Who is Nica Pierce, and will she ever regain her soul from Chucky's grasp?

While the Child's Play movies are classics of the horror genre, Nica Pierce’s character arc belongs in a Shakespearian tragedy. Portrayed by Fiona Dourif, daughter of Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif, Nica is an innocent woman whose life is continuously altered by the sinister exploits of our favorite orange-haired killer doll. Although she is introduced in 2013’s Curse of Chucky, her presence reaches back much further in the series: She is the daughter of a pregnant woman who Charles Lee Ray stabbed before he transferred his soul into a Good Guy doll. Thus, we finally meet her in Curse as a young woman who was born paraplegic as a result of her mother’s injuries. As you can see, Chucky left his mark on her before she even entered the world.

Nica, more than most characters in the Chucky franchise, really doesn’t deserve what happens to her in these movies. In Curse of Chucky, Chucky literally shows up unannounced at her doorstep, murders her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law, and blames it all on Nica. (He’s just the worst type of houseguest.) Nica is promptly sent to a mental ward after she tries explaining that her family was actually killed by a doll that came to life — which, to be fair, is not a very believable alibi. 

We pick up on Nica’s storyline in 2017’s Cult of Chucky, where our doomed anti-hero gets the co-starring role. Institutionalized at the Harrogate mental health facility, she is led to believe by the clinic’s doctors that she actually did murder her family members and that Chucky is a manifestation of her own psychosis. It doesn’t help that one of her fellow patients is obsessed with a Good Guy doll of her own. This only increases Nica’s anxiety about Chucky. Upon learning that her niece, Alice, has died, along with a number of other patients in the facility, Nica becomes certain that our little stabby friend is back in business.

It turns out that the original Chucky had transferred his soul to a couple of other unlucky Good Guy dolls with the help of “VoodooForDummies.com” (someone should definitely shut down that website) and is now wreaking havoc throughout Harrogate. Ultimately, Chucky spares Nica’s life, ominously telling her that there are fates worse than death. And what fate would that be, you might ask? Well, it would be Chucky transporting part of his demonic soul into your body and taking over your already tragic life. Yep, that’s probably a little worse than death. 

And that’s where we find our tortured soul Nica in Episode 5 of SYFY & USA's Chucky, as we see her and Tiffany toying around and torturing an innocent person. Interestingly, we discover that she is not always possessed by Chucky. In her lone scene in this episode, she faints at the sight of blood and wakes up as herself, Nica. Although she loses the ability to walk when she reverts back to her true self, she most importantly regains her own mind and is no longer a puppet for Chucky’s murderous actions. Unfortunately, her own victim doesn’t know this and knocks her unconscious as she’s desperately trying to save him from Tiffany and herself. When she comes to, she’s once again possessed by the partial soul of a serial killer.

Nica Pierce was involuntarily brought into Chucky’s world of terror. Will she ever be able to find a way out?