Characters page for the 1997-2001 TV series La Femme Nikita.
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Main Characters
Nikita
Nikita
Played By: Peta Wilson
A runaway and vagrant framed for murder and condemned to death, she was pulled from Death Row and trained as a spy and assassin by the secret government agency Section One.
- Action Fashionista: Her wardrobe is one of the ways she stands out from the Section rank and file.
- Adaptational Wimp: While the show's Nikita is still a capable agent, the series inverts the original film's power dynamics, and makes her far more submissive.
- Ambiguously Bi: The episode “Open Heart” has her seduce a female prisoner (played by Gina Torres) and proposes that she may have actually felt something real for her. Just what exactly she felt, however, is left unanswered.
- Anti-Hero: Section One may be making the world safer, but they also destroy many many lives while doing so. Some of the time, Nikita will object to this and takes steps to stop it. Many other times, she doesn’t.
- Broken Bird: She was turned into a killer and forced to work for an organization that is barely better than the people it fights, leading to recurring suicidal ideation.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Directly aiding innocents is not part of the Section’s remit, but it is a priority of Nikita’s.
- Cop Killer: By reputation only. In fact, this version of the character was framed.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She was a homeless runaway before the Section.
- Death Faked for You: Like all Section One agents, in this case by staging her death by lethal injection.
- Disappeared Dad: It’s not until the final season that Nikita learns who he is and meets him.
- Dude Magnet: So much so that it's surprising when a male character doesn't express an interest in her.
- Faux Action Girl: While her tradecraft skills allow her to handle most of the Section’s enemies, when it comes to the Section itself, she is consistently disempowered and made to look far less formidable than her peers.
- Femme Fatale Spy: She often uses her beauty and sex appeal to get what she wants during a mission. Actual sex, however, is not an usual part of her bag of tricks, and when a mission requires it, the Section actually brainwashes her in order to ensure she actually goes through with it.
- The Hero: The Protagonist of the series.
- Knight in Sour Armor: She knows what kind of world she lives in, but still prefers to believe that people can be innocent, and that these deserve to be defended.
- Lady of War: Yes, she is a badass, and yes, she is equally at home on the battlefield and in the ballroom.
- Master of Disguise: Not an usual part of her repertoire, but she does manage, near the end of the fourth season, to impersonate Quinn inside the Section without anyone but Michael being the wiser.
- The Mentor: On occasion, to assorted people.
- The Mole: Twice. First, we learn near the end of season four that she’s been working with Red Cell in order to secure her escape from the Section, and not long after, we learn that, for most of the series, she’s also been working for Mr. Jones as his eyes and ears inside the Section.
- Ms. Fanservice: Will on occasion display as much bare skin as 90’s Canadian TV would allow.
- Only One Name: She spends the whole series as just “Nikita.” While we do learn the surnames of her parents—her father is Jones and her mother is Wirth—Nikita never uses either.
- Ping Pong Naïveté: The writers' insistence in showcasing her as an innocent means she can often be shockingly gullible, despite having lived on the streets and spent years among amoral intelligence agents.
- Second Love: To Michael, after Simone.
- Unstable Powered Woman: Although an argument can be made that Nikita’s never allowed any real power, things never go well when she’s given more authority. Her time as Petrosian’s second causes her to alienate all of her friends until she willingly gives up her authority in favor of her old regime, and her time as Section’s second-in-command in the final season coincides with a series of unmitigated disasters for the organization.
Michael
Michael Samuelle
Played By: Roy Dupuis
Section One’s top agent, whose loyalty to the Section is unquestionable, except when it comes to Nikita.- The Ace: Nobody comes even close, and he's able to run loops around the entire rest of the Section.
- Action Dad: He has a son, fathered as part of a long-term undercover mission.
- Adaptation Name Change: From Bob to Michael.
- Antihero: Carries out all of Section One's orders, regardless of whether it involves murder, blackmail, rape by deception, and the like. The exceptions occur when it comes to Nikita, and even then only sometimes.
- Death Glare: His default expression.
- The Dragon: To Operations.
- Perpetual Frowner: Him happy looks
- Put on a Bus: Nikita fakes his cancellation at the end of the fourth season, and so he’s no longer a regular character by the fifth season.
- Real Men Don't Cry: To the point where he cuts the area below his leads so we can show his heartbreak in blood.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: With Nikita.
- The Stoic: The number of times he is not calm can be counted on one hand, with fingers left over.
Walter
Walter
Played By: Don Francks
Section One’s quartermaster, in charge of providing and maintaining weapons and equipment.- Ascended Extra: The original character was nameless in the original film.
