Is Nikki Batista Dead? Did Dania Ramirez Leave Alert: Missing Persons Unit?

The third season of ‘Alert: Missing Persons Unit’ shocks the audience in its second episode when the team lands in the most challenging and important case of their lives. Titled ‘Badge #41870,’ the episode begins with the kidnapping of Nikki Batista, the beloved captain of the MPU. As the team starts looking for her, they discover that the kidnapper is someone Nikki had put behind bars years ago. Now that the criminal is on parole, they have decided to have her revenge. At least, that’s what it looks like on the surface. A deeper investigation reveals a more tragic turn of events.

The MPU Fails to Save Their Captain

The threat to Nikki Batista’s life arrives with Raina Stefanos getting out on parole after spending ten years in prison. She kidnaps Nikki, but when she is arrested, she reveals that it wasn’t her plan to do so. In fact, someone had fast-tracked her parole so she could get out and kidnap Nikki for them. She reveals that the man who paid her had a Celtic knot tattoo on his wrist, and Jason immediately identifies it to be Charles McGannon. To confirm his doubts, Houston meets with McGannon face to face, and he becomes convinced that the mobster is the true culprit, but he also knows that the man will not spill anything.

Through his agency contacts, Houston gets access to the secret tracking device they installed in McGannon’s car to monitor him, which pings them to the location where he most likely took Nikki. When Jason and Mike visit the place, which happens to be in the middle of a forest, they find a dead body. Jason recognizes it from the wedding ring and tries to keep Mike away, knowing that it is Nikki, and she has been killed by McGannon. It turns out that she had secretly been stashing evidence against him and had been approached to give it over to the authorities so that they could deal with McGannon once and for all. The gangster finds out about it and decides to deal with it the only way he knows how: by killing Nikki Batista.

There Might be More to Nikki’s Story in Alert: Missing Persons Unit

Considering how important a character Nikki Batista has been in ‘Alert: Missing Persons Unit,’ it is not only shocking but also a little weird to see how the show does away with her. While the previous episode gave an indication of what happens when someone betrays Charles McGannon, it gave away nothing to suggest that Nikki was in any danger from him. Moreover, we never see Nikki’s face in the entire episode, and to send off a main character like that doesn’t make sense. Moreover, there has been no official announcement from the network, the show’s creators, or the cast, including Dania Ramirez, to suggest that she might be leaving the show. This means that perhaps the show is not done with Nikki yet.

As a rule of thumb, a character’s death in a show is confirmed only when we see their dead body. In Nikki’s case, we do see a body, but we never see her face, which means that there is a chance that something else might be going on in the background. So far, the most likely explanation could be that Nikki is involved in a bigger case and needs to go away for a while, which means her death has been staged, and the people closest to her were kept out of the loop to keep them away from danger. Still, it leaves many more questions, most of which have to do with Charles McGannon and his involvement in this act. Perhaps there is more to the story than he is letting on, and the true scale of the whole thing (especially with the evidence that Nikki had been working on) comes to light.