What to Rewatch Online: Nikita

The action drama Nikita – an adaptation of the French film La Femme Nikita and the 1997 Canadian series of the same name (and just like the 1993 U.S. movie Point of No Return) – debuted on the CW back on September 9, 2010.

The series focused on Nikita (Maggie Q who went on to star in Designated Survivor, the Divergent movie franchise and most recently Ballard), a woman with a prison sentence and a past drug-addiction, who escaped from a secret U.S. government-funded organization known as Division, and – after spending three years in hiding – was back to bring down that organization.

Division was created and supervised by an organization called Oversight. They were responsible for black operations including espionage, sabotage and assassination. Under the leadership of its first director and founding member Percy (24’s Xander Berkeley), Division went rogue and performed under-the-table murder-for-hire.

During the first season, Nikita trained a young woman named Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca), who as a child was saved by Nikita during a mission that killed Alex’s father. Alex became a recruit inside Division, working as a mole for Nikita to gain intelligence.

Over time, Nikita began to bring other Division members on as allies, like Owen (Devon Sawa), a Guardian within Division, who protected one of the prized black boxes used by Percy to guarantee cooperation from countless powerful people all over the globe; Michael (Shane West), the man who had trained her during her forced captivity within Division; Birkhoff (Aaron Stanford), a Division head technician (or more like the IT genius), who left Division after Percy was imprisoned; and Ryan Fletcher (Noah Bean), a CIA analyst, who had been helping Nikita since the first season.

As the show progressed into season three, the storyline revolved around the New Division, which was tasked with tracking down rogue agents who failed to respond to the recall that was ordered after the death of Percy; and then in the truncated season four, which consisted of only six episodes, Nikita was framed for the assassination of the President, causing her to team up with her old allies, including Michael, Birkhoff and Ryan to clear her name and confront the Shop, a group behind the conspiracy. The show concluded with Nikita and Michael eloping, Amanda being captured and bringing about a resolution to the show’s overall theme of betrayal and redemption.

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The first and second seasons included series regular cast members Ashton Holmes and Tiffany Hines as fellow Division recruits Thom and Jaden who trained alongside Alex. And, then there was Amanda (The O.C.’s Melinda Clarke), the former mentor of both Nikita and Alex as well as a master manipulator, interrogator and psychologist at Division who went on to become the head of Division and, in the latter part of the show’s run became the main antagonist as well as Sean Pierce (Dillon Casey), a former Navy SEAL, who was hired to keep an eye on Division on behalf of his mother Senator Madeline Pierce (the late Alberta Watson, who played Madeline – the counterpart to Amanda in the TV series Le Femme Nikita).

The show also featured a number of recurring characters including:

Rob Stewart, who played Roan, a Cleaner for Division and the right-hand man of Percy;
Peter Outerbridge, who played Ari Tasarov, head of GOGOL, a Russian Division counterpart and Amanda’s former lover;
Thad Luckinbill, who played Nathan Colville, a neighbor of, and later love interest to, Alex;
Lyndie Greenwood, who played Sonya, who took over as head technician at Division after Birkhoff left the organization;
Helena Mattsson, who played Cassandra Ovechkin, a former GOGOL agent, undercover MI6 agent and mother of Michael’s son Max;
Cameron Daddo, who played Charles Grayson, the former President of the United States;
Michelle Nolden, who played the Vice President of the United States who later succeeded Charles Grayson as President; and
Richard T. Jones, who played Evan Danforth, former commander in the U.S. Navy and Specail Advisor to President Kathleen Spencer

And, just some of the guest stars who appeared in the show during its four seasons on the air included:

Erica Gimpel (Fame and God Friended Me)
Jessica Camacho (The Flash, All Rise and Countdown)
Lisa Berry (Supernatural and Beyond Black Beauty)
Sarah Clarke (24 and the Twilight film franchise)
Rich Sommer (Mad Men and In the Dark)
Isaiah Mustafa (Shadowhunters and Alex Cross)
Brendan Fehr (Roswell and The Night Shift)
Marc Bendavid (Dark Matter and Good Witch)
Zoie Palmer (Lost Girl and Dark Matter)
Katheryn Winnick (Vikings and Big Sky)
Scottie Thompson (NCIS and 12 Monkeys)
Edi Gathegi (Superman and the Twilight movie franchise)
Julie Gonzalo (Dallas and Veronica Mars)
Ksenia Solo (Lost Girl and Orphan Black)
B.J. Britt (Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Being Mary Jane)
Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us and Paradise)
Pedro Pascal (The Fantastic Four: First Steps and The Last of Us)
Kevin Hanchard (Orphan Black and Hudson & Rex)

The show held an approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes of 85% over the course of its four season run and averaged about 1.6 million viewers over its entire airing on the CW. The series aired in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as in Greece and Cyprus. The show ran for four seasons, airing 73 episodes, and it came to an end on December 7, 2013.

You can watch the season 1 trailer for Nikita below:

And,you can watch all four seasons of the show online on the free streaming service Tubi here.