FXCaution! Do not proceed if you haven't seen the latest episode of The Americans!
Well that was unexpected.
The Americans just shocked us all by brutally killing off Nina (Annet Mahendru) in the last few moments of the episode, and when we say "shocked," we mean it. We did not see that coming, even if in hindsight, we probably should have.
Nina's death came at the hands of the KGB, right after a dream sequence in which she got out of her Russian prison. She was awakened from her dream by a guard who told her she was being transferred, but instead of being transferred, she was taken to her own execution for treason.
She was sentenced, and told that sentence would be carried out "shortly." "Shortly" ended up meaning literally a half second later, and she was shot in the head.
In an interview with Vulture, showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields explained that Nina's death happened exactly the way the Soviets actually did carry out executions, in a way that prevented the victim from feeling any pain.
"We read a book about a Russian spy and we got to the part where they talked about how he was executed, and this was all information that came out after the fall of the Soviet Union, so nobody knew about it for years," Weisberg said. "The Soviets—incredibly enough—had come up with this method of execution that was very carefully designed to spare the victim any suffering. As angry as they might have been at these traitors, they didn't want them to suffer. They felt it was more humane if the person was surprised. And so all those things you see and how Nina was killed are very realistic."
Nina got away with her affair with Stan (and subsequently, the FBI) for so long that fans have basically been waiting for her to die since we first met her, so props to Nina for lasting this long.
"It was funny," Fields told Vulture. "The first season, we just kept watching the tweets and the blogs and everybody kept saying, "This is it. Next week, Nina's done." And we would look at each other and say, "We have so much story to tell." We finally got there."
The Americans airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.