Amanda is a villainess from the TV series, Nikita which is based off the film of the same name. In it's first and second seasons, she was the secondary antagonist since at that time, Percy was it's primary. In the third and forth seasons, she's it's primary antagonist.
Amanda (born Helen Collins) was Division's resident psychologist and a master manipulator, then later on its Director. She was in charge of preparing recruits and agents, giving their task and often (and somewhat more importantly) their disguise. She would then become a Rogue Agent, working with other former Division and Gogol agents. She was also working with Ari Tasarov, her longtime boyfriend until she betrayed and murdered him. She was finally a member of the mysterious powerful organization known as The Invisible Hand before she was imprisoned for life. She is also the last surviving co-founder and former Director of Division.
Amanda reiterates the La Femme Nikita character of Madeline, the executive strategist for Section One.
Biography
Before Division
She is actually Amanda's twin sister, Helen. She underwent horrific psychological trauma from her father, who was searching for a way to work around post traumatic stress disorder. In 1987, The real Amanda attempted to help Helen escape but in the end they were caught by their father. Helen was sent away but returned and slit her father's throat and stabbed her sister, before burning her house down. She took Amanda's identity, due to the fact that there were no records of Helen's existence.
Later on in life, she became a rising star in PsyOps. Shortly after, Amanda along with Carla Bennett and Percy is a founding member of Division. Amanda initial role was being in charge of prepping the newer recruits mentally and physically, often trying to garner information that may have been previously withheld from a recruit's life before Division to ensure that they perform well under pressure. This means that she uses psychological means to make sure that a recruit is ready by providing therapy, disguises and possibly rehab to some of the recruits that may be struggling with addictions attained before Division.
She is also often seen as taking charge of torturing a recruit or others if needed, such as she does to Nikita.
In Division
Division's Resident Psychologist
In Pilot Amanda welcomes Alex in her room in Division as she puts she is going to help her discover and use her own beauty. She mistakens Alex for Ukrainian and believes het butterfly tattoo is symbol of Alex reinventing herself. Alex later feigns an escape attempt and tries to enforce Amanda to help her. Amanda is able to talk her down as she never really wanted to escape this early. When Nikita is branded as priority target, Amanda is assigned to oversea assets. When Amanda was trying to figure out Alex's past via drugging, she didn't find what she was looking for. Therefore, attempts to figure her out. When Amanda kills Alex with her kill chip, after 25 seconds of Alex being dead, Amanda uses adrenaline to bring her back to life. She states that Alex doesn't need Nikita, nor should she go back to Nikita, and tells Alex that she wont hang on to her like she did to Nikita, and lets Alex go free. Season Two
Division Director
Alex and Amanda are "business partners." Amanda keeps it in her best interest to keep Alex under her control and convince her she needs Division, while giving Alex Intel to kill Sergei Semak, the person who ordered her father's murder. Although in truth, Alex seems to derive most of her information regarding her revenge plot from Percy, rather than Amanda. Alex often back talks to Amanda, and Alex once uses it as a remark when Sean steps up to Amanda, Alex snarkly says " Can't remember the last time someone spoke to Amanda like that, oh wait, yes I can, that was me" ("Looking Glass"). In season 2, Game Change, Percy asks why Alex is always looking for mother figures and names Amanda as one of them. However, Percy rightly suspects that Amanda intends to use Alex as a puppet in regaining control of Zetrov.
Amanda is the new director of the Division and has Percy in a glass prison deep within Division. While she seems to have lost a little bit of her edge from season 1, she is still just as ruthless. Without hesitation, she gave orders to blow up Michael (someone she knew for a very long time) and was not interested in rescuing one of her agents when she was captured. Her new objective is to make Division a program to kill the USA cancers, not making it for money, like Percy did. She is put on more pressure with Oversight breathing down her neck. Turning Division Rogue
Recently, she revealed that she wants to destroy Oversight, after having bugged Sean Pierce's phone and overheard his mother's suggestion that he replace Amanda. To that end, she had Roan fake Ryan Fletcher's death before holding him somewhere to force him to help her destroy Oversight.
In the episode Fair Trade a division alpha team captures Brikhoff while he is on mission with Nikita. Amanda tortures him, brutally crushing his hand with a hammer and having guards beat him. She also attempts to surgically remove his memories by piercing his frontal lobe with a surgical needle. After Alex goes out on her own to kill Semak, Amanda learns that Percy has been planning something, though he wouldn't say what. She then gets authorization from Oversight to put Percy into a chemically-induced coma to stave off his black box trigger. But before she could do so, she gets a call from the Guardians, who had taken Oversight captive and demand that she release Percy or they'll execute Clean Sweep, Oversight's fail-safe designed to gas all of Division. Amanda instead decides to hand Percy over to his Guardians, but he escapes and kills his escort. Clean Sweep is barely averted thanks to Alex, though she got trapped within Percy's cell by Roan, who was coordinating with the Guardians.
