In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
You've seen the annoying promos enough to know the back-story: Nikita was trained to be assassin, she escaped, she's going to help others escape, she's a rock star, hey baby. The episode is far less annoying, thankfully, and revolves around the titular heroine, who's bent for revenge after a secret government agency known as Division trained her to be an assassin and then killed her fiancé. She leaves Division a trail, first by contacting her skeezy foster dad, then by visiting the grave of her lost love and thwarting an op to kill a peace-making African leader. Pissed that Nikita is somehow intercepting their intel, Division head Percy assigns an operative named Michael to take her down. Mike swears he's up to the job, but he's got feelings for Nikita. When Nikita confronts him and Percy at a fancy party, he soft-heartedly agrees to give her a head start before hunting her down. She thanks him by shooting him in the shoulder. That's just one half of the story.
The other half deals with the inside workings of Division. It starts with recruiting a feisty young woman named Alex. We meet Alex when she and a masked companion rob a pharmaceutical company, but things go south. The companion gets away, but Alex is taken in and eventually winds up in Division's training program for young assassins. She struggles against her fate, but is told Division killed her boyfriend and framed her for the job. Then, because they're really thorough, they also faked her death. In the training program, she meets fellow baby assassins, as well as a "teacher" named Amanda, whose job is to turn a bunch of Eliza Doolittles into cold-blooded killers.
Alex still seems very much against the whole idea, but at the end we see that her recruitment was actually by design: She's Nikita's "inside woman," feeding her information from Division computers, while Nikita was her masked companion in the heist. Dun! Stay tuned for the full weecap.
See what our No Prior Knowledge vlogger thought of Nikita:
Want to immediately access TWoP content no matter where you are online? Download the free TWoP toolbar for your web browser. Already have a customized toolbar? Then just add our free toolbar app to get updated on our content as soon it's published.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A pretty young woman in a sparsely furnished but gorgeous loft sits at her computer before picking up a gun. Her voice-over tells us her name is Nikita and that six years ago, she was taken out of prison and forced to be an assassin for the government. Three years ago, she escaped. "I was the first recruit to get out," she tells us as she stares seriously at a pinkish blob just out of focus. "I'm going to make certain I'm not the last." Cue the steely title card, which fades into the cartoon rabbit mask of my nightmares. The mask is worn by a woman holding a gun on several hostages. Bugs shouts, "Come on!" and her partner, wearing an equally nightmarish pig mask hoofs it over to a medical vault. Porky starts shoveling armfuls of prescription bottles into a bag. One of the hostages takes Bugs's gun. Porky shoots him from behind, splattering Bugs red with his innards. Cops arrived on the scene. Porky gets away, but Bugs Bloody trips in her haste. Cops grab her and tear off her mask, revealing a panicked teenager. The caption identifies her as Alex in Detroit, MI.
Alex is dragged into prison, but fights against her captors. A man in a suit watches the struggle, looking quite pleased with what he sees. Everything goes white. time we see Alex, she's waking up in a different place, bleary-eyed and disoriented. The man in the suit greets her. He says as far as anyone else knows, she's dead. He shows her a death certificate to prove it. "My name is Michael," he says, his voice as weaselly as it is raspy. "I work for the government." They're giving her a second chance because she's "a young, attractive, white female," with no paper trail. Even more impressive, he says, she managed to kill a criminal they've been tracking for ages. "I didn't kill no one!" she protests as he grabs her wrist, but realizes it's a losing battle. He says they'll teach her how to walk, talk, and serve her country. Be all that you can be!
Nikita walks into a pool party in a teeny-weeny red bathing suit and catches the eye of a portly older gentleman. He waves her over to his jacuzzi, making innuendos about her getting "wet." She pretends to lean in for a kiss and instead snaps his neck, much to his surprise. She reaches for a nearby knife and chucks it into a bodyguard's chest. Another guard comes at her with a gun; she fights him off with a chair. She runs inside, calling on a cell phone for "extraction" now that her target is down. A familiar raspy, weaselly voice on the other end tells her it's impossible. Suddenly, Michael is right behind her, a gun leveled at her head. "There is no out," he says, and pulls the trigger.
