Nikita Episode 1.11 Advance Review

At my graduations (all three of them), the most important thing I had to worry about was not standing on a folding chair and cracking my tailbone. Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca) gets her graduation present in tomorrow’s episode of Nikita: an assignment to kill.

She goes undercover at a young woman’s wedding, tasked with taking out the bride’s father, who happens to be the head of an Armenian crime syndicate. Though at first Alex is petrified at the idea, when Nikita attempts to step in and complete the job for her, she changes her mind and decides to go through with it herself. It’s a clever way of turning Alex against Nikita (Maggie Q). We’ve seen them disagree, but this is the first time audiences will really see them on opposite sides of an issue. It’s an interesting chance to develop Alex outside of her relationship with Nikita, just as she’s tackling a crucial, character-building problem. After all, how would you change if you knew you were going to have to kill someone?

On the Division front, Jaden (Tiffany Hines) tells on Alex to Thom (Ashton Holmes), hoping to get him to turn her in. Instead, he tells Alex that Jaden is after her. That scene between them shows exactly how strained their relationship has become since she duped him in “Phoenix,” but that there’s still plenty of sexual tension there. That’s not the only thorn in Alex’s side: Birkhoff (Aaron Stanford) discovers the shell program that she’s been using to chat with Nikita. Percy (Xander Berkeley) is smart enough to use it against Nikita, but still falls into the trap of ignoring Michael’s warnings to call off an operation that’s clearly compromised. I sometimes wonder how much Percy really values Michael’s opinion, given that he ignores it so many times.

You’ll also get some valuable hints of backstory this episode; namely, that Alex had a bigger hand in designing the master plan than we first thought, and you’ll see the events that led right up to the pilot. Nikita‘s continuity gets a real boost this episode. And check out Robin Givens (The Game) in a minor guest-starring role as a wedding planner.

Saying any more would spoil the fun, but “All The Way” is an episode that is many different things. It’s another episode for Lyndsy Fonseca to truly develop her character and begin to take her down the path to full-fledged agent that we’ve been promised will happen this season. It brings Ashton Holmes back into play, right when Thom can be used the most (we always knew he’d end up getting caught between Alex and Jaden). It also fills in some crucial and much-awaited backstory, at the same time revealing further complications that will certainly become important further down the line. It doesn’t necessarily make the best standalone episode, but it’s an important piece of the Nikita puzzle that simply cannot be missed.

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