FRINGE’s Joshua Jackson Teases The Team is ‘Constantly Under Threat’

For as many changes as FRINGE has undergone throughout the years, one of the constants has been that the team (whether it was in our universe or Over There) gets together, investigates the freaky event of the week, and makes the world a little bit safer.

But now as FRINGE embarks on the final hours of the series, not only are we 20-plus years in the future, but since we’re smack in the middle of Observergeddon, there aren’t really “cases of the week” for the team to investigate. However, thanks to the newly discovered tapes that Walter left behind pre-ambering, our Fringe team will have a new road map that will shape how the foreseeable future of the series will play out, format-wise.

“We are in the midst of the device that gets introduced in episode 1, about the tapes,” Joshua Jackson (Peter) told reporters on set late last month. “So that becomes kind of…the motivational device, plot device, of every episode this season.”

Unfortunately, because things have changed so much, the danger is all the more apparent as the team continues with their journey.

“We’ve always done a little bit of action stuff, but…it hopefully comes across that our team is under tension constantly,” Jackson said. “There’s no moment where they’re not exposed, just by virtue of their being alive in this timeline. So there’s a constant sense of dread, because you could literally turn a corner, and there’s an Observer… That’s the end of the show. So, yeah.”

“For my own sake, Peter has become much more of a proactive character rather than sort of following the other characters through a storyline,” he continued. “He’s generating more of his own story this year, which is a lot more satisfying for me…There’s this sense of urgency because there’s no time to sit and think, right? There’s no ‘All right, we’ll take the samples. We’ll go back to the lab and work it out with Walter. Then we’ll go back into the field and solve it.’ That doesn’t exist anymore. It’s constant go-go-go-go-go-go-go. Immediate danger. And that present sense of dread, of ‘Oh shit, we’re completely overwhelmed. We don’t really know what we’re doing, and we’re exposed at every moment because we are out of our limit.’ As opposed to, in the first four seasons, Fringe is the establishment. It’s not even X-FILES. It’s not even in the basement. It’s not the nice, shiny glass office. You know, it is the man. And now, we’re the rebels. We’re the insurgents.”

So if you were hoping things would let up anytime soon, maybe think again. (And perhaps buy some protective gear for our gang.)

“We are constantly under threat,” Jackson previewed. “We don’t have to build in false beats just to get to the place of ‘Uh-oh!’ because the uh-oh is already there. And if that tension is told in a correct way, if literally you feel like around every corner that you bump into [the potential for trouble]. I mean, we have a scene — with a character who I will not name, doing a thing I can’t tell you about — where that scenario plays out. It’s just a small, quotidian thing. One break from the routine leads to disaster. I mean, really fucking major disaster. And if that sense of dread permeates the show this year, I think that’s really good. You know, you have our gang and you have this family dynamic that the family itself is very happy to be together… But the backdrop is that at any second, it could go away.”

Ah, yes, the complicated family dynamic. Peter’s refusal to let go of the search for his daughter before they were ambered has led to lingering tension with both Olivia and Walter.

“Peter essentially committed the exact same sin his father did, which is a totally understandable,” Jackson noted. “I mean, part of what was always so dynamic about the thing that Walter did wrong is, I think, just about any person — not even any parent — can understand why. He had lost his child and was given an opportunity to have his child back. You would have to be Jesus to say, ‘No, actually. That’s wrong.’ So everybody gets that. And Peter, I think, in much the same fashion, wasn’t capable of processing that. I think he pushed everyone in his life away. He pushed Olivia away, I think…because he just couldn’t accept the idea that he wasn’t going to be able to fix this.”

But as Jackson noted, despite the trouble Peter and Olivia may currently be facing, they have already made a commitment to each other beyond anything viewers have really experienced with the duo in the past.

“You know we’ve been this damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t couple,” he said. “And for Peter, damned-if-you-do a lot. But in an odd way, this year’s crisis for the family happens off-camera. The romantic and dramatic tension of will-they-or-won’t-they has been resolved. They’re married. They have a child. The loss of the child clearly did something bad to them in the off-camera portion that we don’t get to see between the end of season 4 and the beginning of season 5. And so, yes, I think…putting the family back together definitely goes toward healing the rift…Relationships are tough, and you go through bad phases. And clearly, something traumatic like this happens, like losing a child, it puts an unbelievable strain. So their story is, over the course of this year, putting back together the things that would have been torn apart by that incredible [strain]…Oh, and World War III happened and all the rest of it.”

As for what went down in that time we missed, viewers will get a little more clued in about what went down…soon.

“There’s a portion of it, those things get illuminated in the episodes that come down the line — and pretty quickly,” Jackson promised. “There’s not a lot of dawdling in the storytelling this year, because we don’t have much time…You know, the world has been invaded. We are slowly being exterminated. That’s enough. You don’t have to give more. So the story comes pretty fast and furious…there hasn’t really been a let-up, there’s not been a breather episode. So it keeps on progressing in pace.”

But still, all things considered, Peter isn’t too unhappy to be where he’s at in life.

“I think [if he had the choice of] a utopia now without Etta, Peter would choose a dystopian future with Etta,” Jackson said. “I think that’s a much happier place for him to live. I don’t think that there’s any part of him that’s upset that [he’s there]…I mean, he’s been working in the Fringe Division. The shit’s been bad. So I think for him, the fact that he has his child back, so what’s the drive? To not lose his child again. To have his wife and his child in his life, to be, to have his family back. That’s the theme that comes up quite often for him in the first couple episodes is. This is, put any name on it you want, in his world, this is a miracle. His child was gone. It was over. There was no reason to go forward. And he wakes up. Literally, you know, a Sleeping Beauty, he gets popped out of it. And here’s his baby. And even though she’s a grown woman, she’s still his baby. And he gets a second chance. Even though the backdrop of it is ugly, I think for him, he’s really happy to be there.”

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FRINGE airs Fridays at 9 PM on Fox.

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