What happened?
Olivia is being terrorised by a strange energy force that appears with increased frequency and ferocity. Walter fears that it may be caused by another Cortexiphan subject and so leaves the lab for the first time in 3 years to accompany Olivia in finding this person. Walter also wants to validate himself as sane enough to not be taken back to the mental hospital – a decision that rests with Olivia.
Walter and Olivia find ‘subject 9’, Mark Little, and though he possesses magnetic powers he is not responsible for the energy force. He can, however, repel it – and so he is taken to channel his powers against the energy when it next appears. Just before he does, however, Olivia stares into the energy and believes she sees the man that has been appearing in her dreams.
When the energy force is apparently destroyed, over at Reiden Lake Peter pops up out of the water. Fringe division quickly claim him due to his knowing so much he really ought not to. He asks to see Olivia and, though he is pleased and relieved to see her, she has no idea who he is.
Thoughts
Curiously, I’ve read a couple of reviews to this episode already and they all generally come out with a sense of disappointment and negativity. And I’m surprised. Because my reaction to this episode was entirely the opposite – I thought it was great and the best of the season so far.
Naturally the big take-home point was the arrival of Peter and all along it felt rather obvious that this strange force that was terrorising Olivia was Peter trying to break through. Yet for all that it still managed to be creepy – this strange, faceless ball of malevolent energy. The scene where Olivia woke with it in her room was good, but better was the ‘attack’ in the bathroom, preceded by Walter seeing it before it happened on his monitor, that made it feel like a kind of supernatural poltergeist assault.
The look on Olivia’s face to Astrid before the bathroom door slammed was really haunting, and that scene for me was one of the most intense Fringe has ever shown.
The episode really focused on the relationship between Olivia and Walter. It was explained that Walter did conduct his Cortexiphan trials, and Olivia was one of his subjects. We were also told that the instance where she set her room on fire occurred, so much of what we knew from the ‘former universe’ events is true here.
Olivia running away from the trials perhaps accounts for why she’s not quite as bitter towards Walter as you might expect her to be but it also seems that there hasn’t been any investigation into other subjects, considering Massive Dynamic (a more mercenary, immoral company in this universe) has held the files for twenty years. This in turn suggests Olivia has never really delved into her ‘powers’, nor have other Cortexiphan subjects been used to enable a crossover to the other universe to occur (as in the Season 2 finale). Since there was no Peter to go ‘over there’ to rescue I suppose that all makes sense.
Compared to the hostile and damaged Mark Little, Olivia is balanced and understanding and patient with Walter. His flip out in the hotel room saw her decide to stay awake with him and there they were, in the café, almost like a grandfather and grandchild, with him teaching her how to drink her ice-cream beverage to get the most flavour.
Perhaps more striking was Olivia’s relationship with Nina, which here seemed far more familiar and almost mother-daughter like. They shared a quick joke, one that displayed Nina knew much about Olivia’s life, and that one exchange was all that Olivia needed to settle herself. Very interesting. I also really liked how animated and irritable Walter was towards her, too – clearly there’s a lot more antagonised history between them. Maybe in this universe she’s like Yoko Ono to Belly’s Lennon!
Walter really stole the show for me in terms of emotion, though. I’ve never wanted to give the mad bastard a hug more than when Olivia was trying to leave him alone in his hotel room; the unsure smile and the fidgeting demeanour masking the tirade of nervous tics and neuroses vying to explode was heartbreaking. Walter has always been a lovable monster but more because of his quirks and irreverence – here his frailties and broken functionality illicit sympathy.
The red herring plot of ‘subject 9’ was perhaps the weakest element of the episode. Considering it seemed plain enough that he wasn’t responsible for the force then anything to do with Mark Little just felt like filling in time before Olivia and Walter realised the same thing and progressed on to what we really wanted them to see. And retreading the path that Walter had a lot to answer for because of all these children’s lives he messed up was, perhaps, an important point to clarify for this universe but it did also feel like a well-worn plot we’ve seen and heard about many times before.
Can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Mark not ‘defeated’ the energy force and instead listened to Olivia commanding him to stop. Quite what did occur in that moment to then result in naked Peter appearing in (of course) Reiden Lake was totally glossed over. I doubt Fringe will really bother explaining it. The basic point, I think, was that Olivia had made a tangible connection with Peter through the force of energy and then Mark ‘popped’ that energy away and, thus, Peter was ‘born’ into the universe (naked, in water, at the spot where ‘he’ died; your standard baptism/rebirth!)
As I suspected, Peter here retains all of his memories from the ‘former universe’ whilst this universe has no idea who he is. That’ll mean he has to try and rebuild the relationship he had with Olivia (and, perhaps, if she’s not inclined maybe Fauxlivia will lure him to her side?) but quite how Walter will deal with the thunderbolt news that this is his son is going to be very interesting.
Same goes for Walternate, too, who we still haven’t seen! If anything is going to draw him out maybe it’s to stake a claim on Peter for himself. . . This could start another battle between the two sides all over again, which would present a certain kind of plot echo where Peter is, once again, the key cause to a great rift.
What was the best part?
So many great scenes, but I think the diner scene was the best of the bunch. Shifting from the intimate and honest exchanges between Walter and Olivia to the energy force emerging, sending people running, was a good surge of excitement. And Olivia quickly shooting out the glass to make their escape, finishing with the skidding car dully thumping against the energy force to extinguish it just looked and played out really cool.
What do I think will happen next?
Peter will surely tell Olivia who he is, where he came from. How easy a time she has accepting that and what she does with that information may dictate how things are taken from there. If we’re lucky we’ll also be treated to Peter getting the chance to tell Walter who he really is, too. If we’re really lucky the next episode will also let us in on seeing how The Observers will react, knowing that September disobeyed the order to remove Peter from existence entirely (as previously stated, this may provoke them to try and take matters into their own hands and prompt a whole different kind of conflict).
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