The cast of Nikita hit Comic-Con this year with a thrilling panel and news of the upcoming third season, which will air on The CW Fridays this Fall. You can find video of the panel itself and KSiteTV’s other Nikita Comic-Con coverage here. But that’s not all we have for you!
KSiteTV attended roundtable interviews with members of the show’s cast, and we figured the best place to start would be with the man who plays “Michael,” Shane West. What’s up with the Nikita gang in Season 3? Were we able to get some spoilers out of him? And what’s Michael’s last name? Here are some of the answers we were able to get.
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“You know, what’s made me so happy to be on this show is that each year it seems to reboot itself again,” Shane says about starting the show in yet another direction. “Going into this third season now, the dynamic is completely changed. By the end of the second season, you saw this kind of family growing. In a sense, kind of a Justice League-Avengers thing where we’re arguing as well as they have to save the day, and solve these crimes, and to an extent, humanity, and it’s just that now that they have to run Division, it’s going to be psychologically more difficult for them. They’re now practically living together in Division as well, so it’s going to cause a lot of conflict. There was already conflict at the end of the second season, but now they have to work together, and they’re pretty much forced to by the President, who has given them all these pardons. It’s going to make things more unique, and I think it’s going to make it more personal as well. I think there will be a lot more intimate scenes – and I don’t necessarily mean sexual, but intimate, as in getting into the characters more, and seeing how they can actually connect under these circumstances,” he tells us.
In talking about the show’s new direction, Shane revealed a bit about the third season premiere, which airs in late October. “One of the main things for this season is that there are 30 or more people that are rogue out there in the world, that have not come home to Division, and so our whole point is to bring these people back. They might be willign to do it, and they might not be willing to do it. They might try and kill us, or we might all of a sudden have a new team member. That is, in general, the point of the season of where we have to go. So the first [episode] starts off in China with a rogue agent that doesn’t want to come home, and we have to stop him from trying to finish his last order from Percy. Some of them don’t think Percy is necessarily dead; some peopel believe it. Some people don’t believe that we should be running Division, and they think if they come home and get that pardon, they might actually be executed. It’s all going to start with China,” he says.
West thinks the notion of rogue agents is a “wonderful” casting idea.” “This brings a lot of guys and girls that can come in on this,” he says. “Young, and old, and whatever, that can come in there and bring a presence. The first guy, I’m thrilled to find out who’s playing him, because it’s a great character.” That is not to say that some fan favorite foes will be gone forever. “Amanda is still lurking, with Ari, of course,” Shane says. “She’s not in the first one, but she has a good little character arc that’s talked about, that the audience wouldn’t exactly know about. It’s brought up in the first episode. So you’ll see she’s been doing right now. She’s lurking. She’s about to pop up.”
Also on the subject of fan favorites, this interview was conducted soon after the announcement was made that Devon Sawa would be made a series regular on Nikita as Owen. How did Shane react to the news? “We were excited about that, if not completely baffled, and so was he,” Shane recalls. “I had just seen him four or five days ago, and he sent me a text saying that he suddenly was a regular, somehow it even got across Twitter. And, yeah, we were excited. Owen’s a very integral part of the show, and there’s no one else like him and that character. You can go so many places with it. It’s going to be perfect help for this team, for Team Nikita as I like to call it. Now we have quite a group.”
“He’s not in the first episode, because this just happened. So we have to find out when [or if] Devon is going to be in that next one. Which is smart. Because it’s a good build. Right now it’s the current team, and then it’s going to start extending with the other characters. So that will be also fun for the fans to watch, and tune in and see who is popping up,” Shane adds.
Beyond the “Dirty Thirty” as many of them are calling them, Shane is careful not to spoil too much. “I know what’s going to happen. I asked, and it’s insane, and it’s awesome. And that’s all I’m going to say. But one of the things that I wanted to see, pre-having the conversation with Craig [Silverstein], was to see Michael go through some more pain this year. Season One, for me, character-wise, was a bit more fun, for me, as Shane. Season Two was more fun to do because of all of the incredibly over-the-top, on-the-run storylines with the new characters and things like that. Season One, I was just roaming around Division, basically. But for me, that was a little bit more fun, because, from a character standpoint, it was more dark, and he was kind of more the husband last year. So, one of my requests was ‘how do we balance both?’ And what Craig explained to me was going to happen in these 22 or 23 episodes was pretty great. It’s going to be very positive for a while, and then there’s going to be a certain negativity that comes in, that will be another thing that I don’t think anyone could possibly guess, so I’m excited about that,” Shane enthuses.
One thing that might not come up in Season Three is Michael’s last name. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m kind of enjoying the fact that I don’t know anymore. It was something that I was interested in, in the beginning of Season One, just because I thought it was strange. When we get our call sheets, it’s literally just the first name for almost everyone, so it’s kind of funny not knowing what that last name is. You see it all the time. And then after a while, I liked him being mysterious, so it was kind of fun not knowing. I just hope it’s good, once they tell me what it is. But it’s probably ‘Michael Smith,’ like a ‘John Doe’ kind of thing. Or ‘Michael Doe.’ Who knows.”
Finally, Shane was asked about the state of “Mikita” (the Michael/Nikita pairing) as we get into Season Three. “They’re happy right now,” he says. “We’re starting off with them being happy again. We ended that second season going towards that. That’s something I can say for the fans. We’re not starting off Season Three with them in trouble in their relationship. So they are happy.”
Stay tuned to KSiteTV for more Nikita interviews in the coming days!