- Cool Old Guy: Bandanna, ponytails, tattoo…
- Dirty Old Man: He’ll made advances on all the women in the Section.
- The Engineer: Birkoff may be in charge of the software, but Walter is in charge of the hardware.
- Non-Action Guy: Spends most of his time in Section HQ.
- Old Retainer: A modern-day version.
- Sailor's Ponytail: Part of his standard look.
- Retired Badass: Retired from the front lines, at least; he still works with the equipment at Section.
Birkoff
Seymour Birkoff
Played By: Matthew Ferguson
Section One's head technician, who knows no life outside of it.- Ascended Extra: Based on the original film’s nameless computer instructor.
- Cannot Talk to Women: Initially. His general lack of confidence is one of the biggest differences between him and his brother.
- Communications Officer: Often leads comms.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Kills himself in order to stop the rogue AI he created.
- Mission Control: Is the person most consistently running missions from HQ.
- Non-Action Guy: He's the brains while Nikita and Michael are the brawn.
- Separated at Birth: From his twin brother Jason.
- Techno Wizard: Built an artificial intelligence in his spare time.
- Undying Loyalty: After his rogue AI attempts to kill everyone in Section but him, Birkoff chooses to remain.
Jason
Jason Crawford
Played By: Matthew Ferguson
Birkoff’s more confident identical twin, who is brought into the Section after the former’s death.- Back for the Finale: Returns to team up with Walter for some shenanigans involving Operation’s successor.
- Backup Twin: He appears after Birkoff is killed off.
- Casanova Wannabe: According to Quinn, all that it takes for someone to catch his interest is being female and drawing breath.
- Communications Officer: Although he doesn’t play this role as much as Birkoff, he’ll still occasionally perform it.
- Deadpan Snarker: He’s cockier than Birkoff.
- Dead Person Impersonation: He’s assigned to impersonate Birkoff to infiltrate Center.
- Mission Control: While capable of fighting if he has to, he's much more useful when he's seated at a desk with access to a computer, so he often ends up serving this role to Nikita (or whoever else he's backing up at the time). Some episodes make him a Missing Mission Control where he gets kidnapped and Nikita has to rescue him.
- Non-Action Guy: He's the brains while Nikita and Michael are the brawn. Though around Season 3-4, he knows how to wield a gun.
- Put on a Bus: He get transferred out of Section One and into Oversight at the end of the fourth season.
- The Mole: Made to impersonate Birkoff to infiltrate Center.
- Separated at Birth: Birkoff had no idea of his existence until season 4.
- The Smart Guy: Specifically when it comes to software.
Quinn
Kate Quinn
Played By: Cindy Dolenc
Birkoff's replacement as Section One's head tech and mission control.- Canon Foreigner: The only one in LFN’s regular cast to not be directly based on a character from the original film.
- Communications Officer: Replacing Birkhoff.
- Deadpan Snarker: She speaks her mind, despite the Section.
- Femme Fatale Spy: Makes successful advances onto Operation, as part of her assignment by Mr. Jones.
- The Mole: For Mr. Jones.
- Techno Wizard: Manages to cobble together an AI version of Madeline.
Madeline
Madeline
Played By: Alberta Watson
Operations' consigliere and Section One's psy-ops expert; she keeps agents emotionally sound enough to operate.- Adaptational Badass: The original Amande was originally simply the organization’s deportment instructor.
- Adaptation Name Change: She was Amande, in the original film.
- Ascended Extra: Amande was the most prominent of the original film’s support staff, her role is expended considerably here.
- The Baroness: Not a Sexpot, but not quite a Rosa Klebb, either.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: With Operations.
- Black Widow: After learning that the husband she believed dead wasn’t, she kills him.
- Cain and Abel: One of the first things we learn about her pre-Section life is that she killed her sister.
- The Consigliere: To Operations; by season four, the two had worked together for seventeen years.
- Minored In Ass Kicking: She doesn’t usually make it to the field, but she can more than handle herself when she does.
- More Deadly Than the Male: “There’s no weapon as powerful as your femininity.”
- Only One Name: It’s possible, given her husband, that her last name is “Sand”, and but that’s never actually confirmed in the series.
- Sibling Murder: The way she tells it, she killed her sister because she wanted one of her dolls.
- Torture Technician: In charge of the Section’s interrogations, which never rely on positive incentives.
- Troubling Unchild Like Behavior: Again, kid murderer.
Operations
Paul L. Wolfe
Played By: Eugene Robert Glazer
Section One's director, willing to do all sorts of evil in order to carry out its purpose.
- Adaptation Name Change: His equivalent in the original movie was named Grossman.
- Ascended Extra: Grossman, from the original film, was a much more minor character.
