Favorite Characters: Alex Udinov (Nikita)

My Nikita love-fest continues with Alex.  Like Birkhoff, she’s a wonderful character even apart from her excellent relationship with Nikita.  While Nikita is a top-notch leading woman and Birkhoff is an entertaining personal favorite, Alex is probably the most intriguing character on the show.  Her intense backstory (chockfull of spoilers, by the way – consider yourself warned) gives us a rich, complicated character just begging to be explored.  This is Alex.

Right away in the pilot, we get tons of revelations about Alex and it only scratches the surface.  We see that, despite Division’s interest in her as a capable murder, she couldn’t actually pull the trigger in the crime she’s been imprisoned for.  Amanda’s sharp, probing assessment of her offers hints of her past.  There’s the drug use, of course, but also her roots; her flawless American accent only indicates how young she was when she left Russia, and Amanda points out that a 13-year-old eastern European girl with no family probably didn’t come to the States of her own free will.  And finally, the pilot ends with the reveal that, as a new recruit, Alex isn’t just our eyes into Division – she’s Nikita’s as well, serving as Nikita’s mole on the inside.

And that’s just the beginning.  More than a trafficked orphan, more than an escaped sex slave, more than a recovering addict, more than a spy infiltrating spies, the show is only getting started with Alex.  In the episodes to follow, it slowly rolls out her history as the daughter of a ruthless Russian industrialist, the presumed-dead heir to an empire built with unclean hands.  We learn of the death of her family, including Division’s involvement in it, and how Nikita, in sparing Alex’s life, inadvertently puts her on the path that leads to her exploitation, abuse, and addiction.  When Nikita reconnects with Alex years later, it’s only to help her and atone for her (Nikita’s) own mistakes in trying to help Alex the first time.  She doesn’t count on Alex’s resolution to avenge her family, her insistence on helping Nikita take down Division.

With such complex ground in which to cultivate a character, it’s no surprise that Alex is as messed-up as she is incredible.  She’s a survivor with an enormous well of courage who takes on her enemies and her demons with the same fierce determination.  More than any member of team Nikita, she’s a champion of the victimized – her past experiences make her especially attuned to the suffering of others, and her guilt at getting out when others haven’t fuels her need to rescue those who’ve been lost through the dark cracks of society.  When it comes to relationships, she’s a mixed bag.  Guarded doesn’t begin to cover her default setting; she’s been hurt, used, and lied to, and she doesn’t easily let people in.  However, once she does connect with someone, it means the world to her, and even though she can’t necessarily articulate that, she needs her few friends and confidantes so badly.  Put these two facets together, and you get someone who desperately needs the strong attachments she tentatively forms, but who has so little trust in the idea of herself as worthy of love or friendship that she’s vulnerable to emotional manipulation.  She’s quick to pull away because it’s so easy to convince her that she’ll be let down or betrayed, or that her loved ones will discard her as soon as they’re no longer in need of her.

Forged in fire, Alex is hands-down the most rewarding character to watch on Nikita.  It’s amazing to see her grow into a young woman wrestling to figure out who she is.  After one life was taken from her and another tried its best to ruin her, she creates a new life for a new Alex, one who doesn’t deny the tragedies in her past but doesn’t let them determine her future.