Alexandra Hunter

Alexandra Hunter
Nickname	Alex
Gender	Female
Birth Date	(1986-01-16) January 16, 1986
Profession	High-End Fence Thief
Status	Alive
Family	Michael Hunter (Grandfather) Sadie Hunter (Grandmother)
Portrayed By	Gloria Votsis
Season(s)	1, 2, 3, 4
First Appearance	Home Invasion
Last Appearance	Ancient History
Episode Count	9 episodes
Images of Alexandra Hunter

Alexandra Hunter is a high-end fence and a friend and past lover of Neal Caffrey. She uses an origami flower as her calling card.

Character Profile

Beautiful, intelligent, and devious, Alex is a high-end fence, dealing mostly in Eastern European antiquities. Prior to the show, she had only been arrested once in France but all charges were mysteriously dropped, thanks to some powerful friends.

As a child, her grandfather would take her out to Coney Island and point out to the water, saying the greatest treasure is out there, hinting at the rumored Nazi treasure from WWII. On his deathbed, he gave her a golden cherub piece to the music box, which was eventually revealed to be the key to finding the treasure.

Alex also owns a medieval villa in Sardinia.

Episodes

Home Invasion

Alex was first introduced as a pickpocket. Before Alex could move on her mark, Neal swaps out her mark's wallet for another one with a yellow origami flower that Kate Moreau left him. After she finds him standing across the street, she expresses her dismay that he's "still the best" and a "show off" after spending four years in prison. Neal asks her about the music box and they reminisce over their previously failed attempt at stealing the music box together from the Amalienborg Palace with Alex claiming she gave up on it a long time ago, which Neal refutes by producing a golden cherub piece of the music box that he lifted from Alex's purse. Nevertheless, Alex doesn't provide anymore information about the music box but Neal offers back the origami flower with his phone number inside.

That evening, Alex shows up at Neal's apartment, accusing him of turning Fed and pressing him about his sudden interest in the music box again. Regardless of his excuses, she informs him that there's been a lot of chatter about the music box but before they can dive deeper into their conversation, Peter Burke shows up, having decided to take up Neal's offer of letting Peter stay at the apartment with him until the Burke's house is rewired. Alex spells out "FED" on the Scrabble board that Neal was using and leaves.

Later, Alex walks into the middle of an FBI sting and blows Neal's cover as payback because the FBI ran her prints using one of the Scrabble pieces she touched.

In the end, Neal makes amends with Alex, apologizing for lying to her, but Alex admits she knows better than to trust him. Neal expresses the same sentiment but is "willing to take a leap of faith", so Alex tells him that she knows where the music box is but, as long as he works for the FBI, she will never tell him.

Front Man

After Neal reaches out to Alex, she pays him a visit at his apartment. He reiterates his need for the music box and even promises to give it to her after he's done with it, so she makes a deal with him: if he can get out of the tracking anklet by 6 PM the next evening, she'll tell him the location of the music box.

As planned, Neal returns anklet-free to his apartment, where Alex is waiting. Regardless of how Neal managed to slip out of his anklet, albeit a little late, Alex compromises by offering to steal the music box together and split the music box evenly. Before she leaves, she hands him a pink origami.

Out of the Box

While skinny-dipping alone in a pool, Alex is joined by Neal (to ensure he's not wearing a wire) and she tells him the music box is located in the Italian Consulate General's private safe and the general was flying in next month to pick it up, and the perfect time to steal it would be during a party the Italian Consulate was hosting in a week. Since the music box is a stolen artifact to begin with, the Consulate General would not go reporting the robbery.

While planning the heist, Alex withholds which vault the music box is locked in as insurance that Neal doesn't steal the artifact without her, but she does inform him and Mozzie that the vault is high-security and torch-resistant. Upon discussing party invitations, Alex divulges that she will be going as the plus one of a duke, who's name is already on the invite list. Neal suggests he will get in by making a generous donation to the people of Italy. Then, Alex and Mozzie leave when Peter walks in.

