Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
Nikita fittingly capped off a sensational second season that began with "Game Change" by turning the canvas on its head yet again. "Homecoming" was a bold and satisfying season finale, daring in its unexpected hopefulness and lack of a traditional cliffhanger. Make no mistake about it though, the new balance of power places Nikita and her friends in very real danger - from outside and from within.
The hour's most pivotal event was obviously the death of Xander Berkeley's cruel and vainglorious mastermind, Percy. It's hard to imagine Nikita's world without him in it, even though we know his dragon's head is only one of many. He went out in grand style of course. I particularly loved when he confessed to his faithful Division recruits how he betrayed and used them all and that he wasn't sorry in the least because they were all "pathetic street trash." Ah, Percy. You will be missed. Nikita did deserve this hard-fought victory though, and it was truly thrilling to watch him plunge to his gorgeously gory death, breathing his last word before the end, as she once predicted, "Nikita."
The title "Homecoming" refers to Nikita and Michael's return to Division both as star dropouts returning to campus as well as Percy's prodigal progeny returning to the fold. All season we've been teased with Percy's "Luke, I am your father" comments to Nikita, but Percy's last was so over-the-top that it seemed to me to close the door on any literal interpretation of these allusions. Instead, he seemed more like Dr. Frankenstein intent on killing his monster. Once Percy was dead though, Nikita was finally able to stop running from the truth she's been battling all season: Division made her who she is today. Maybe it's just easier without anyone around to say, "I told you so."
"Homecoming" brought the audience back full circle to the beginning of the season as well as the beginning of the series. Starting in "Game Change" and continuing throughout Season 2, Nikita has wrestled with the concept of finding a home, and whether she'd deserve to finally rest there if she could ever find it. Here, she finally accepts that, like it or not, dreaded Division has always been her home. Taking over the organization she once sought to destroy sounds crazy at first, but it actually takes her back to her original mission. In the pilot episode, Nikita said she was the first recruit to get out, and she was going to make certain she was not the last. Now she's been presented with the opportunity to make good on that vow on a large scale, and bring "immunity, identity, absolution" to Division's masses. How could a girl with a guilty conscience matched only by her savior complex ever resist it?
Before he died, Percy also got to demonstrate his magnificent genius one last time. The elaborate satellite particle beam plot turned out to be a con, while his real plan depended simply on his most loyal soldier, Roan, physically placing the plutonium inside a nuclear reactor. This also gave me yet even more respect for last week's layered "Crossbow". Why was it so laden with references to science fiction? Because that's exactly what Percy's "Star Wars" satellite Death Star plan was. Roan's death was also a nice, ahem, shock, though the bigger and more welcome surprise was his moment of genuine grief when he realized that Percy was dead. There a heart beating under that Terminator facade all along.
Michael is my kind of spy... fearless and inventive.
Despite its general awesomeness, I did have a few problems with the episode. First of all, Nikita and Michael blew the hatch open last week and I don't believe anyone had time to reseal it, so why were the Marines struggling to cut through the hatch in this episode? Did I miss something? Also, Sean and Alex got from New Jersey to Maryland in no time. I'm not saying I need to see them chatting in the car or whatever, but there just didn't seem to be any suspense in regards to their tracking down Roan. Even terrific Nikita episodes often feel like they need maybe five more minutes to completely pull off everything that was attempted. I would've rather had one more "Where the hell is Roan?" scene between Sonya and Birkhoff and/or Sean and Alex than the Amanda scene at the end, which felt like an unnecessary reminder of things we all already know: Amanda has a black box, she's still one of the Big Bads on the canvas, she's super evil and so forth.
The almost-happy ending between Michael and Nikita was absolutely beautiful. The sun has come up and they've once again somehow survived the impossible. They're in plain clothes in a pretty pastoral setting, but it's phony. It's a fake farm that recently housed the trained killers who gave their lives for Percy's lie and it's a perfect metaphor for the life-after-espionage fantasy that they've been contemplating all season. Michael would still like to chase after it, but Nikita is not yet capable of believing a real happy ending awaits her, so she'll keep working on that atonement thing.
It was a finale without real cliffhangers, yet everyone's in flux. Can the government really be trusted to let Division sort itself out when killing them all is so much simpler? Will Division's power bring out Nikita's dark side? Can Ryan maintain his integrity? Will Alex be able to pursue a future with Sean or will her painful past continue to haunt her? Can Michael and Nikita's relationship survive this latest major life change? Season 3 (yay!) holds the answers to these questions and many more and I can't wait until fall to see how it all plays out.
Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/19/nikita-homecoming-review
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