Nadia Santos
Encyclopedia
Nadia Santos is a fictional character in the television series Alias
, and a main character during the series' fourth season
. She is played by Mía Maestro
.
, Nadia is the daughter resulting from an affair between Irina Derevko
and Arvin Sloane
. She is the half-sister of Sydney Bristow
and Jacqueline Sloane (Arvin's daughter with his wife, Emily). According to Irina's sister Katya
, Nadia was born in a Soviet
prison and taken away from Irina the day after her birth. Identified by the Soviets as "The Passenger," a being with a "direct conduit" to Milo Rambaldi
, Nadia spent the first few years of her life as the subject of experimentation, including injection with a "Rambaldi fluid" which triggered her connection to Rambaldi.
According to Elena Derevko
(speaking in her guise as Sophia Vargas), Michael Vaughn
's father Bill kidnapped Nadia from Soviet custody and left her with Vargas. However, this is irreconcilable with Bill Vaughn's timeline, since Bill Vaughn was killed by Irina Derevko in 1979. Since Sydney was born in 1975 and Irina left in 1981, Nadia has to have been born in 1982, three years after Bill Vaughn's death.
Regardless of the circumstances of her arrival, Nadia grew up in an orphanage in Argentina
under the direction of Elena/Sophia. After being attacked by a man in the orphanage one night, Nadia ran away and spent her teen years on the streets, committing some 130 criminal acts including assault and petty theft. At the age of 17 or 18 she was captured by police. Roberto Fox, an Argentine intelligence operative, was impressed by her skill and recruited her into a branch of Argentina's intelligence service (SIDE
). She spent the next few years being trained as a spy. Eventually, she became romantically involved with Fox.
In reality, Fox was a rogue agent operating for his own interests and not those of Argentina, a fact Nadia learned during a mission to obtain secret documents during which a close friend and colleague was killed. Nadia learned the documents were in fact from the Argentine government. For this betrayal, she shot and killed Roberto Fox upon her return from the mission, however (for reasons not explained) the blame for his murder fell upon César Martinez, a fellow operative who, like Nadia, had been recruited from the streets. She continued working in Argentine intelligence after this event, while Martinez became a freelancer, using the equity of his supposed kill to establish a reputation with criminal organizations.
Santos first meets her half-sister Sydney while undercover posing as a supposedly catatonic woman in a Chechen labor camp. She is being sought by her father, Sloane, who wants to use her connection to Rambaldi to locate an artifact called the Sphere of Life. This artifact is said to house Rambaldi's consciousness. The Convenant captures her and injects her with the same Rambaldi fluid she was subjected to as a child. This triggers a "muscle memory," causing Nadia to write out a complex algebraic equation which, when solved, reveals the coordinates of the Sphere of Life. Sydney, Vaughn and a CIA team then recover Nadia. Later, Sloane approaches her and convinces her to join him on a quest for the Sphere of Life. Nadia says she had moments of lucidity as the fluid wore off and in those times she altered the equation so only she knows the true location of the Sphere.
Between seasons three and four, as shown in season four flashbacks, Nadia and Sloane locate the Sphere of Life in Siena
. Nadia, seeing the madness Rambaldi inspires in Sloane grow as they get closer to the artifact, and after having apocalyptic visions upon touching the Sphere, refuses to retrieve it. Sloane berates her and tries to retrieve the Sphere himself, failing and gravely injuring himself. Nadia saves his life and apparently turns the Sphere over to the CIA or the Department of Special Research
.
At the start of the fourth season, Nadia had broken ties with her father and returned to Argentina to live a peaceful life. After assisting the newly formed APO
unit in rescuing her sister, she accepted a position with the organization, which is a black ops offshoot of the CIA. As of joining APO
her code name was Evergreen. Upon learning of her mother's supposed death from Sydney, she swore an oath to kill the person responsible for killing Irina, not knowing "Irina" was killed by Jack in order to protect Sydney (it is later revealed Jack actually killed a woman who was genetically doubled
to appear as Irina).
Jack led Nadia to believe Irina had been killed by Martin Bishop, a master thief with terrorist connections who had taken Sydney prisoner during an APO mission gone astray. Nadia shot Bishop to death during the mission to rescue Sydney and continued to fire bullets into him until her gun ran out of ammunition.