Later, Alex drops by Neal's apartment while he is working on a sculpture, his gift to the Italians. After some conversation, Neal finishes the art piece and the two relax on the couch together, reminiscing about the first time they attempted to steal the music box from the palace, resulting in a scar on Alex's arm that Neal guiltily comments "healed nicely". During their conversation, Neal's tracking anklet is deactivated.

On the night of the heist, Alex arrives at the consulate as the duke's arm candy, already clocking Neal standing at the bar. She quickly swipes the manager's keycard from his right pocket and passes it to Neal, wishing him luck and telling him the music box is located in a triple-walled case-hardened steel 1943 McKinsey safe, before returning to her date with drinks and watching Neal make a spectacle of himself in order to get caught. While Neal is being led away into the inner sanctum of the consulate, Alex plants a few timed smoke bombs disguised as tubes of lipstick.

After Neal successfully steals the music box with Mozzie as his lookout, Alex shows up unplanned to have Neal let her into the locked hallway. She embraces him, prematurely congratulating him while lifting the keycard from his pocket. As he turns to help Mozzie get into the locked hallway as well, Alex leaves with the music box and the keycard, leaving Neal locked in the hallway with no keycard and Mozzie on the other side of the consulate just as they can hear people coming down the stairs to capture Mozzie. Before Alex walks away, she slips the keycard through the iron gate back into the locked hallway for Neal to rescue Mozzie and himself just before they're both caught.

Later, with the music box in her hands, Alex is once again led into Neal's apartment by June Ellington, Neal's landlady. Neal is surprised and relieved to see her, and Alex admits that she isn't ready to say goodbye to Neal in case Kate's not the girl he wants in the end, and she doesn't want the same people coming after her as they did Neal. He commends her for making smart decisions and she tells him to try doing the same some time before leaving his apartment.

Copycat Caffrey

Alex returns to New York to get Mozzie's help, but their meeting is interrupted by Neal asking for information about a missing Thayer painting that was fenced in Dubai. Neal is called away by Peter, so Mozzie and Alex continue their conversation.

When Neal rejoins the two in his apartment, Mozzie and Alex tell Neal that someone very powerful is out to get Alex, probably in connection to the music box. Wanting to disappear, Alex was introduced by Mozzie to Russell Smith, an old friend from Detroit who dealt in Krugerrands, to sell Krugerrands incrementally. Unfortunately, Russell found out someone was offering money to find Alex and was ready to sell her out, which is why Alex wanted Mozzie's help to convince Russell to stop. As Alex leaves frustrated by Mozzie's lack of concrete help, Neal reassures her by telling her he won't let anything happen to her.

Later, Neal concocts a plan to help her while also helping his current Thayer case. If he convinces the FBI and Professor Oswald's group of criminology students that the new mark is Krugerrands, the FBI will want to talk to Russell to set up a sting instead. Once everyone gets word of Russell talking to the FBI, it'll kill his street cred so that no one will care what information he has. Though initially skeptical of Neal's plan, Alex has no choice but to agree.

The next day, Alex and Neal make a scene about the Krugerrands in front of Professor Oswald and his students, which ends in her slapping him for theatrics.

Alex helps the FBI wrap up the case by posing as the buyer for the Krugerrands and the Thayer painting, and as her reward, Peter gives her a plane ticket to Italy and tells her that they "publicly thanked Russell for his thoughtful and continued cooperation with the FBI", discrediting him from his underground contacts and the people looking for her. Alex thanks him with a kiss on the cheek, mentioning that Neal was right about Peter being the best.

At the end of the episode, Alex is seen packing her things into a cab when Neal comes up, teasing her about a wooden box that was the same size as a missing Matisse painting that was believed to have been taken by Oswald but wasn't found at his home. Alex promises to look out for it as she needs the reward money and Neal warns her to be careful, which she reciprocates back to him. As a parting gift, Alex gives Neal her golden cherub piece of the music box, claiming that she's giving up her obsession, which Neal comments that she's suggesting he should give up as well. Alex replies that Kate's gone but the rest of them are still there before kissing him and leaving for Venice.