- Bad Boss: The man runs the Section by fear, and has no qualms about killing his people.
- Big Bad: If one considers Section One to be the series’ chief antagonist, then Operations plays this role.
- Dies Wide Open: After he’s killed trying to save Adam, we get a shot of his opened eyes.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": We do eventually learn his name, but its use is reserved for very few people. For everyone else, it's "Operations".
- Knight Templar: A textbook case.
- The Spymaster: He's top dog at Section One.
Recurring Characters
Carla
Carla
Played By: Anais Granofsky
Nikita’s neighbor and friend.- Back for the Dead: Is killed off after her return.
- Black Best Friend: In season one.
- The Bus Came Back: She was never quite put on a bus—Nikita simply moved to a different apartment, and it would have made sense for Carla to just never appear again—but she returns for the season two endgame.
- The Mole: Secretly working for Adrian.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She is all about the men, in her cover identity.
Gray
Gray Wellman
Played By: Callum Keith Rennie
An architect with whom Nikita begins a fake, and then real, relationship.- Demoted to Extra: Akin to Marco from the original film, except that Marco was far more important and prominent.
- Innocent Bystander: The only reason he's of any interest to the Section and its enemies is because he may or may not have been the unwitting recipient of a cache of stolen intelligence documents.
- Nice Guy: Just a normal, friendly civilian who likes Nikita, and who Nikita likes back.
- Put on a Bus: Never seen again after Nikita breaks up with him.
- Temporary Love Interest: There for a two-episode arc.
Mick
Mick Schtoppel / Mr. Jones / Martin Henderson
Played By: Carlo Rota
A criminal broker employed by the Section who becomes Nikita’s neighbor and friend.- Ascended Extra: Starts out as a mook for an antagonist-group-of-the-week, and ends up becoming the series’ most frequently recurring character.
- Casanova Wannabe: Although he's not necessarily unsuccessful at love, he believes himself to be far more charming than others find him.
- The Confidant: For Nikita, occasionally, as someone who knows of her life with the Section but is not directly part of it.
- Decoy Leader: Not actually the leader of The Center, but rather an actor paid to play the part.
- Plucky Comic Relief: The only real light-hearted character in the series.
- Taking Advantage of Generosity: Mick is constantly asking favors of Nikita, usually begging for her to act as his romantic wingman or his partner in a fake relationship.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We’re not told what happened to him after his ruse is discovered and he's replaced, although given the series, it’s probably not good.
O’Brien
Marco O’Brien
Played By: Stephen Shellen
A homicide detective whose path crosses Nikita’s during an investigation and realizes she is not what she seems.- Ascended Extra: A guest-star in a single season-one episode, he returns in the final season to fill the hole left by the absent Michael.
- By-the-Book Cop: His story is all about trying to convince Nikita to testify against a murder suspect.
- The Determinator: His ultimate downfall: once Nikita concludes that he will not be stopped from investigating her, she frames him for murder and blackmails him into abandoning his identity and joining the Section.
- Lead Police Detective: In his introduction story.
- Sacrificial Lion: Bites it as the final season arc involving The Collective kicks into high gear.
Hillinger
Greg Hillinger
Played By: Kris Lemche
A computer genius “temporarily” kidnapped by the Section to assist with a mission.- Arch-Enemy: To Birkoff.
- Consummate Liar: Often using technobabble for the purpose.
- The Dragon: To George, in season 4.
- Face–Heel Turn: Of a sort: although Hillinger was antagonistic from the start, his debut episode nevertheless portrayed him as largely sympathetic, even after he actively works against the Section. Subsequent episodes unequivocally portray him as an enemy.
- The Gadfly: Consistently provokes everyone around him, with Birkoff as his favorite target.
- Insufferable Genius: He’ll let you know how he believes he’s the smartest guy in the room, even when at gunpoint.
- Karma Houdini: While he's hit by karma hard in his initial appearance, being forced to serve the Section for life, once he's in this position, he is quite good at evading any sort of consequences for his actions. Even when he is put on abeyance, this is comparatively light punishment, given his actions, and it only gives him a chance to get off scot-free. It is only in his final appearance that his karmic bill comes due.
- The Mole: For Oversight.
- Teen Genius: Graduated from college at 13, completed a PhD program in six months, and his job before the Section was as a tenured college professor.
Adrian
Adrian
Played By: Siân Phillips
“The Mother of Section One", who has now turned against her creation and enlists Nikita to bring it down.- Amnesiacs are Innocent: Is allowed to live the rest of her days in hiding, despite everything she'd done in previous eps.
- Anti-Villain: She’s not really wrong about the Section.
- Bus Crash: We find out in season 5 that she’s died.
