BY ANTHONY MEDINA
**This episode originally aired in May 2011. If you are unfamiliar with the series, be aware this review contains spoilers.**
“You ask me what I want? I want what every other American wants right about now, job security.” – Percy Rose
It was a fitting end to the first season of this shockingly well done CW show. “Pandora” manages to successfully conclude each characters story arc, while raising new questions for the future and even throwing a few more twists our way just to keep us on our toes.
As the episode opens our heroes find themselves in some unfortunate situations.
Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca) has a kill chip in her brain and must obey Division’s orders (or must she?)
Nikita (Maggie Q.) was shot and killed by Alex (or was she?)
And Michael (Shane West) is locked in a Division prison and can’t escape (or can he?)
No, no, and yes.
Meanwhile, Fletcher (Noah Bean) is in the heart of the CIA helping to decrypt a blackbox he believes will expose Division’s plan to attack the government. Unfortunately, Percy (Xander Berkeley) is smarter than the average bear and rigged the device to release a toxic gas designed to kill the director of the CIA. In doing so, he can blackmail Oversight to put a puppet in the vacated seat and thus gain control of the 37 billion dollar CIA budget. A nifty plan to be sure. And I must say, there’s nothing quite like watching Percy gloat when he has the most powerful people in the country at his mercy. He may be a psychopath, but he’s a badass psychopath.
Not to worry though, the Nikita crew is on their way to save the day, hurray I say!
We learn that Alex faked Nikita’s death and Nikita recovers just in time to storm the CIA and pull everyone out of the room as the gas is released. When Percy learns of Alex’s betrayal he orders Amanda (Melinda Clarke) to activate her kill chip. Amanda complies but immediately revives her with a shot of adrenaline. It turns out Amanda is planning a coup against Percy and she lets Alex go as her first act of open defiance. Michael manages to escape Division with the help of his old friend Birkhoff (Aaron Stanford) allowing him to neutralize Percy and reunite with Nikita. Good guys win!
This was a great ending to a great season. The few criticism I would have would be that some of the twists were fairly predictable and the survival of our heroes depended largely on other characters acting uncharacteristically. But all that is overshadowed by the copious amounts of awesome that burst out of every scene. This is by far the best show the CW has produced in a long time, Bravo I say.
Finale
Thinking Man Rating: 12 Thumbs Up
Season 1
Thinking Man Rating: 15 Thumbs Up
**Be aware the Thinking Man rating system is based on awesomeness and should be disregarded if you are not now, or have never been, awesome.**