Amanda became pleased when she learned that Senator Pierce was the only surviving Oversight member, allowing her to officially make Division rogue.
Becoming a Rogue Agent
Division was turned against Amanda when Percy revealed that she was planning to betray Division for her own personal gains.
It is later revealed that Amanda was secretly involved with the head of Gogol, (Division's arch rivals) and Semak's right hand man, Ari Tasarov. They are both exiled and are on the run together with the last of Percy's black boxes. Amanda is shown shooting a man the head immediately after he had finished decrypting the black box. Season Three
Her Rogue Cell with Ari
In the following months after she was forced to give up her role as Division Director back to Percy after her alliance with Ari was revealed and Percy's own death, she called former Division agents as well as former Gogol agents with the help of Ari Tasarov in efforts to join her in her quest for vengeance against Nikita and the New Division. She has her new enforcer, Anne, break out Owen because she needed something from him. But he escaped Anne and went to Nikita.
However, Amanda hacked into Division's communications and gave an ominous and intimidating message about what she has planned for Nikita and Division. Ari expressed concern that she was allowing her personal vendetta with Nikita to cloud her judgment, but she tells him otherwise. She would also later on reveal that Owen's name might actually be Sam.
After Nikita saved Owen after he was stabbed by Ari in a desperate attempt to escape Nikita, she was in a hotel room with Anne and she revealed that she might get to Nikita by getting to those in her circle.
Fallout from Ari
After she activated an agent that Ari never intended on activating, she made him a wanted man by the FBI, Interpol, and the CIA. Ari went to confront her, but she had Saalim Nassar and a few other terrorists she allied herself with at the time to gun him down, thus ending their 20 year relationship. It drove him to Division for help. He helped them to ruin her plans to frame Division for the terrorists' crimes.
She would then later go after his son, But Nikita and Division helped his son's protector, thus ruining another one of Amanda's plan. However she captured Alex and manipulated her mind into thinking Nikita didn't care about nothing except her mission by brainwashing her via a lobotomy via a cranial needle. Shortly after she traded Alex for Ari. After she failed to force Ari to give her his half of the code to the Black Box, she shot him. However, he lived long enough to give Nikita the Black Box.
Road to The Invisible Hand
She would later on contact the secret group known as The Invisible Hand. A group that once had Percy as a member. Together, they had set off a chain of events. Amanda would use Michael's disability in their plans. She told them to infect the prostetic hand that would replace his cybernetic one with a nanovirus which is activated via remote and which kills the host body. Later on, her mental manipulation on Alex would lead to a mutiny which ultimately lead to Division's downfall.
She also reverted Owen back to his real personality, Sam Matthews. Sam and Amanda would strike a deal and she would promise him an auction for the Black Box if he brought Nikita to her. Later on Amanda revealed to a captured Nikita her plan with Alex and was happy when she head from Sam who stole the black box that a mutiny was in progress because she knew she had a victory over Nikita.
She would then reveal to Nikita her tragic past via another cranial needle lobotomy. Nikita would later on be rescued by Michael and Amanda would be forced by Sam to honor her agreement with him. She pointed him to various world leaders who would be interested in the Black Box. She also helped him arrange the auction at the G20 summit. However she would betray Sam by taking the Black Box and he never got his money. While all of this was taking place, she arranged the President of the United States to be kidnapped and brought to The Invisible Hand and was replaced by a decoy. Because of her success at the G20 and despite the fact that Sam destroyed the Black Box, Amanda was finally apart of The Invisible Hand.
Amanda would set her endgame plan for Nikita into motion when she forced her to kill the President or else she would activate the nanovirus within Michael. She of course couldn't tell anyone. However, the false President killed herself and Nikita was framed for her murder. Amanda would then call in the remaining 19 members of The Dirty Thirty to kill Nikita's people. But Nikita saved them all. However, Amanda got her revenge on Nikita for her role in losing her position in Division; Nikita is on the run as a fugitive, alone, and is thought by the rest of the world to be a killer. And because Division is destroyed because of her actions, she would get revenge on Carla Bennett and destroyed the organization Carla helped build and love.
