Nikita

For those of us who thought Percy (Xander Berkeley) was down and out, this week’s episode of Nikita certainly proved us wrong. He’s still a force to be reckoned with, which is definitely scary.

To kick off the episode, Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca) enters a church and makes a beeline for the confessional. “I’m not any good at this… I need your help,” she says. This confession isn’t for a priest, though — it’s for Nikita (Maggie Q). With Alex after the black box, Nikita’s holding up her end of the conversation from a rooftop with Michael (Shane West). She again encourages her former protégé to leave Division and join her, but Alex wants to kill Sergei Semak first. She reveals that Percy offered her information about Semak in exchange for cigars, but she turned down the deal after he let slip that he keeps information about all of his enemies on his black boxes. She wants Nikita to give her the file so she can learn more about Semak and they can screw over Percy. Nikita decides to consider it, and they part ways. As Alex leaves the church, we see Roan, the scary cleaner with square glasses, lurking. Uh oh…

Cut to the woods at night. There’s an eerie fog — very Twilight. Inside, our ex-Division crew is checking out Percy’s enemy files. Strangely, there’s nothing more exciting on Semak than a phone conversation in which he went off on Percy — and who can blame him? More interesting is Nikita’s file. Birkhoff (Aaron Stanford) tells her there’s information about her real parents.

Back at Division, Amanda (Melinda Clarke) accuses Percy of sending Alex to meet with Nikita behind her back. Percy smugly announces that Alex went on her own and he’s actually doing her a favor. He’ll be able to get Nikita’s whereabouts in the next 24 hours, and all Amanda has to do is get him a room with some sunshine in return. Even Percy needs his Vitamin D.

Meanwhile, Nikita pores over her file. Her birth certificate shows that she was born in Vietnam to a woman named Anh. Michael speculates that there’s no info on her father because he was an American. However, another document lists her father as Rybat, which is an old CIA term: It means classified. Nikita’s shocked because she used to hack into Division computers to try to find her parents but never came up with anything. Birkhoff sheepishly admits that he was in charge of deleting all recruits’ birth info. An annoyed Nikita demands he hack into the CIA, but he says he can’t because his tricks won’t work a second time. She huffs off. Poor Birkhoff just doesn’t get the credit he deserves.

Michael follows her, and Nikita admits that this has been hanging over her for her whole life. We flash back to her recruit days when she nearly killed a Division trainer because he called her a “scummy little orphan girl.” When Amanda and Percy got wind of it, they decided to cancel her because they couldn’t control her. Fortunately, Michael convinced them to let him try get through to her.

We see more foggy woods, and then Michael and Nikita get ready for bed. “The only thing worse than losing a family is not having one,” he says. This makes Nikita feel guilty about not telling him about his son in Belarus. She tries but can’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she tells him that he’s sacrificing so much for her and she doesn’t feel like she’s doing anything for him. He assures her that he wants to help her get her family back since he can’t get his. Aww. Isn’t he the best?

The next day, Alex is reading the newspaper when she hears her intercom buzz. Apparently, she gets visitors so infrequently that she needs to grab a gun before answering. Paranoid much? It turns out that there’s no guest, just Birkhoff, who has hacked her intercom so they can face-time chat. He tells her Percy must be playing her because the Semak file is useless. His advice? You can’t beat Percy at his own game. The only way to win is to not play.

Our favorite assassin couple makes their way into a CIA storehouse in Maryland and manages to steal personnel files, leaving a trail of bloodied up guards behind. Amanda goes to Percy to inform him that she knows exactly where Nikita is headed and that he was the one who set the plan in motion. (As much as we hate to admit it, he’s really good at what he does.) Although thanks are in order, Amanda triumphantly tears up a picture of a sunny island in front of him instead. Ouch.

Not realizing Division’s onto them, Nikita and Michael arrive at 343 Walnut Street, the address of her presumed father, Richard. When no one answers, Nikita decides to pick the lock in spite of Michael’s suggestion that breaking and entering “might get things off on the wrong foot.” She hears a noise inside and whips out her gun. Clearly, we’re about to see a great first impression. As she enters the kitchen, a man jumps out with a knife and they begin to fight. That’s when we see the family resemblance. Nikita’s father gets the upper hand, but Michael bursts in. He gets Richard to drop his knife, and Nikita reveals that she’s his daughter. It takes some explaining, but finally he believes her. It turns out he’s on the run too because the CIA falsely charged him with smuggling heroin.

