By now, I’m sure you know that Fringe has returned and so have all our favorite characters from both universes: Olivia (times two!), Walter, Astrid, and my personal favorite, Lincoln Lee. But something isn’t quite right this season… Something is so obviously missing.
The last time we tuned in, Peter had disappeared into oblivion and left a hole in everyone’s lives. (If you watch “Neither Here Nor There,” then you’ll know you don’t get by without hearing about this once or twice.) So where is Peter Bishop now? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.
Olivia: There is no one else. There is just me.
It’s the same storyline we’ve seen done before in everything from It’s a Wonderful Life to a smaller extent in Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s ‘The Wish”. And somehow it always manages to feel new and different. What would the word be like if you weren’t in it? Well, in the case of Peter Bishop, the answer is: very different. One could even say different enough for a series reboot?
alt!Olivia: It must be hard to develop trust in people when all you’ve got is yourself. It must be terribly lonely.
Our Olivia never had the benefit of falling in love with Peter and warming up to the outside world. The other Olivia never had Peter to give her a child and realize the people of our world aren’t so bad. Yet in this reality, both Olivia’s still managed to end up at the same place in their lives so not much has changed in that regard. But at their core, where it really matters, they’re very different than how we remember them.
Between The Lying Game, Ringer, The Vampire Diaries, and Fringe, twins and doubles are definitely in this year. Anna Torv is fantastic at playing two characters who look the same but have their own unique identities. I’m always fascinated to see the two Olivia’s interact and notice the differences in each.
Walter: People die, it happens. Sometimes they even die twice.
Olivia isn’t the only one missing Peter’s influence. Walter also had “nothing to tether him to the world,” so he’s a little bit crazier and out of touch than usual. (I mean, he even lives in the lab and is afraid to leave.) He’s witnessed his son die twice this time because, per the Observers, Peter never “lived to become a man”. I think we can assume Peter died in the lake when Walter brought him over to our world.
Lincoln: What’s beyond the door?
Olivia: Sometimes answers lead to more questions.
Which brings us to the series being rebooted. In the old reality, Peter lived and was brought into Fringe Division after a case involving Olivia’s fiance John Scott and biological terrorism. In this new reality, it’s Lincoln Lee who has that honor after his partner Robert Danzig (Stargate: Atlantis‘ Joe Flanigan, who the writers giveth and then taketh away) is murdered by some suspicious shape-shifters. This begs the question: How else will Lincoln be taking Peter’s place in the weeks to come?
Walter: I don’t think there is anything sadder than when two people are meant to be together and something else intervenes.
If this were a pilot for a new series, it’d be a perfect setup and introduction to a new world with new characters. As it is, it’s ‘neither here nor there’ and incomplete. Without Peter, and knowing what we’ve lost, we’re unable to fully accept this new reality we’ve been given.
Of course, it’d also be a lot easier to settle into it if Peter wasn’t flashing up behind Olivia or appearing to Walter in reflections all the time. The Observers are aware of this problem, too, and so they task poor September with fixing the anomaly and permanently removing Peter from time.
September gets all his hardware ready, including a part from a TV set (Because to remove a TV character, you need a part from a TV, right?), and flips the machine on before hovering over the button. Does he do it? …No. He’s a rebel that one.
Next week:
Scully and the new Mulder continue investigating Fringe-y cases, and Walter continues going insane.