The first season of Nikita seemed to progress its characters with three years of development in just one season. Now, the fast-paced series is about to enter its second season on September 23.
At the Comic-Con International in San Diego, we participated in interview roundtables with the cast (find those interviews here) as well as the show’s developer and executive producer, Craig Silverstein.
What did he have to tease about Season 2?
A lot.
Please do not duplicate this interview onto other websites. Instead just place a link to KSiteTV. Thanks! Questions to Mr. Silverstein are in bold, answers are not.
How will the black boxes factor in to Season Two?
There’s either three or four black boxes left, depending on who you ask, and so they definitely want to find the rest of them, but their goal has shifted a little bit in this season. They’re going to try to take down the people above Division, Oversight.
Will you be introducing any new characters?
There’s going to be a character named Sean who comes in from Oversight, who decided they needed a bit more oversight. They send him in – he’s kind of like the Colin Farrell in Minority Report. He’s played by Dillon Casey. He is looking for flaws in the season. He might be a potential love interest for Alex. He’s going to be someone from her world.
Can you tell us about Percy’s next moves with all that’s happening with Division and Oversight?
I’ll say that Percy may not be moving around a lot. He may be confined to an area in Division, and it’s probably one of the coolest sets we’ve built on the show.
Do we see Birkhoff?
Yes. Birkhoff is not in Division anymore, but I don’t want to say more than that. It’s answered in the first episode.
Are we going to learn more about Percy and Amanda’s past?
Yes. There will be some origins of Division this season.
Are we going to be seeing Alberta Watson again, or anyone else from the original La Femme Nikita TV series?
You’ll be seeing [Alberta Watson] in Episode One. Right away.
What else can you tell us about the black boxes?
The whole season is about the black box, because Nikita and Michael have one. They came away with Percy’s black box at the end of last season. Michael actually clobbered him with it, made Birkhoff decrypt it, and so this season is about digging in to the box, finding all of the secrets on it, and trying to clean them up one by one. Everything that’s on this box. I’m not saying it like there were aliens at Roswell, but if there were, it would be on the black box. It’s that big.
Will we see more of the Guardians?
They’ve all sort of spread to the wind. That’s in the background. We start to deal with the idea of those people in Episode Two, actually.
Are there any plans to bring back characters like Owen?
Episode Two, Owen returns.
What are Amanda’s next moves, now that she’s in a serious position of power?
She is running Division now.
It looks like Amanda is trying to turn Division into a more principled place, to try to get it back to basics. No more missions on the side. She is trying to be Oversight’s good girl. But I think Amanda’s scarier than Percy, so I think eventually, her true colors will come through.
Is Alex really receptive to another love interest right now?
She’s not receptive to it at all.
What is she looking for, then?
What she’s looking for is the man who ordered her family’s death – the man who controls her father’s empire.
What is the state of people trusting one another right now?
I think Michael and Nikita trust each other. I think that Amanda certainly doesn’t trust anybody. Alex has been betrayed by everyone she’s really ever been close to, so she has major trust issues. So, yeah. Trust no one.
What can we expect in terms of the Nikita/Michael relationship? Is it smooth sailing now that they are working together?
Oh, there’ll be wrenches. I think smooth sailing is pretty boring. So, how does something come up between them that’s not annoying, basically. And I think we’ve found that. But that’ll take a while to develop.
Where there was anything about Season 1 that deviated from your original plan?
The only thing, I think, is that Michael and Nikita got together a little faster than I originally thought. But everything else, pretty much, came out according to plan.
What encouraged that to happen?
You make a plan in the beginning of the season. You have 22 episodes up on your board. And when you start watching what’s coming back, you start to react to the film. What I was reacting to, was it seemed like people didn’t know where Michael was coming from, and they didn’t like it as opposed to being like “what is the deal with this guy?” So it was like “pick a side, Michael.”
It was reacting to the story that we were watching. You write it, you shoot it, and then it starts to tell you what it is. It turned out very similar to what I originally planned, but that was one thing that came a little faster.
Have you made a similar plan for Season 2?
Yes. We mapped out Season 2 and the arc of Season 3, as well.
What is the overarching theme of this season?
The overarching theme of this season is Michael and Nikita righting wrongs as Alex heads from right towards wrong. And it’s also “home.” Every character on this show – every character is searching for “home” in their own way.