Point Blank

It's suggested that Alex is back in the US and stealing pieces of the Almaranta shipwreck that she previously fenced. Neal tracks her down to a rooftop before the NYPD can find her so he can convince her to steal the music box from a locked safe in Diana Berrigan's apartment and return it to the Russians, which would take the target off her back. She agrees and succeeds but narrowly escapes as Diana comes home earlier than expected.

At the end of the episode, Alex shows up at Neal's apartment again, asking about the target on her back, which Neal responds that whoever was after her should redirect their focus on the Russians now. He proceeds to tell her that he found Fowler but he still doesn't know who killed Kate. When Alex asks about the code embedded in the music box, Neal assures her that Mozzie would crack it. Just as Alex reaches into her bag to pull something out, Peter and Diana barge into the room with guns pointed at Alex, but Alex reveals a small notebook so she could give Neal her phone number, promising to answer "from now on" before leaving.

Forging Bonds

In this episode, Neal tells Peter the story of how he came to work for Vincent Adler. During these flashbacks, we find out that Neal and Alex first met when she was digging into Adler's business. Neal was the one who caught her and brought her to Adler under the guise of an interview, during which Adler warned her to stay away from his holdings. After leaving, Alex returns to ask Neal out to drinks after she confronted him about setting her up. He agrees and they end up sleeping together. In bed, Neal and Alex reveal to each other that "Nick Halden" is not Neal's real name and Alex was digging into Adler's holdings in search for the music box because she heard he had information on it, which turned out to be a rumor that the music box was in the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen. Before leaving him in bed, Alex left one of her origami flowers, saying she'd send him a message if she needed his help with it.

Further along in the story, Neal did receive a second yellow origami flower from Alex, confirming the music box's location.

Power Play

Alex is seen walking down a street at night. She stops to answer her phone and tells someone that she's on her way. As she starts walking again, a man is shown to be following her, presumably someone who works for Vincent Adler.

Under the Radar

After being drugged by Vincent Adler, Peter and Neal wake up to see themselves being held in a room with Alex with no backup on the way. Adler enters the room and reveals that he's already found the U-boat, which he takes Neal and Peter down to see up close. Adler uses Alex as a bargaining chip to get Neal and Peter to open the U-boat's hatch, which is rigged with explosives, while everyone else watches from behind the safety of the blast-proof glass windows in the room. After they accidentally activate the timed TNT, Alex reveals that her grandfather was Gerhard Wagner, who was a German Nazi soldier who received the final SOS signal from the U-boat, and remembers him telling her the story of Midas, the king with the golden touch that destroyed himself. The bomb deactivates after Neal types "MIDAS" into the old typewriter.

Still located in the room with Adler and his henchman, Alex watches the broadcast from Neal's glasses as Neal and Peter descend into the U-boat and find the treasure. When Neal takes off the glasses, the display shuts off so Adler moves towards the U-boat with Alex still as his hostage. Upon entering the treasure room, Adler orders his henchmen to take all three hostages out for a "limo ride" but Alex refuses, elbowing one of her captor's in the stomach and taunting Adler to shoot them. Instead, Peter gives in to the limo and Adler has them drugged again.

When Alex wakes up, she, the three of them are tied up and laying in a dry dock, where Alex spots Adler's men opening the dam to drown them. Alex reveals that she has a knife in her bra, which she swiped from one of her captors earlier during the struggle in the treasure room, so Neal, being right in front of her, rummages around her bra with his teeth. Once free, the three head out of the dry docks only to find Adler's men still waiting at the top of the stairs. They duck for cover as the men start shooting. As the men close in on their hiding spot, Diana and Jones arrive just in time to rescue them. Relieved, Neal and Alex share a passionate kiss.