Nikita wakes up from the dream, now in a car in New Jersey. She drives over to a ramshackle house, rings the doorbell, and is greeted by a man who looks like he hasn't had a clean change of clothes in months. She facetiously calls him "Daddy" when he doesn't recognize her. She grabs him by the throat and throws him back inside. A little exposition reveals he was her foster parent, and not a very good one. She snaps his wrist when he reaches up to her. Then there's a lot more exposition where she tells him what happened after she ran away eleven years ago. Did some drugs, hung out with bad people, got framed for killing a cop. She's 27 now, but when she was 18, she was sentenced to die by lethal injection. But her execution was faked (the fake part was where she wasn't held up in appeals for twenty years) by a secret division of the government called... Division. They trained her to be an assassin. A cut to Alex shows her getting dressed, a butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck. "It was a year of training before my first mission," Nikita says, "sort of like a military charm school." Then Nikita broke one of their rules by falling in love with a civilian. And also by using the wrong fork at a fancy party. Quelle horreur! Division killed off her Daniel and made it look like an accident. "Why are you telling me all this?" Daddy Not-So-Dear asks. Because they needed to fit an infodump into the episode. She encourages him to tell Division everything she just told him. She wants to send them a message: "It ends now."
Meanwhile, back at the Charm School For Assassins, Michael shows a wide-eyed Alex to a training room where a couple dozen recruits are sparring. Later, Michael is going over some surveillance footage with another man. A General Safwani is seen going into a hotel with three bodyguards. The other man notes that if the General makes it to the UN, they'll have failed, so they have to get to him first. Michael has four men for the job, including a new recruit named Thom. The other man's phone rings and he helpfully answers "Percy," so we know what his name is. Percy listens for a moment, then takes Michael off the Gwen Stefani op and assigns him to find and kill Nikita. "Do you think you can do that this time?" Percy asks. "What do you think?" Michael retorts. I think... no.
Charm School cafeteria. Alex tries to have a quiet lunch by herself, but she's immediately singled out by another recruit. They get into a fight, or start to, but a young male recruit grabs Alex's bully and advises them to chill. He introduces the bully as Jaden. He's Thom, the one about to go on his first mission. He thinks they should stick together to make it through training, but someone calls Alex away because "Amanda" is ready to see her. Jaden will have to pick on someone else in the meantime.
Back at Bad Daddy's house, Michael and another Division agent have showed up. Dad bitches about the damage Nikita caused. Michael tries to get more out of him, but he's got nothing, so the other agent shoots him through the head. "I was talking to him," Michael complains. The other guy promises to clean up the mess. At least he's courteous.
Nikita's at a snow-dusted cemetery, visiting her Daniel's grave. She remembers snuggling in bed with him and lying to him about how she was an airline consultant. He gives her a diamond engagement ring. In her surprise, she playfully slaps him in the chest, nearly breaking his ribs. She kisses them all better and everything's all sunny and romantic until we flash into the frigid gray present. Nikita takes off the ring and leaves it at Daniel's grave. Some groundskeeper is going to be really happy later.
Charm School. A nerdy fellow is telling Percy that a pressure sensor was triggered at the cemetery. They walk into a surveillance room and look at a screen of snapshots showing Nikita kneeling by Daniel's grave. Nerdy fellow seems almost sad the chase is almost over. "There'll never be another one like her," he says. "Don't be so sure," Percy says, giving us a segue to Alex's arrival on Amanda's doorstep. Alex marvels for a moment at a fancy red dress on display in the otherwise spartan room. Amanda, approaching from behind, encourages her to try it on. Alex feigns distaste. Amanda promises to show Alex how to use her beauty to her advantage. Alex doesn't want to get all dolled up and starts to leave the room, but Amanda calls her back by saying something in Russian. Alex stops in her tracks. Amanda exposits that Alex was once a young Ukrainian girl, brought here against her will with other girls, who learned to lose her accent. Alex tears up. Amanda tells her vulnerability can be her greatest weapon.
Meanwhile, black SUVs are pulling up at the cemetery. Several armed agents hustle out while Nerdy stays behind with a laptop and headset. They advance on Daniel's grave and shoot a still-kneeling Nikita about a jillion times. She falls over, revealing herself to be... a mannequin. Somehow, even though they had surveillance access to the grave, they didn't notice her carting in a mannequin? All right. Nerdy directs them to another part of the cemetery, but Nikita pops up in the seat behind him. She aims a gun at his head. "Good job, Birkhoff," she coos. Then she pistol-whips him and drives off with him unconscious in the seat beside her.
