Nikita season 4, episode 1 “Wanted” aired tonight, featuring Nikita making her first public move in an attempt to clear her name.
So what happened in Nikita season 4, episode 1 “Wanted”?
The first hundred days
One-hundred days after the supposed assassination of the President of the United States. Nikita, the most wanted woman in the world, is still on the run. Over the last three months, she’s been evading capture while following leads in an effort to figure out why the president shot herself.
Meanwhile, Alex has taken up a position as a special envoy to the United Nations, working to stop human trafficking — with the side benefit of stopping The Group’s supply of human test subjects. Sonya has been the Robin to her Batman, helping her follow leads while shutting down multiple trafficking operations.
Elsewhere, Michael, Birkhoff, and Ryan have been working together. Birkhoff and Ryan have been helping Michael run leads from their new command center: an airplane. While Michael has been running extended missions in the hope of finding Nikita, Ryan has been knee-deep in conspiracy theories, filling up a shiny board of Shop-related leads.
Nikita returns
Nikita re-enters the United States to talk to a journalist, Dale Gordon, who has been asking a lot of questions about the president’s death. She’s stopped by some local cops, and though she gets the better of them, her reappearance becomes Big News.
Nikita heads into Manhattan to confront Dale in the network’s building. She tells him what happened in the President’s office, saying that both the president and her head of security, who gave Nikita the gun to shoot the president, were acting out of character.
She realized that Karl Jaeger, the German intelligence office/Shop agent who bought the Black Box from Owen, was also acting out of character before his death. Nikita, suspicious that there might be some kind of drug to blame in all three cases, wants to use Dale’s source in the FBI to get some blood test results.
Of course, it turns out that Dale doesn’t have a source as he claims. Instead, he’s been getting anonymous text messages with information leading to the questions he’s been asking. Nikita realizes immediately that the source is Amanda — just as the ENN building is surrounded.
A hostage situation
Nikita is lucky that the friends she left behind are the best of the best and haven’t given up on her; Michael, Birkhoff, and Ryan follow the clues from her dust up with the local cops right to ENN. When Nikita needs an out, Birkhoff calls with a lifeline: Michael is waiting outside.
Nikita stages a hostage situation, holding Dale at gunpoint and taking him up to the roof. She leaves him with her evidence about Jaeger and tells him to give it to the senior-most Fed he can find. The FBI, though, realizes she’s both bluffing and has help.
As Nikita winds her way through the building and into the vents to get out, she tells Birkhoff she wanted Team Nikita to move on with their lives after she left. Birkhoff, naturally, puts Nikita in her place about how that’s never happening, and it’s all very heartwarming.
Birkhoff, though, is booted from ENN’s system just as Nikita needs to get past a spinning turbine. As Birkhoff and Michael work up a Plan B to get her out, Ryan and Nikita chat. Nikita brings Ryan up to speed with what she’s found, and the gears in Ryan’s head start turning at a deafening level.
Exfiltration
Birkhoff mocks up a photo of the wife of FBI Deputy Director Matthew Graham in a rifle’s crosshairs, and Michael uses it to coerce him into helping Nikita get out. Graham calls for the power to be shut down, and Nikita is finally able to get out of the vents — and into Michael’s waiting arms.
But Michael is downright cool and businesslike as he directs her to ride off the scene with Graham and meet him later at a rendezvous point. It’s not exactly the passionate reunion we were hoping for, but Michael is clearly — and understandably — hurt after Nikita left her engagement ring behind for him to find.
On the drive, Nikita tells Graham that she didn’t kill the president and to talk to Dale. As he pulls the car over, Graham pulls his own gun out, and when Nikita drives off, he shoots. Nikita takes a bullet to the shoulder.
Nikita’s wound causes her to crash the car, leaving her bleeding and trying to reach Michael on foot.
Another frame job
Graham returns to ENN and approaches Dale, who turns over the evidence Nikita left him. A few minutes later, the tent Dale was sitting in explodes while the Deputy Director walks away.
Graham, it turns out, is working for Amanda and The Group. Of course, they’re framing Nikita for these deaths as well.
Meanwhile, in India
As Nikita’s drama-filled return pulled focus in America, Alex and Sonya were in India. Alex has been shadowing a corrupt government official involved in human trafficking. Alex follows her to an exchange, hoping for intel she can trace back to Amanda.
Upon further investigation, the deal seems strange since it’s very small — four men with a family resemblance. Her attempt to get closer for more intel backfires though, and the meet ends up in a bloodbath with the buyer and only one of the human subjects getting away. Alex finds some Shop technology among the carnage, which sends Ryan down another one of his analyst rabbit holes.
Alex is getting ready to leave when a gun is leveled at her head by the Cleaner formerly known as Owen. All the pieces are now on the board.