Nadia continued to try to learn more about her mother, which led her to bond somewhat with Jack. During the fourth season, she was romantically involved with her CIA colleague, Eric Weiss
.
Nadia is troubled by a recurring dream in which she and Sydney fight to the death. In the fourth season, she is shot by terrorist Anna Espinosa
and left in a medically-induced coma for several days, avoiding a second assassination attempt in the hospital thanks to quick thinking on the part of her father. Against medical advice, Jack Bristow revives Nadia from the coma in order to obtain vital information regarding the whereabouts of a chemical bomb stolen by Anna; although Nadia survives this, Jack's actions threaten to unravel a larger plan between him and Sloane.
On a mission to stop Elena Derevko from implementing her endgame by activating a giant Mueller device
over Russia, Nadia is infected with a compound which turns her into a mindless killing machine and (true to Rambaldi's prophecy) she tries to kill her sister. Nadia nearly kills Sydney but is shot by her father. She survives the gunshot and as season 4 ends is in a coma as CIA doctors work to find a cure for her condition.
The character is not a regular during the early episodes of season 5, although the hunt for a cure is shown as a prime motivator for Sloane's actions. Nadia does make a non-speaking cameo at the conclusion of the episode "Solo"; in a later episode, Nadia was briefly revived from her coma by Prophet Five as a way of continuing Sloane's support.
In the episode "30 Seconds," Nadia is finally revived permanently when Sloane administers to her a drug designed by Rambaldi, though in order for it to work, he must first kill her (which he does by suffocating her). After her revival, Nadia returns to live with Sydney and wrestle with her feelings towards her father. At the end of the episode, she finally confronts him about his obsession with Rambaldi when she discovers a Rambaldi artifact ("Page 47") hidden in Sloane's home. When she tries to destroy the page Sloane, in a brief fit of madness, pushes her into a glass coffee table. A shard of glass punctures her neck and Nadia is killed.
Nadia appeared in subsequent episodes as an apparition who haunts (and distracts) Sloane as he works to complete his endgame. When Sloane asks her why she is haunting him, she replies it's because he wants her to. In the end, as Sloane lies seemingly trapped forever in Rambaldi's tomb, Nadia's apparition appears saying "You're all alone", Sloane retorts with "At least I have you." to which Nadia replies "No!" and fades away leaving an immortal Sloane now alone.
Nadia spoke English, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and German on her missions.
Alias (TV series)
Alias is an American action television series created by J. J. Abrams which was broadcast on ABC for five seasons, from September 30, 2001 to May 22, 2006...
, and a main character during the series' fourth season
Alias episodes (Season 4)
The fourth season of the American drama/adventure television series Alias premiered January 5, 2005 on ABC and concluded May 25, 2005 and was released on DVD in region 1 on October 25, 2005...
. She is played by Mía Maestro
Mía Maestro
Mía Maestro is an Argentine actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Nadia Santos in the television drama Alias, and as Christina Kahlo in Frida.-Life and acting career:...
.
Biography
Introduced near the end of the third seasonAlias episodes (Season 3)
The third season of the American drama/adventure television series Alias premiered September 28, 2003 on ABC and concluded May 23, 2004 and was released on DVD in region 1 on September 7, 2004. Guest stars in season three include Vivica A...
, Nadia is the daughter resulting from an affair between Irina Derevko
Irina Derevko
Irina Derevko , is a fictional character on the television series Alias, and a main character during the second season of the series. Irina, played by Lena Olin, is the mother of the central character, Sydney Bristow.-Biography:...
and Arvin Sloane
Arvin Sloane
Arvin Sloane is a fictional character played by Ron Rifkin. He was the former director of SD-6 on the television series, Alias.-Background:...
. She is the half-sister of Sydney Bristow
Sydney Bristow
Sydney Anne Bristow , played by Jennifer Garner, is the main character and protagonist on the television series Alias. She is an American woman with Russian-American family background who works as a spy for the CIA....
and Jacqueline Sloane (Arvin's daughter with his wife, Emily). According to Irina's sister Katya
Katya Derevko
Yekaterina "Katya" Derevko, alias The Black Sparrow, was the second of the three Derevko sisters to be introduced on the ABC television series Alias. She was played by Isabella Rossellini.-Character Biography:...