Alex is invited back to the FBI's office to help them find Adler. She remembers overhearing Adler's plan to ship the treasure out by boat to Europe but couldn't until the end of the week. She was also able to recall the "wooden beams, pre-war architecture, solid steel roll-up doors facing west" on the warehouse and "some kind of clanging at night" coming from outside.

After the meeting, Sara Ellis introduces herself to Alex and Alex deduces that Sara isn't a Fed. Before their conversation could get much deeper, Neal cuts in and Sara leaves. Alex expresses her approval of Sara to Neal, which he tries to deny any relationship before changing the subject back to the treasure. Alex told him that her grandfather used to take her out to Coney Island when no one was around, point to the water, and say that the greatest treasure was out there. It turns out, as the one who received the final SOS signal from the U-boat, Alex's grandfather encoded the SOS antenna design into the music box, intending on building a receiver when he got to America and finding the sub, but the box was lost after WWII. The only thing he had left was the golden cherub key, which he gave to Alex on his deathbed, asking her to find the music box and the treasure. To end her story, she admits to Neal that he reminds her of the treasure - "Some wonderful fantasy that's just out of reach". Finally, she gives him a kiss goodbye on the cheek, tells him to take care, and they part ways again.

Ancient History

It is revealed that Alex spent sixteen months in a women's central prison in Thebes, Greece for stealing from a dozen historical sites to decorate her villa in Sardinia. While she was locked up, Rasmus Spiteri made her an offer: either stay locked up indefinitely or help him steal and return plundered antiquities from the Amorgâłs expedition on display at the Hellerman Gallery in the name of cultural reclamation. Alex agreed to the assignment and returned to New York. She orchestrated a robbery at the Greco Museum, which was botched by the NYPD, so the stolen goods were moved to the NYPD evidence warehouse.

During her stay at the Athenian Hotel, Neal reached out and told her that the FBI are onto her, offering her a way out: work with the FBI to catch Spiteri red-handed with the stolen antiquities, which she agreed.

To steal the antiquities from the Hellerman, Alex pretended to be the assistant of Neal, posing as a famous street artist. They convinced the Hellerman curator to close gallery 2B, where the Greek antiquities were being displayed, so Neal could paint something on the wall of the gallery while Alex turned off the alarms to the exhibit. As Neal was moving the last few pieces into the truck parked in the back, Alex disappeared, leaving Neal to get apprehended by NYPD a second time and the stolen pieces locked up in the NYPD evidence warehouse.

A few hours later, Alex broke into the NYPD evidence warehouse and sped off with a truckload of all the stolen antiquities from both heists, all of which was caught on tape. She rendezvoused with Spiteri but escaped via a second car with all the stolen goods.

That evening, Alex waited for Neal at his apartment. While Neal appears to be hurt that she played him, Alex explained that Neal owed her a treasure, the Nazi U-boat treasure, but they were even now.

Relationships

Neal Caffrey

Neal is a friend, romantic interest, and former partner of Alex. They first met while he was working under Vincent Adler and Neal discovered that Alex was digging around in Adler's business, which he reported to Adler. After being warned by Adler, Alex asked Neal out to drinks and Neal agreed to get his mind off of Kate, who had a boyfriend at the time, and they slept together.

Later on, Alex and Neal spent some time together running cons overseas for eight years. During that time, Alex convinced Neal to help her steal the music box from the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen but they failed, resulting in her hospital stay in France, during which Neal never visited her. Out of resentment for his abandonment, Alex never visited Neal in prison either when he was eventually caught.

Throughout the series, Neal and Alex are shown to have an ambiguous relationship, with or without Kate, but their history is too complicated for them to become a true couple, especially with Neal choosing to help the Feds while Alex will always be a professional criminal.

Mozzie

Mozzie and Alex were presumably introduced by Neal after the incident with Adler. They run in the same circles and trust each other enough to call on each other for help and information.