Note: Full spoilers for the Nikita: Season 3 finale follow. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve been warned!
Nikita wrapped up its third season with a ton of changes and a big cliffhanger. I spoke to the show’s creator and executive producer, Craig Silverstein, about the events of the Season 3 finale and what’s to come in Season 4, which has been announced as a six-episode final season.
IGN TV: We’ve got a lot to talk about her with the finale and the final season announcement. So let me get to it with the fact that Nikita’s now on the run. As Maggie Q told me, it’s kind of a return to classic Nikita with her out there on her own. She wants to protect the people she loves, but what do you think made her decide to just needed to split off from them at this point?
Craig Silverstein: I think protecting them is a big part of it, knowing that she’s gone from anonymous to notorious in the blink of an eye, sort of. The other part -- which might be below the surface -- is that at heart, she’s always been a lone wolf. She cares about people, but I think there’s a natural pull for her toward that.
IGN: The big thing, of course, you also did in the finale was getting rid of Division, physically. They literally cannot go back anymore. How did you decide it was time to finally get rid of that and get rid of those sets?
Silverstein: [Laughs] Yeah. It was fun to see them blow up, wasn’t it?
IGN: It was very fun! Did it just seem like the right time to cut that cord?
Silverstein: Yeah, absolutely. It goes along with the same kind of thinking that led to the Death of Percy; that for any given storyline, we don’t want to wear out our welcome. And after so many people knew about the location of Division… the SEALs, the president, Team Nikita and Amanda… The biggest power of that place came from the fact that nobody knew where it was. So once that location started to get out, it was only a matter of time before the actual structure itself became obsolete.
IGN: Let’s talk about the President, because you had kind of a fun double switch there. First, the President choosing to kill herself when Nikita wouldn’t go through with it, but then the actual President still being alive. You could have just done the one and it would have been pretty shocking. How did you then decide to actually have that second layer on it?
Silverstein: That’s been coming for a long time, and it’s part of the framework of Season 4. You’ll also notice there are a couple characters we look back to that weren’t exactly what they seemed to be in the last few episodes. So that’s sort of setting up part of a grand plan by the group.
IGN: This season, you had some fun with “spy-fi” and introduced some elements that were a little more fantastical, as far as Michael’s hand and the ability for someone to be perfectly mimicked. Is that always a delicate line, to decide how far you can go with that stuff?
Silverstein: Yeah, all of those elements of spy-fi, everything you see is grounded in some kind of reality. Obviously the technology to grow back limbs and stuff like that exists. There’s an army department of regenerative medicine. They’ve been able to grow back fingertips, though not a whole hand. For the concept, there’s always an underlying basis of either something that’s real or something that is in development stages, which is what The Shop is all about -- the idea that the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. But sometimes we don’t have the budget to pull them off in the way that the real world does it. So it’s trying to find that line between what really exists and what we can actually sell as realistic. But we like the science fiction stuff, the spy-fi, and we’d always be happy to push it that way, but we’re always, always seeking to ground a high concept.
IGN: Season 2 obviously left some important threads to deal with, but if it had been the end, it mostly could have worked as a series finale. The Season 3 finale was much more of a true cliffhanger. I have to ask, since you weren’t officially renewed at the time you made this finale, were you kind of rolling the dice?
Silverstein: No, I had a strong feeling that we were going to be coming back. I didn’t know for how many [episodes], but I did have a very strong feeling that we were going to be coming back, stronger than I had from Season 1 to 2 or 2 to 3. So that’s why we left it that way.
IGN: So let’s talk about Season 4 being six episodes. What were your discussions with the network like about that, and how are you feeling about the six episodes?
Silverstein: Six episodes, what I would say about that is that what we are going to plan is akin almost to the feeling of special event. It’s the way that the storylines would come together near the end of the season… Where weeks might pass between episodes in the early part of a season, when we we’re doing more standalone [stories], and then as things get tighter near the end, days are passing; or two episodes will take place over the course of one day. So it’s almost like the end run of a season; that’s what this is going to feel like, which is exciting because we get right to the good stuff right away. The way that Season 3 slingshots you onto that stage, where Nikita is the most wanted woman in the world and is being hunted by the world, is the perfect place to accelerate to.
IGN: I had Nikita fans tweeting me about this and I’m sure you had likewise, but the concern becomes, will this be enough time? With the different plotlines and the different characters and wanting to give resolution to them all, will you have enough time to fit everything in?
Silverstein: Yes, we’ll be able to deal with the major stuff. There are probably one or two storylines that we could have told and we probably won’t now, but they don’t have anything to do with closure. No one’s part will be sacrificed because of the six.
IGN: I’d assume you’d probably just have to be more laser-focused in terms of choosing your guest stars and things like that?
Silverstein: Yeah. It’s going to be heavily serialized. It won’t be about the bad guy of the week.
Source : ign[dot]com
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