Birkhoff wakes some time later in a dark, boarded-up room. He's tied to a chair. Nikita wants access to Division's computer networks. "Bitch, just skip to the part where you kill me," he says. She gives him another whack with her gun, bloodying his mouth. Percy will kill him anyway if he helps her. Nikita wants to shoot him but fights back the urge. He quietly wonders why she wants the information, since it wasn't any use to them in finding her. He realizes she's going after Division. "Niki, you're insane," he says. "Don't call me Niki," she warns. "Then don't call me Nerd," he says. Oh, sorry about that. I didn't know your name earlier. He reminisces about the old days when she'd order his nerdy self around. He comes to the conclusion that she must be working for "the other side," and she doesn't correct him.
Back at the Charm School headquarters, some computer drones have gotten a hit on Birkhoff's tracking implant. Michael rushes off with about a dozen armed agents and finds Birkhoff in a cruddy little playground, bound to a rocking horse. Nikita is long gone.
Alex shows up for fight training, her makeup and hair all pretty. She and Jaden trash-talk a little on the sidelines before noticing Thom as he finishes sparring. "He's just nervous because he's about to go on his first op," Jaden says. Alex wonders if Jaden and Thom are boom-chikka-wow-wow, but Division frowns on such things. Thom drops down onto a mat beside them. Jaden wants to know about Operation Black Arrow. "I know it's going down at the Wyckland Hotel," she says. Thom is surprised she knows this. Jaden says she spied on Thom Googling stuff in the computer lab. Is Thom supposed to be a little slow? How can he be ready for his first op? [And why is the intel on Google better than what they briefed him with? And why are these kids allowed to use the Internet? - Zach] Maybe they're going to use him as a human shield. Jaden's just jealous Thom gets to kill someone. That's disturbing. Alex agrees with me. Thom tells her most of their missions are counter-intelligence (he's good at being counter-intelligent) but their other missions are to kill. Alex looks horrified.
Headquarters. Birkhoff is nursing his black eye and bragging to Percy and Michael about how he was able to "turn the tables" on Nikita. "The only reason you're alive is because she wanted you that way," Michael says. He wants to suspend all operations until they get Nikita, but Percy refuses. He heads out to some fund-raiser, blustering about how he's not going to let street trash get in his way.
Speaking of whom, Nikita is wandering around her gorgeous loft wearing naught but her underthings while cool music plays. It's like a Victoria's Secret commercial up in here. She stops at her laptop when she sees she has an e-mail. It's in Russian. The computer decodes it: "Black Arrow Target: Safwani. Wyckland Hotel. 1700hr." Nikita picks out an all-black ensemble of jeans, leather jacket and matching gun.
Wyckland Hotel. Safwani's up in his room with a bevy of bodyguards. Another guard waits downstairs, radioing up that the lobby is all clear. Just to prove him wrong, a man in a hotel uniform slips something into the guard's water glass. The guard takes a drink and is soon overcome with the heaves. He runs off to the men's room, where Thom, dressed as an attendant, jumps him with some chloroform. He wrestles the man into a stall. Another agent joins him. That was easy. Safwani's men upstairs realize something is wrong when they can't reach their colleague on the radio. Two of them leave the hotel room to check it out. Everything seems to be going according to plan until Nikita shows up to beat the crap out of Thom and the other agent. "That could have gone better," Nikita says. Not really. I mean, it only took you ten seconds to take them out, and they were each twice your size. Plus, you did it in heels! Don't be so hard on yourself!
She marches upstairs, kicks open Safwani's hotel room door without breaking her leg, and quickly knocks out Safwani's one remaining guard. She tasers a befuddled Safwani and then wheels him into the hall on a room service cart. She's met by that trigger-happy agent who killed her stepfather. He's very serious-looking. I'm calling him Happy until someone says his name. Happy whips out a funky blade weapon of some kind, but before he can dispatch Nikita, Safwani's two other guards step out of the elevator. Happy happily slices them up while Nikita gets away with her cart. She wheels Safwani down into the parking garage with Happy in hot pursuit. She loads Safwani into a waiting car while Happy unloads his gun at them, but somehow manages to miss. She drives away.
She pulls up outside the United Nations sometime later and honks the horn. She wakes Safwani. "You can't do this to me!" he protests. "Do what?" she asks. "Save your life?" She explains that the others were sent to kill him before he could make it to his peace summit tomorrow. Safwani doesn't quite believe that the United States would do that do him, but Nikita explains that Division is something the U.S. has lost control of it. There's more explanation about how Safwani's country is rich with oil. Once peace comes to Safwani's country, he'll kick out all the outside oil companies. "Those companies contracted Division to kill you." Nikita makes her getaway when the UN security guards finally come out to see what's going on.
