Niko is one of the original characters that are not in the Neil Gaiman works that Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives is adapted from. One of the livelier ones with her eccentric charms, Niko is already a fan-favorite and also one whose fate at the end of season 1 raises most questions.
Niko can see ghosts after suffering a near-death experience. Her manga and spy cartoon binging make a surprisingly helpful aid to the dead boy detectives and Crystal.
Despite not having any powers or unique skills, she’s not one to back down and stay back at home while her friends contend with perils aplenty.
So when Charles and Edwin are captured by the diabolical witch Esther Finch, Niko accompanies Crystal and infiltrates the witch’s house to free her spectral friends.
She manages to help them a lot and ultimately saves Crystal’s life by taking Esther’s magical dagger herself, shielding her friend. She dies quickly after that and later, her friends mourn her deeply.
But it’s not quite the end of the line for the character yet.
Is Niko really gone?
Niko isn’t really gone, which is true for anyone in the show, at least as far as Edwin’s word on the matter is concerned. “No one is ever gone,” is what Edwin says in one of the episodes.
Rightfully so, as the final scene before the credits roll shows an igloo in the middle of snowy, stormy nowhere, and three people inside it sitting around a fire — Litty, Kingham, and Niko.
Her face is never really show as she sits wearing a hooded red coat. She has the same soapstone bear in her hands that was with her when she died from Esther’s dagger.
The soapstone bear, given to her by Tragic Mick, is key to her survival. She is dead and yet there’s no finality in it. It’s a show focusing mostly on people after they have died.
In such a show, mortality is, at most, a comma or a question mark. It’s not a full stop. And so, Niko’s story hasn’t come to an end yet either.
The magical soapstone
According to Steve Yockey, the co-showrunner, the soapstone polar bear pulled her soul out of her body and sent it to the astral plane, which is where the audience last sees her inside the igloo, with the sprites by her side.
A journey from the astral plane to the mortal one is possible since plane travel has already been demonstrated by Charles and Edwin when they go to hell and return to the land of the living.
As to how she gets back and if she will return to her own body which is being sent off to Japan, or another one, are questions only season 2 can answer.