Her final battles against Team Nikita
One hundred days after Nikita was labeled a traitor by Amanda and The Invisible Hand, Nikita returned to the states after being in the forests of Canada. Amanda of course contacted the authorities of her location. She had sent in a double named Matthew Graham, who was impersonating the real FBI debuty director who went by the same name. Matthew however was in the middle of an interview with ENN reporter, Dale Gordon when he recieved the call. Shortly after Nikita escaped, she had the double kill Dale in a bomb blast. Later on when Nikita was going to kill the double after discovering he was a double like the president, Amanda was threatening Nikita if he dies, she would kill the real Matthew. Matthew said to Nikita that he would rather die than allow this 'psychopathic bitch to win.' But Nikita could not do it, but Michael pulled the trigger, killing the double. Matthew said that he hopes Nikita finds her. Amanda replied 'so do I' before shooting him.
Sometime later, Amanda had Alex captured by the CIA who linked Alex to Nikita, but then Alex got away, however, Amanda had another double out there by the name of Ronald Peller who impersonated an NSA agent. After Nikita captured Ronald alive (only because she discovered he was Birkoff's father's double), she was going to give the double some evidence to give to Amanda, leading her on a goose chase, but then Ronald inadvertantly revealed to Amanda that Birkoff was his son. But then Amanda ordered the double to kill them, but Nikita shot him before he killed Birkoff. Phillip Jones, Amanda's boss, wasn't too thrilled that Amanda has cost them a valuable asset and benched Amanda and told him that he would take care of Nikita 'his way.'
Shortly after, Mr. Jones with Amanda in the room with him, called Nikita and offered her anything she wanted, provided they leave The Invisible Hand alone. After she silently consulted with the rest of her team, she made a counter proposal to Mr. Jones, to fold. To give himself and Amanda up, close down operations, and clear her name was her price. Amanda wasn't too shocked that she was asking something she assumed The Invisible Hand wouldn't give her, but much to her shock, Mr. Jones agreed to give Nikita what she wanted. However, their plans to start World War III would go forward. But shortly after Nikita botched their plans, she tracked Amanda and Mr. Jones to a compound in Dubai.
After Nikita and her team raided the compound and seemingly made Mr. Jones surrender, Amanda refused to go down without a fight. She killed everyone in the control room of the compound and was going to launch the Pakistani nuclear weapons to US targets, but Nikita killed Amanda after she was shown to be beyond reasoning and appeal. Though later on after Nikita was cleared of any wrong doing thanks to Nikita bringing back the President to the states, that Amanda's death was a facad arranged by Amanda and Mr. Jones. It turned out the Amanda Nikita encountered was a double and the real Amanda was very much alive when Amanda spoke to Mr. Jones in an undisclosed location.
After Team Nikita gets their happy ending of sorts. She is shown taking over the Invisible Hand and programs their assets to listen to her and only her. She also orchastrates the kidnapping of Ryan Fletcher and attempts to turn him into one of her minions but fails to do so as he escapes. Amamda orders them to bring him to her alive and well. She watches on in shock as Ryan either kills of seriously wounds her protectors. She is even more shaken when she sees him throw himself out of a window and onto a car ultimatley dying in the hospital from his injuries. This also put her and the Group back into Nikita's crosshairs, much to the chagrin of her new boss, Mr. Adrian .
Her Ulitmate Fate
Shortly after Ryan's death, Nikita and Alexandra went on a crusade to take down the group once and for all. They took out various primary group members one by one until it was just Trevor Adrian and a few other members. Amanda however was counting on Nikita and Alex killing them. She watched from a undisclosed location the interrogation Nikita conducted and the fight between Alexandra and Nikita when Alex was seemingly trying to reason with Nikita. After Nikita killed all the members of The Group, Alex knocked her out. Nikita, Alex, and Birkoff were sent to jail for their illegal actions. But it was revealed that a soldier was a double of the group when he brought in Amanda into her holding cell. As Amanda was gloating on how she evolved and how Nikita will suffer, Nikita's people took out the double. Nikita was then set free and she grabbed Amanda. She told Amanda how she decieved her. She never killed any of The Group members, they were all put in jail cells Nikita said she wasn't anything like Amanda, though she had to make the rest of the world see that she did become a monster.
Nikita told her that no one was coming for her just before she told her these final words "Welcome back to the basement, Helen". Amanda then screamed out "NIKITA!" much like Percy did shortly before he died, just as Nikita closed her cell, leaving Amanda to be imprisoned for the rest of her life. Much like how Amanda's journey began in her father's basement, it ends in a basement that was controlled by the US government.
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