, Nadia was born in a Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
prison and taken away from Irina the day after her birth. Identified by the Soviets as "The Passenger," a being with a "direct conduit" to Milo Rambaldi
Milo Rambaldi
Milo Giacomo Rambaldi is a fictional person from the American television series Alias. The work of Rambaldi, often centuries ahead of its time and tied to prophecy, plays a central role in the show.According to Alias creator J.J...
, Nadia spent the first few years of her life as the subject of experimentation, including injection with a "Rambaldi fluid" which triggered her connection to Rambaldi.
According to Elena Derevko
Elena Derevko
Elena Derevko is a fictional character from the television series Alias, played by Sônia Braga.Elena is the sister of Irina and Katya Derevko. Considered to be the most ruthless of the Derevko sisters, Elena is the secret leader of The Covenant. She was first mentioned in the season three episode...
(speaking in her guise as Sophia Vargas), Michael Vaughn
Michael Vaughn
Michael C. Vaughn is a fictional character on the television series Alias. Played by Michael Vartan, Vaughn is one of Sydney Bristow's co-workers and her ongoing love interest. He, like Sydney, is skilled in a variety of areas...
's father Bill kidnapped Nadia from Soviet custody and left her with Vargas. However, this is irreconcilable with Bill Vaughn's timeline, since Bill Vaughn was killed by Irina Derevko in 1979. Since Sydney was born in 1975 and Irina left in 1981, Nadia has to have been born in 1982, three years after Bill Vaughn's death.
Regardless of the circumstances of her arrival, Nadia grew up in an orphanage in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
under the direction of Elena/Sophia. After being attacked by a man in the orphanage one night, Nadia ran away and spent her teen years on the streets, committing some 130 criminal acts including assault and petty theft. At the age of 17 or 18 she was captured by police. Roberto Fox, an Argentine intelligence operative, was impressed by her skill and recruited her into a branch of Argentina's intelligence service (SIDE
Side
Side was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, in the region of Pamphylia, in what is now Antalya province, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey...
). She spent the next few years being trained as a spy. Eventually, she became romantically involved with Fox.
In reality, Fox was a rogue agent operating for his own interests and not those of Argentina, a fact Nadia learned during a mission to obtain secret documents during which a close friend and colleague was killed. Nadia learned the documents were in fact from the Argentine government. For this betrayal, she shot and killed Roberto Fox upon her return from the mission, however (for reasons not explained) the blame for his murder fell upon César Martinez, a fellow operative who, like Nadia, had been recruited from the streets. She continued working in Argentine intelligence after this event, while Martinez became a freelancer, using the equity of his supposed kill to establish a reputation with criminal organizations.
Santos first meets her half-sister Sydney while undercover posing as a supposedly catatonic woman in a Chechen labor camp. She is being sought by her father, Sloane, who wants to use her connection to Rambaldi to locate an artifact called the Sphere of Life. This artifact is said to house Rambaldi's consciousness. The Convenant captures her and injects her with the same Rambaldi fluid she was subjected to as a child. This triggers a "muscle memory," causing Nadia to write out a complex algebraic equation which, when solved, reveals the coordinates of the Sphere of Life. Sydney, Vaughn and a CIA team then recover Nadia. Later, Sloane approaches her and convinces her to join him on a quest for the Sphere of Life. Nadia says she had moments of lucidity as the fluid wore off and in those times she altered the equation so only she knows the true location of the Sphere.
Between seasons three and four, as shown in season four flashbacks, Nadia and Sloane locate the Sphere of Life in Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
. Nadia, seeing the madness Rambaldi inspires in Sloane grow as they get closer to the artifact, and after having apocalyptic visions upon touching the Sphere, refuses to retrieve it. Sloane berates her and tries to retrieve the Sphere himself, failing and gravely injuring himself. Nadia saves his life and apparently turns the Sphere over to the CIA or the Department of Special Research
Department of Special Research
The Department of Special Research is a fictional government agency from the American television series Alias. The DSR is introduced in the first season episode The Prophecy....
.