Suddenly, a Division alpha team pulls up outside. Luckily, Richard has just as much heavy artillery as his daughter does. After throwing smoke bombs and blowing up the barbecue, they’re able to escape by boat. Roan almost manages to shoot Richard, but Nikita tells him to duck in the nick of time. Look at all that bonding!

When they get back to Birkhoff’s, Nikita announces that Richard will be staying with them. He says he’ll be gone soon, so Nikita offers to find a way to exonerate him. He thinks it’s too risky and doesn’t believe she can do it. After all, she just blew his cover and put yet another government agency on his trail. Plus, he’s not sure he can give her what she’s looking for.

In the middle of the night, Nikita wakes up, grabs her gun, and surveys the house. She finds her father, who says he’s looking for something to help him sleep. She directs him to Birkhoff’s most expensive booze, and in return he apologizes for speaking out of anger earlier. They sit down to chat, and he tells Nikita about her mother, a nurse he met after he was shot on a mission. There were complications when Nikita was born, and Anh died a week later. He says he brought Nikita over to the States as soon as he could and reveals that giving her up was the hardest thing he ever did. “Then you never should have given me up!” cries Nikita before apologizing and admitting that she also lets her anger do the talking sometimes.

Alex and Percy discuss why he lied to her about the Semak file, and he tells her about Nikita’s father. We flash back again to Percy, Amanda, and Michael’s powwow about cancelling Nikita. After Michael left, Amanda and Percy continued brainstorming. Amanda didn’t think he’d succeed because Nikita was like a dog that had been kicked its whole life — she only knew how to lash out. They decided to let Nikita find her father to give her a sense of self-worth and make her feel grateful to Division. Percy tells Alex that they knew about Nikita’s hacking, so he was going to let her to find the information, show up at her dad’s door, and then find out that “not only was she not trash, she was intelligence royalty.” Alex asks why he didn’t just tell her himself, and Percy asks Alex why he made her work for the intelligence on Semak. She puts the pieces together: It’s because it’s not true. There’s an impostor in Nikita’s house.

This revelation is especially chilling because we cut back to Nikita’s heart-to-heart with Richard. They’re discussing whether she wants kids while Percy explains that Richard Ellison doesn’t exist. The whole file is fake. He planted it all. They didn’t need it once Michael got through to Nikita, but Percy later realized it could be used as a weapon against the rogue agent. And it’s working. Poor Nikita is so desperate for someone to confide in about Michael’s son that she tells Richard. She reveals that she wants Michael to know, but he couldn’t be involved in Max’s life without the risk of Division finding out. Uh, Nikki, you just told Division. Suddenly, we see Roan in the creepy woods. Amanda orders him to strike as soon as Richard has secured the box.

A bit later, Birkhoff goes downstairs because Alex has managed to send him a computer alert. She explains that Richard’s a Division plant, but Richard gets him at gunpoint before he can warn the others. Birkhoff manages to hit him with a random electronic device. He sort of holds his own in the ensuing struggle, but we wish he’d just call in the big guns. Luckily, Michael and Nikita hear the commotion and step in. She’s so hurt and angry that she goes absolutely crazy on Richard. Meanwhile, Amanda discovers the struggle and gives orders for Division to storm the house, get the black box, and kill them all.

Before Nikita and Michael can disable Richard’s tracker, gunfire opens on the house and bullets fly everywhere. Poor Birkhoff. That place was pretty awesome. To make things worse for him, he has to take one for the team by getting his tablet from across the room to bring in air support. He manages to dodge his way over to it, but not soon enough to prevent Michael from taking a bullet. Nikita races over and covers him as Birkhoff launches a missile. There’s a massive explosion just as Roan enters the house. Fortunately, Birkhoff, Nikita, and Michael all survive. As they leave the room, Nikita sees Richard get up. She shoots him dead. When he falls, we see Roan on the ground. He opens his eyes, finds his miraculously unbroken square glasses, and gets up.

The next day, Alex goes to gloat to Percy. However, he thinks he has won because he knows Amanda will find out she warned Nikita. He says, “Can you pass her lie detector test? I can.” Well, we’ve seen Alex do it before, so we can only hope she will again. He thinks he owns her now, but she tells him to go to hell.

As Birkhoff gets ready to take off in a super expensive car. He tells Michael and Nikita he’ll set up the next base, and then leaves them to debrief. Nikita admits to Michael that she can’t deny him a family when she wants one too. She explains that Max is his son and she killed Richard to protect him. The last thing we see is Michael drop her hand. With that we’re left wondering if Mikita will recover. Plus, what happened to Roan, and will Amanda believe Alex or Percy?