"Je Me Perds"

Pepa's past is somewhat of a mystery to us. No one even knew Paco had a sister until Lola uttered her name in Ep. 57. What we have learned about Pepa's past is that she was a fearless, wild child who ran away from home when she was 18, she became a cop when she fell in love with a Sub-Inspector, and prior to her relationship with Silvia, she had roughly 52 sexual partners.

What does all of this mean? Personally, I think it means that prior to her return to San Antonio, Pepa was even more of a loose cannon than the person we saw in S6-S8. As many people, including myself, have mentioned, Silvia changed Pepa's life for the better. And not just because she was the love of Pepa's life, but because of the role she played in her life. Silvia was a calming presence amidst Pepa's chaotic lifestyle, the one person who could restrain some of the craziness within Pepa. She quelled Pepa's fears, such that the idea of "(kissing) on the same couch for the rest of (her) life (and) sharing a mortgage...(and) choosing a school or a place to retire" no longer scared Pepa. Instead, it filled her with "the adrenaline rush of a roller coaster speeding down an incline"; it filled her with "real joy". And that's why Silvia's death has had such a profound effect on Pepa. When Silvia died, everything Pepa held dear, everything she valued, the person she loved most in the world was ripped away from her.

Many of you keep saying that the Pepa of S9 is not the Pepa we know, and, to a point, I agree. In Ep. 105, Pepa was acting on pure hatred. She turned her pain and hate into a weapon and unleashed the rage within her when she shot El G point blank in the head. Since then, she's been acting like everything is normal, putting on a smile whenever she's around Paco, Aitor, Don Lorenzo or anyone else. But behind all of her smiles and her laughs, she's still hurting. This is not the Pepa we knew, but perhaps it is the Pepa that existed before Silvia came back into her life, albeit a more extreme version of it. If a pre-Silvia Pepa was reckless, I suspect it was because she lived like she had nothing to lose. A post-Silvia Pepa probably feels the same way, but even more so given how much she's actually lost.


And this is why I think Pina & Co's La Femme Nikita rip-off is a perfect fit for Pepa. She's the perfect hybrid of Michael and Nikita - the two title characters of LFN. When Michael first joined Section, he wasn't the cold, emotionless man that Nikita meets years later. Michael became that way after the apparent death of his wife Simone, a fellow Section operative. He completely shut down when he thought she was dead, and it wasn't until Nikita showed up that he started to open up and feel again.

To me, Pepa is experiencing what Michael went through. Silvia got Pepa to open up, to feel, to love. With Silvia, Pepa laughed. She smiled more. She joked around by making Top 5 Fantasy lists and pointing unloaded guns at her friends. With Silvia gone, Pepa probably feels broken, powerless and tortured by what she couldn't do on that fateful day, what she can't change. She's shutting down. She doesn't want to love or be helped - she doesn't want to feel anything, because it hurts too much.

All of these emotions that Pepa feels and, more importantly, the ones she doesn't feel any longer, become more prevalent when you throw in the fact that she's being blackmailed by the CNI, and that's where her similarity to Nikita come in. Pepa's trying to hold onto the little part of her that remains - the little control over her life that she feels she has left, which is being threatened by the CNI. And deep down I think Pepa wants someone to help her, which is why she's relying on Aitor. Granted, I wish she'd rely on someone else (maybe Curtis, who would actually make a good Walter to her Nikita), but the point is that Pepa is looking for a way to hold onto who she was. But with all of the pain and darkness she's surrounded in, she just doesn't know how.

Yes, this is not the Pepa we've seen in seasons past, but perhaps that's the point. Pepa was never going to be the same when Silvia died. She's trying. She's trying to breathe, trying to feel something other than powerless, but at the moment she's simply...lost.

kalike

*The title for this lecture is based on the song "Je Me Perds" by Jena Lee