Charm School. Alex shows up on Amanda's doorstep again. Alex pretends to want Amanda's help just long enough to grab a pair of scissors. She holds the blades to Amanda's throat and demands her help in escaping. Amanda remains utterly calm. She talks to Alex about the futility of running, because she's already home. Melinda Clarke's voice is sort of hypnotic. I sort of want to join Division now. Alex sobs and lowers the scissors.
Washington, D.C. The nattily dressed elite of the nation's capital arrive at a Greek-style concert hall for that fund-raiser Percy mentioned earlier. A senator is chatting with Percy at the bar, needling him about Division conducting unauthorized assassinations and whatnot. "Remember you work for us," the senator says. "I work for whoever happens to be sitting in your chair," Percy says. "That person tends to come and go." The senator looks duly threatened before slinking off with his tail between his legs. Michael approaches Percy and tells him Nikita sabotaged Operation Black Arrow. He goes on about how impossible it is to find her when she casually saunters up to them with a "Hey, guys!"
She has on a fabulous dress that looks like it has a metal exoskeleton beaded onto the fabric. It's like if the Terminator made haute couture. Percy and Michael wonder how she got inside. In answer, an older gentleman joins them and flirts with Nikita, calling her a "friend of the family." Michael spills a drink on the codger, necessitating their leaving the scene to get the horny old goat cleaned up. Nikita tells Percy that she found out what escort service he used and made sureshe would be his date to the fund-raiser. Like she's making smalltalk, she tells Percy she's going to take him down, mission by mission. Percy nods to the backup stationed around the room as waiters and such. Nikita pretends to touch up her makeup, but when she twists her tube of lipstick, a car explodes outside the hall. Party-goers scramble in a panic. Nikita grabs a gun from one of the undercover agents and mows down two other agents, using the first as a shield. She takes aim at Percy and Michael who's joined the scene, but the two duck behind the bar. Nikita runs.
Michael follows her into an alley and calls her name. He has a gun aimed at her and orders her to toss her own weapon behind her. He also orders her to get down on the ground and spread her arms and her legs. She doesn't. "Just like old times, huh?" she asks. She turns slowly to face him. He can't understand why she came back once she was free. "Someone has to stop Percy," she says. Michael points out that Percy will take everyone down with him, including the whole country. Nikita is genuinely confused by that, so Michael explains about all the dirt Percy has on Division's operations, hidden all over the world. She still wants to stop him from training slaves to do his bidding. They argue about whether what Nikita really wants is revenge. Michael warned her about getting emotionally attached. "You mean the way you did? With me?" she asks. She says she knows he's staying with Division in order to protect the other recruits, like he did with her. He lowers his weapon and allows her a head start. She pulls out another gun and shoots him in the shoulder so they'll think he tried to stop her. With that, she and her awesome outfit disappear into the night.
Percy and the gang are back at headquarters, forming their plans to stop Nikita. They can't figure out just who's feeding her information. Whoever it is, Percy wants their heads.
Back in her spacious loft, Nikita gets an e-mail from her contact. "Good job, Ms. Legendary," it says. Nikita tells her partner in crime to log off. "Chill, Sensei," comes the response. We see fingers typing out the rest of the response on a keyboard: "Escape attempt sealed the deal just like u said. They suspect nothing." The camera pulls back to reveal Alex, sitting in Division's computer lab. Nikita again commands her to log off, telling her, "Never forget what I taught you." Alex logs off just as Michael walks up behind her. She pretends to be working at some assigned program. In her loft, in a shot that's actually a continuation of the first in the episode, Nikita stares again at the pinkish blob. This time, the blob comes into focus and is revealed to be the piggy mask from the "botched" heist. "Here we go," Nikita says. Cue the rockin' music that signs us off for the week.
Find out seven things you need to know about Nikita star Maggie Q.
See what our No Prior Knowledge vlogger thought of Nikita:
Want to immediately access TWoP content no matter where you are online? Download the free TWoP toolbar for your web browser. Already have a customized toolbar? Then just add our free toolbar app to get updated on our content as soon it's published.
Tippi Blevins is not a highly-trained secret assassin. As far as anyone knows. You can reach her at b_tippi@yahoo.com or http://twitter.com/tippib