At the start of the fourth season, Nadia had broken ties with her father and returned to Argentina to live a peaceful life. After assisting the newly formed APO
Authorized Personnel Only
Authorized Personnel Only , is a fictional black ops unit within the Central Intelligence Agency in the American TV series Alias. It was formed at the beginning of Season 4 and is headquartered beneath the Los Angeles Subway system....
unit in rescuing her sister, she accepted a position with the organization, which is a black ops offshoot of the CIA. As of joining APO
Authorized Personnel Only
Authorized Personnel Only , is a fictional black ops unit within the Central Intelligence Agency in the American TV series Alias. It was formed at the beginning of Season 4 and is headquartered beneath the Los Angeles Subway system....
her code name was Evergreen. Upon learning of her mother's supposed death from Sydney, she swore an oath to kill the person responsible for killing Irina, not knowing "Irina" was killed by Jack in order to protect Sydney (it is later revealed Jack actually killed a woman who was genetically doubled
Project Helix
Project Helix is the name of a fictional technology in the TV series Alias. The device is used to rewrite a person's DNA, effectively morphing them into a clone of the person from whom the replacement DNA was procured. The only way to detect a double is through a deliberate flaw built into the...
to appear as Irina).
Jack led Nadia to believe Irina had been killed by Martin Bishop, a master thief with terrorist connections who had taken Sydney prisoner during an APO mission gone astray. Nadia shot Bishop to death during the mission to rescue Sydney and continued to fire bullets into him until her gun ran out of ammunition.
Nadia continued to try to learn more about her mother, which led her to bond somewhat with Jack. During the fourth season, she was romantically involved with her CIA colleague, Eric Weiss
Eric Weiss
Eric Weiss is a fictional character, played by Greg Grunberg, from the television series Alias. He is one of Sydney Bristow's CIA co-workers....
.
Nadia is troubled by a recurring dream in which she and Sydney fight to the death. In the fourth season, she is shot by terrorist Anna Espinosa
Anna Espinosa
Anna Espinosa is a fictional character from the television series Alias, . Born in Cuba, raised in Russia, Anna was a Soviet spy at some point, until the collapse of the Soviet Union...
and left in a medically-induced coma for several days, avoiding a second assassination attempt in the hospital thanks to quick thinking on the part of her father. Against medical advice, Jack Bristow revives Nadia from the coma in order to obtain vital information regarding the whereabouts of a chemical bomb stolen by Anna; although Nadia survives this, Jack's actions threaten to unravel a larger plan between him and Sloane.
On a mission to stop Elena Derevko from implementing her endgame by activating a giant Mueller device
Mueller device
A Mueller device is a mysterious piece of technology in the US television series Alias. It usually appears as a hook-shaped armature which levitates a red-orange liquid-filled sphere. It is named for Oskar Mueller, a chemist who was believed to have invented it, though it is later revealed to have...
over Russia, Nadia is infected with a compound which turns her into a mindless killing machine and (true to Rambaldi's prophecy) she tries to kill her sister. Nadia nearly kills Sydney but is shot by her father. She survives the gunshot and as season 4 ends is in a coma as CIA doctors work to find a cure for her condition.
The character is not a regular during the early episodes of season 5, although the hunt for a cure is shown as a prime motivator for Sloane's actions. Nadia does make a non-speaking cameo at the conclusion of the episode "Solo"; in a later episode, Nadia was briefly revived from her coma by Prophet Five as a way of continuing Sloane's support.
In the episode "30 Seconds," Nadia is finally revived permanently when Sloane administers to her a drug designed by Rambaldi, though in order for it to work, he must first kill her (which he does by suffocating her). After her revival, Nadia returns to live with Sydney and wrestle with her feelings towards her father. At the end of the episode, she finally confronts him about his obsession with Rambaldi when she discovers a Rambaldi artifact ("Page 47") hidden in Sloane's home. When she tries to destroy the page Sloane, in a brief fit of madness, pushes her into a glass coffee table. A shard of glass punctures her neck and Nadia is killed.
Nadia appeared in subsequent episodes as an apparition who haunts (and distracts) Sloane as he works to complete his endgame. When Sloane asks her why she is haunting him, she replies it's because he wants her to. In the end, as Sloane lies seemingly trapped forever in Rambaldi's tomb, Nadia's apparition appears saying "You're all alone", Sloane retorts with "At least I have you." to which Nadia replies "No!" and fades away leaving an immortal Sloane now alone.
Nadia spoke English, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and German on her missions.