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Reel Toronto: Nikita – Season 1 (Part Two)
Everybody's favourite female assassin goes globe-trotting while hardly leaving the borders of our fair city.
Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.
And we’re back! If you missed it last time, we checked out the first 11 episodes of Nikita, everyone’s favourite sexy assassin show. We talked about the show’s complicated genealogy and explained how nutty it is that she flies all over the globe without actually leaving the GTA.
So instead of going over all that fascinating context again, we’re just going to dive right in and look at the back end of the season, which certainly holds its end up when it comes to heading to every nook and cranny of the GTA.
Last time out, we saw both Parkwood Estate and Valley Halla, and here we have another cinematic manse, King City’s Eaton Hall, playing some kind of European castle–type place.
We go inside, too.
A couple of episodes later, we return (we forget if it’s supposed to be the same location) to the loveliest building Seneca College has got. Among other things, it provided the exteriors of William Hurt’s mansion in A History of Violence.
Back downtown, here we are on Duncan Street, with Metro Hall in the background, and you can see in the back there that they tried to put in some New York–style street signs.
And do our eyes deceive us or, as the camera moves, do we catch a glimpse of a little bit of the CN Tower poking out the top of Metro Hall?
Episode 12 concludes with Lyndsy Fonseca visiting Pearl Street’s Club Mink.
The big set piece in the 13th episode is a gala event that takes place here…
…in the lobby of the Royal Conservatory’s Telus Centre.
You can even see a bit of the exterior beyond the entrance here.
Surfing the web, Nikita visits (and has flashbacks of a prior visit to) the very French Chateau Margeaux.
It’s actually supposed to be in Quebec, but when she visits the site…
…you can see it’s actually the Vaughan Estate, by Sunnybrook Hospital. (If you’re counting, this is already the second time Nikita has fake-visited Quebec. Zero fake visits to Ontario so far. Hmph.)
When she crosses the American border, she’s actually at this fake location…
…down in the Port Lands.
Indeed, the wintry lakeshore is on fine display, and regardless of where in the world she’s supposed to be, she’s actually within sight of the Humber Bay Bridge.
And this clandestine meeting…
…takes place at the Sunnyside Pavilion.
And, still in episode 14, we visit this small airport…
…actually, Oshawa Municipal Airport.
The 17th episode takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and shots like this kind of make you feel like you might be there.
But as we get closer, we realize, “Oh, yeah…that’s just the Liberty Grand,” (formerly the Ontario Government Building) on the Ex grounds.
You can even see a bit of the Lakeshore here, when the bullets start flying.
In a flashback, we see this theatre, actually Hammerson Hall at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre.
A big chunk of the 18th episode takes place in this lovely small town, which is supposed to be in the U.K., except that it has an RBC branch.
It’s actually downtown Cambridge (because cafés in the UK don’t have .ca web addresses)…
…and there’s a big shootout on the bridge.
The main baddie is actually Ray Park, the martial artist who played Darth Maul, as well as Toad in the first X-Men. So, there you go: Darth Maul in Cambridge.
The “Royal Birkham Bank” seen here is actually Cambridge’s City Hall.
Hey, here’s Darth Maul again, in a church.
From the outside and inside shots we can can deduce it’s Metropolitan United.
This lovely party…
…is actually at the ROM, obviously in the old, pre-Libeskind section.
And then we find ourselves in “Plainview, PA,” which looks as if it could be anywhere.
It’s actually played by two local small towns. The main street seen here is Brock Street, in Uxbridge.
This bank is just down the street, at 99 Brock Street.
You might think, what with the store name, that this is also in Uxbridge, but nope—it’s way over in Port Perry.
We also get one of the most obviously named…
…(and properly captioned!) locations in the entire series: Dundas’s Lakeview Restaurant.
Hmph, well, this is half right. Obviously it’s our Union Station (which doesn’t look much like DC’s)…
…and there’s a brief skirmish just down the hall in the upper concourse area.
Things get real as we hit the season finale and Nikita goes into CIA headquarters. It’s the provincial Mowat Block building, playing the same scary government edifice it has played in everything from Last Night to The Recruit.
This clandestine alley meeting is recognizably taking place on Temperance Street, just down from the LED-endowed Goodlife building on Yonge, near Adelaide.
What appears to be a fancy restaurant here…
…is actually the gorgeous Grand Banking Hall that is now part of 1 King West.
Nikita lives in a loft that we see pretty much every episode, and it’s actually some pretty pricy real estate: the former Crystal Ballroom on the top floor of the King Edward Hotel…
…but here the bad guys close in, and we finally see the exterior…
…as she makes her escape by zipline with Scotia Plaza in the background.
Who knew? She lives in the top of the Royal York!
And with that—phew—we are done with Nikita for the time being. There have, of course, been three more seasons, but it’s amazing to think of the corners of the city (Casa Loma aside!) they didn’t manage to hit in the first one.
The post originally indicated that Nikita’s loft is a set, when in fact it is actually located in the King Edward Hotel.
