Nikita: Things Are About to Change Again

I managed to catch up with Craig Silverstein, the executive producer and showrunner of the awesome Nikita at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour last night. Silverstein told me about what's to come in the second half of Nikita: Season 2, including the promise of two major shifts on the series, including one coming very soon. Plus, how is he feeling about the chances for a renewal for Season 3? Read on to find out.

---

IGN: I really enjoyed Michael and Owen teaming up last week. Was it fun for you to take those characters and see how they operate as a duo, away from Nikita?

Silverstein: Yeah, it was cool. What we tried to honor was, Nikita said, "It's going to take the two of you together," and we wanted to remind people that Guardians are a cut above, you know? Because they're chemically enhanced as well, so you really did need Michael and Owen together to fight that Guardian.

IGN: I spoke to Maggie in December, and she said this current three-episode arc, which began with the last episode, she felt was a really important one that would once again shift the dynamics quite a bit.

Silverstein: I would say that's true. The episode that is coming up, not this week, but the next one, we were considering calling "Game Change 2." If that wasn't a lame title, we would have said that, because it really does shift everybody and everything.

IGN: This show moves pretty fast. When Michael went in last week, disguised as a Guardian, I wondered if he might then be undercover for awhile, but he was found out right away.

Silverstein: The interesting thing was that because we know what the Guardians are heading towards, we wanted to get to that story, basically. And Michael couldn't participate in that.

IGN: How long were you planning the reveal of Alex's mom? Since the beginning of the show?

Silverstein: Yeah, that's why last year we had Roan's voice. He wasn't even in the episode, but we made sure we had Rob Stewart, who plays Roan, come in and record, "Mother down," because it was Percy's specific directive to Roan to tranquilize her instead of kill her that night. We were planning to have the mother come back into the story from last year. We didn't know exactly how it would go down. It shifted a bit from what we originally thought. We always wanted to have [Sergei] Semak be possessive and lustful of her and covet Nikolai's wife as the emotional reason he wanted the empire. But the fact that she was having an affair with him before was something we found this season.

IGN: She was just given a lot of information from Alex that she doesn't know how to process. What's her mindset going to be like moving forward?

Silverstein: Well, she needs to confront what Semak really is and she needs to confront her culpability in the whole thing and she's doing that. And Alex also needs to process and separate out, "How guilty is my mother?" It's not so clear, because he's also kept her on these pills and stuff like that and so it's hard… That's why Alex doesn't know what to do next, for this next episode and the one after, until she kind of tracks back onto a course.

IGN: She teamed up with Nikita in the biggest way she has in awhile in the past episode. Is that a sign of things to come? Will there be more direct mending between them?

Silverstein: Yeah, more direct mending, more teaming up. More of the old mentor/student and agent/mole thing – the good old Season 1 dynamic, to play out for a little bit.

IGN: I love what's going on with Percy and Ryan, since that's an unexpected combination. Percy has spent the whole season in the cell so far. He got some things back, and then got them taken away. We obviously are seeing a lot about just how much he's still pulling strings though from that cell, so is it safe to say he'll be ratcheting things up in the coming week?

Silverstein: Absolutely. He's tired of being in there. We're getting tired of seeing him in there! He's wanted out for awhile. He's been maneuvering things to get out. And so, you know… it's time to start doing it!

IGN: What about Ryan?

Silverstein: The interesting thing with Ryan is Ryan is caught in this weird thing… He hates Percy and Division, but also, when he was the guy at CIA who was the boy who cried wolf, that nobody believed about Division… Now he's there in the pit. You've got to be careful what you wish for. So he wants to hear all this Division stuff. "Tell me how it all started." And so he's a bit conflicted about it. But I think he wants to hear it all so he can bring it down. That's what I love about Ryan. He is not a trained fighter. He's completely f**ked. His death was faked. No one knows he's alive. He's at the bottom of Division. And he's still fighting. He's a true blue.