TV Goodness Q&A: Maggie Q and Craig Silverstein Talk Nikita’s Final Season [INTERVIEW + VIDEO] 

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Three weeks. We only have to wait three more weeks for the final season of Nikita. We managed to get some intel from series star Maggie Q and EP/Co-creator Craig Silverstein at this year’s Comic Con. Below, read about what to expect next in Nikita’s journey, why it’s time to tell Birkhoff’s origin story (and whether or not it’ll involve Xander Berkeley‘s Percy) and how it’s all going to end.

What’s Nikita feeling coming into season 4?

Maggie Q: “We’re gonna start with a little bit of a time lapse, which we needed. I was picturing we’d pick up a year later. I mean, it’s a hard thing. You’ve gotta find that balance. I kind of want to see when we come into it Nikita living this life of- she sleeps for two hours a night now and when she closes her eyes it’s a nightmare scenario. All of it – where she’s gone, where she’s going, where she won’t go, all of that. So, it’s not the same Nikita, that sort of hopeful fighter. I think more than anything she wants to clear her name – not for her, but so that the people she’s always been associated with will never, ever be in danger. I don’t think she’s going out there going, ‘Well, I don’t want to look bad.’ But Craig and I discussed [it.] It’d be really cool if in the end Nikita actually got to  step into the spotlight and say, ‘This is my name. This is who I am. This is what I’ve been through.’ That makes me feel emotional because this is someone who’s had to hide her whole life and so that’d be nice, personally. But the love stuff, I don’t know. I don’t know. Michael… I don’t know if we’re ever gonna shower again. I mean, we’ll shower separately.”

Do you think in a way this takes Nikita back to where she was when the series started when Alex was her only real ally?

Maggie: “Kind of, but it’s a little bit sadder for me now because she knows what she can have. In the beginning she had nothing. She was a bonafide – not just loner – she really had no family, no friends, no real allies. Even with Alex, she had to build her as an ally. So with this it’s sort of when you have that taste of who you love and what you know and happiness and that gets taken away because same crazy bitch told you it was gonna go away. That is a nightmare scenario. It really is because Amanda called it from the beginning and that’s bigger then her.

How long until you come back and where are you going to pick the story up?

Craig Silverstein: “Yeah. We had big debates about this in the writer’s room. For a while we just kept saying three to six months. And it was because Albert [Kim] and Kristen [Reidel] wanted six months and I wanted three. So it’s three. We come back in – essentially the story’s gone public – with the press and them filling us in on the first hundred days since the assassination of the President and how the search for her assassin’s been going. That’s our ‘in’ to the story. And Nikita’s still on her own and we meet the team and the context of them looking for her or trying to find The Shop to clear her name, prove she didn’t do it.”

Have you already envisioned how each character’s going to end their story?

Craig: “Pretty much. There may be one or two that is still a little gray.”

Have any of the actors been pushing for anything?

Craig: “Yeah. We had those discussions at the beginning of last season, but now it’s like we only have six episodes guys. We’re just gonna tell this story. I hope you like it.”

If they don’t trust you by now…

Craig: “Exactly.”

What was it like writing with the end in sight?

Craig: “It was great because that’s where we started. Because you knew it was an end, it’s like let’s not mess around. Let’s figure out the last moment, and now let’s figure out the moment before that as opposed to let’s figure out the first moment. So we started at the end, getting back in the writer’s room.”

At some point during these six episodes doesn’t there have to be big confrontation between Nikita and Amanda?

Craig: “Yes, there will be.”

If there’s a Birkhoff origin story is there any chance Percy would be involved in it?

Craig: “Percy is involved in it. I don’t know if he’s gonna be involved on screen, but there’s some Birkhoff origin stuff that’s new.”

Are we gonna see any of the other actors come back?

Craig: “I’m working on it. There were some plans and then when we got into it we realized exactly how much story we had to tell and went, ‘Wow. I don’t know.’ I don’t know.'”

Is it more freeing to be able to concentrate everything down to these final six episodes?

Craig: “Totally. Totally. Knowing what your parameters are is so, so key. If I was told it’s six episodes, but if the ratings are good maybe we go more that would like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I don’t know what that sixth episode would be. It’s so much easier when you know.”

 How angry is Michael at Nikita for not trusting him?

Craig: “I think he’s angry, but now it’s three months later so you’re gonna see a guy who’s had three months to think about it. I think it’s happened enough times between the two of them, where he’s like he’s gotta make up his mind to what to do. Somebody proposed to question him early on in this season, ’cause this season is about identity for everybody, and someone says, ‘Who are you without her? Do you even really know?’ And it’s the kind of question he’s got to answer, or he should for himself.”

Will we learn his last name this season?

Craig: “Yeah. [Laughs.] We know what it is. We’ve known what it is for quite a while, but it’s fine, it’s a good last name. But the fact that everyone really wants to know…It’s sort of like why?”

How many different end game scenarios did you throw out like, it ends with everybody blowing up in the plane. It ends with Bobby coming out of the shower and it’s all a dream. How many did you throw out?

Craig: [Laughs.] “There were really only two of them. I know, emotionally, where I wanted to end at least with her, which is a very kind of quiet ending. So I want to see if we can build to that.”

 Were you able to tell all the stories you wanted to? Or are you happy with the amount of stories you got to tell through Nikita and her family?

Craig: “Yeah. Yeah, I am. If we had 13 episodes there may have been one or two more things we would have done like we were talking about last year. There’s no room to do it. It would be cheesy if we tried to do it in six, but they weren’t huge, key things.”

I know you’re planning an ending, but is there a possibility of revisiting the Nikita universe someday?

Craig: “Obviously, there have been too many examples lately for me to say never say never. I should say never say never. There’s been Arrested Development. Who knows. And I’ve seen shows live on in different ways so yeah, there’s always a possibility.”

What are you proudest of with this show?

Craig: “Some of the things I’m proud about may not be the things that other people [are.] Like sometimes when our crew is all working together and coming up with something that really looks good and is surprising to me, it just came from everybody being on their game. I’ll give you an example. In season 2 we were in a rush to figure out a story and Nikita had to get up- it was when she thought Ryan died. She was ascending this building to take out this Wall Street bad guy. We had written she’s got a grappling hook and she shoots it up and it goes to the top and that was the least of our worries. We were trying to figure out all this other stuff. And the production crew’s like, ‘Look. It’s kinda cheesy. I don’t know what she could shoot up that many stories. We’ve kinda seen that before.’ And they came up with Nikita taking this device that hooks into the window washers grooves in the side of the building and using the motor in it to pull herself up that groove with a foot braced on it. And it looked really cool. It was so much cooler. That’s the stuff that I remember being really proud of.”

Need a little bit of a refresher? Here’s a Nikita Season 3 recap:

The fourth and final season of Nikita premieres Friday, November 22nd at 8/7c on the CW.

Edited for space and content