A clip from Nikita season 4, episode 1 “Wanted” has made its way online. Star Maggie Q also previews what we can expect from the titular heroine in the final season.
In this clip from EW.com, we see that the bounty on Nikita’s head is even greater than the one for Osama bin Laden. But, as a group of local police find out, there’s good reason for that.
Maggie Q, who plays the titular heroine, also recently spoke with EW about what we can expect from season 4.
Nikita’s mindset
Q says that as season 4 picks up, Nikita has been on the run for three months, and that time has had a dramatic effect on her. “[W]hen we find her at the beginning of the season, she’s not the same person that you watched for three seasons. She’s not hopeful, dutiful. She’s lost something, for sure.”
The struggle comes from the fact that Nikita’s battle in the final season “is not to clear her own name for the sake of clearing her name, but the fact that clearing her name will actually keep the people that she loves safe for good is what she actually wants.”
Resurfacing
According to Q, it is a reporter who gives Nikita an opening to resurface. With this reporter, Nikita sees “an opportunity to reach someone who she actually thinks will not listen because he believes her or because he cares about her fate, but will because he’s a greedy journalist, and he wants an exclusive on something that they would never have access to, so she thinks that’s her window.”
Q adds of the above clip, “It’s bizarre how she’s been gone and then she just throws herself back into the public eye. For me, even when I read it, it was a little bit jolting, because it’s so dangerous for her to be anywhere near any of this. But she sees it as the last opportunity to clear her name and make this happen, and whether this works out for her or not, she doesn’t care.”
Team Nikita
While Birkhoff and Michael remain mad at Nikita after they reunite, Q describes the dynamic with the rest of the team as being like “when you have friends, somebody that you know and love very well, even if they do something you don’t agree with, when you see them, there’s an overwhelming sense of joy and relief at the fact that, first that they’re safe, and second, that you’ll always love them no matter what they do, no matter how crazy they are.”
As for Michael, the fiance Nikita left behind, “[I]t’s a little different, because it’s so much more personal,” Q previews. “Michael’s really hurt. Michael’s not in a place where he can see why she did what she did. To him it all seems sort of selfish.”
Amanda and The Shop
With Nikita reunited with her team, the final fight for them is Amanda and The Shop, who framed her for the assassination of the President of the United States. “[S]o there was The Shop, and now above The Shop is The Group. And The Group is basically Mr. Jones, [Amanda’s] partner, and the people who fund and manipulate The Shop and all The Shops around the world, globally,” Q explains.
“So it’s kind of about how Amanda is working her way through The Group to not only take over their operations but also how that is weaved in with her purpose for Nikita.” Because Amanda no longer has the resources to target Nikita’s loved ones, Q says, “her focus starts to tunnel back to Nikita, but it’s a whole different dynamic than we’ve seen in the first few seasons.”
Challenges of the final six
Of the feel of the final six episodes, Q says, “I got into it and realized that wrapping up the season with six was a lot harder, just because story lines start to move into turbo. If we had done a full season, even a 13-episode season, Michael and Nikita wouldn’t have seen each other until episode five or six. There’s no way that we’d throw them in together in the first episode.
“I wasn’t in love with the fact that she saw the team or Michael that quickly, because if you think about what it took for her to leave in the third season, it was huge!” Q adds.
“I had some really big character problems with that quickly being in the vicinity of people that she loves that much, that she sacrificed that much for, and putting them in danger again, essentially, because that’s not what she would do.” But with only six episodes to play with, “how do you keep the whole cast apart?”
The final season “definitely had its challenges,” Q says, “and the writers did a great job. I feel bad for them, because they were really struggling with how to give it what it deserved but also within these parameters. It was quite difficult.”
The focus on identity
Season 4, according to Q, will focus a lot on identity. We’ll meet a young Nikita in the premiere, a side to her that we haven’t seen before. “We’re going to see Nikita 48 hours into Division, 24 hours into Division, which is still pretty raw and still in that animal state she was in as a street kid,” Q says.
The length of the season didn’t allow the writers to fully explore everything. “I still have that question: Why is Nikita who she is? Why is she so good? Why is she the best that they’ve ever had? There has to be a reason,” Q says.
“In the first and second season, we did talk about that, and we were excited to get into it, but the story lines go where they go, and I think the fourth would’ve been the season where we got into that had it been longer, but I still think people are really going to like how we stay within the central characters.”
The conclusion
As for the conclusion, Q believes fans will be satisfied with the ending. “The writers did an amazing job. Craig [Silverstein], our creator, what a challenge to take all the years of work and intricacy and everything that you’ve woven for these characters and then have to end it so quickly.
“So I feel like they did a real justice to where everyone’s going and what the future holds for them essentially.”
Nikita season 4, episode 1 “Wanted” airs Friday, November 22 at 9:00 p.m. ET on The CW.