This is what’s happening.’”
Though Alex’s secret is currently safe, Michael seemed to know something was going on with her. “He and the rest of the group have this uneasy feeling… But it’s not enough of a character change for people say, ‘Lock her up!’” Fonseca teases.
“It’s what Amanda probably wanted, just putting this mole in there — with Alex not knowing she is one — to stir the pot and cause mayhem.” Michael even commented to Nikita in a previous episode that the in-fighting is exactly what Amanda wants, since power struggles among the leadership leave Division vulnerable.
According to Fonseca, “The mutiny thing definitely goes further and further for at least a couple of episodes after this one. Alex is going to be stuck in the middle” as “[t]hings are going to go so far out of her control. It’s all going to blow up.
“Division will never be the same, and this is really the beginning of it,” she ominously previews.
The emotional toll
“There’s something crazy coming up with Sean, so I don’t want to give it away,” Fonseca says with a laugh.
As for the emotional toll of Alex’s actions, like shooting Ryan, Fonseca says, “as long as Alex runs away from things that she hasn’t dealt with in her past, as long as that holds power over her, Amanda’s trickery will continue to run her life…
“Eventually, things get worse and then she goes on this rampage and there’s revenge and such cool stuff comes up,” Fonseca adds. “And once she can harness all of that, she’ll know where [things have been altered in her head] and she can make sense of it. It doesn’t ever necessarily go away, but there will be an understanding of it.”
As for the season finale…
In the final stretch of episodes this season, Fonseca also teases that there is some “really good Amanda/Nikita stuff. Michael’s also thrown in there, believe it or not. He comes into the mix in interesting ways.”