- Faking Amnesia: When she first returns in season 4, although it then becomes real.
George
George
Played By: David Hemblen
Section One’s liaison with Oversight, their supervisory body.- The Alleged Boss: He’s Operations’ superior, and empowered to take over the Section if he chooses to, but for much of the series Operations and Madeline successfully keep him ignorant of their acts of insubordination.
- Avenging the Villain: Suspects the Section of having killed Adrian, whom he loved, and will destroy them if he ever confirms those suspicions.
- Chekhov's Gunman: He’s mentioned in passing throughout season 2, and is at the other end of multiple phone calls with Operations before his appearance in season 3.
- The Unseen / Unseen No More: During season 2, he’s known only as the superior Operations talks to on the phone. In season 3, he finally shows up in the flesh.
- Foil: To Operations.
Davenport
Davenport
Played By: Lawrence Bayne
One of Section One's field team leaders.- Foil: For Michael.
- Mauve Shirt: His role is usually to be a familiar face.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Is said to be very capable, except he’s always pit against Michael, whom nobody can top.
- Punch-Clock Villain: His occasional antagonist role is due to the fact that he actually follows orders.
Helmut (*SPOILER CHARACTER*)
Helmut Volker
Played By: Maxwell Caulfield
The hard-partying heir to an arms-dealing fortune, who Nikita is assigned to marry due to his connections with Red Cell.- Arms Dealer: Using weapons "procured" from his father's company.
- Depraved Bisexual: Flirts with both "Freddy" and "Anna" (Michael and Nikita).
- Handsome Lech: Immediately puts the moves on Nikita and Michael, and it's clearly something he does a lot.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: Nikita notes that he owns quite a few expensive art pieces.
- Marriage of Convenience: Proposes to "Anna" partly because of attraction, but mostly because he'll only inherit his father's fortune if married.
- Upper-Class Twit: Spends most of his time partying, doing drugs and shooting *rockets* for fun, all on his father's dime.
His second episode, however, reveals him to be a substantially different sort of person, for who the following tropes apply:
- Black Sheep: His playboy reputation makes him stand out among his more respectable relatives and leads him to being held in contempt by his father.
- Cowboy Cop: Takes it upon himself to stop Red Cell's plan to blow up the Hague.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Nikita discovers he's not who he says he is after he single-handedly fends off an attack by multiple enemies.
- Fool for Love: Marries Nikita in order to ensure his inheritance, but falls for her anyway.
- Interpol Special Agent: So secret that even Section One had no idea he was one.
- Marriage Before Romance: After the wedding, he and Nikita discover that they're actually quite well-matched.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Turns against INTERPOL orders after it—thanks to the Section—decides to let Red Cell carry out its attack on the Hague.
- Temporary Love Interest: Although curiously, only after he marries Nikita.
- Zero-Approval Gambit: His public persona has garnered him the antipathy of his father, but it also means that he, and not his father or brother, is the target of criminal groups like Red Cell.
Jasmine
Jasmine Kwong
Played By: Kira Clavell
One of a group of young Section recruits trained by Nikita and Michael, who later makes it into Section One proper.- Action Survivor: Like the rest of her team, she was meant to be a sacrificial lamb during its first mission.
- Ascended Extra: She’s introduced as part of a group, and is the only one to appear in successive episodes.
- Death Faked for You: The Section standard.
- Mauve Shirt: After her return, she’s mostly there as a familiar face.
- Parental Abandonment: Sent into foster care due to a combination of China’s one-child law and parents who wanted a boy.
- You Are in Command Now: Takes control of the group of recruits she belongs to after Nikita and Michael are captured.
Mr. Jones
Philip Jones
Played By: Edward Woodward
Nikita’s father and the true leader of The Center, and therefore ultimately Section One.- Abusive Parent: Indirectly, as it is his manipulations that got Nikita into the Section.
- The Chessmaster: Manages to oversee a massive intelligence structure from the shadows, with few even suspecting his existence.
- Disappeared Dad: Kept himself from Nikita’s life until the final season.
- Man Behind the Man: To an extreme. The Center itself exists behind Oversight, and Jones himself exists behind a number of false Mr. Joneses.
- Mysterious Employer: Even Operations only knows of him, but doesn’t know what he looks like.
- No One Sees the Boss: Until Nikita finds him, he’s represented by multiple actors playing the role of Mr. Jones.
- Parental Betrayal: Allows Nikita to live in the streets, get framed and convicted for murder, and work as an unwilling member of Section One.
- Parental Favoritism: Nikita’s sister, on the other hand, appears to have been allowed to live a perfectly normal life as his daughter.
- The Spymaster: The man ultimately behind The Center, Oversight, and the Sections.
