FRINGE: Now That Olivia Remembers Peter and Her Timeline, Is Walter Next? Josh Jackson Weighs In
April 12, 2012 by Marisa Roffman
Most fans of FRINGE’s Peter and Olivia were thrilled when she finally remembered her life from our original timeline (and Peter got confirmation he had been home all along), but there has been one key thing that has been missing — Walter’s memories.
True, Walter and Peter had a lovely moment in “Nothing As It Seems,” but it’s still not the relationship we spent three seasons growing to love. So when I sat down with Josh Jackson (Peter) on the FRINGE set last week, I asked him whether his character would now be trying to get his father to remember his past now that Olivia has finally “returned” to the right state of mind.
What was his answer? Check it out…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBuMXyEQwRk[/youtube]
Was that what you thought would be happening? (I’ll admit I was expecting a different answer.)
Related:
FRINGE: Lance Reddick Teases Things Come to a Head With Alt-Broyles and David Robert Jones
FRINGE: ‘The Consultant’ Video Preview Teases Meana Versus Fauxlivia, Walter Crossing Over and More
FRINGE: ‘Letters of Transit’ Photo Preview
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I have to say that I’m a little annoyed with the writers for “glossing” over what I personally think is the best thing about Fringe…the strong relationships these people have with one another. The “you’ve been home all along, Dorothy” crap really ticks me off. It’s as bad as saying “it was all a dream”. I really do expect more from Fringe. I’m still crossing my fingers that the endgame will be worth the frustration that has been season 4 and am hoping desperately that there will in fact be a full season 5 to redeem this otherwise amazing show!
this video has me a bit baffled too …either Josh is fibbing, so as not to give away the finale, or the writers completely dropped the ball if they just “glossed” over the memory loss of peters relationships with Walter/Walternate, Astrid 1 and 2, his moms, Nina, etc. etc. Yeah he has Olivia back which is awesome, but I’m thinking it still isn’t his home, and that our Olivia is temporarily in this Olivia to bring him back! lol…i want a blue screen season finale! but not baby Henry
I have to say this is NOT what I expected. Based on this interview, the only person who knows he’s home is Peter. He has not shared any of that with anyone else, except for maybe Olivia, or so it seems.
I suspect there is more underneath. It does intrigue me that he said this was a “stop along the way” for Olivia, with an eye toward the final two episodes this season.
I actually firmly believe that Olivia’s “memories” are linked to the cortexiphan injections AltNina was giving her.
Hmm, what if Peter is actually in a third universe? And the Olivia that has regained her memories is more of a thing where the REAL olivia, the olivia from Peters universe, has “bled” in to this universe?
Either way, I’m digging the new season. I just REALLY wish they’d move it out of the Friday “death slot” to see how the show really does. That it is in that slot, and still does well is, I think, a testament to how good the show is, but it is also undermining how well it could do.
I have my own explanation which I’m happy with even if they never touch on this again.
The observer’s are the ones who interfered with everything and they were the reason that timelines changed. The crossing over was something that was caused indirectly due to the actions of an observer. Now when they changed that and the bridge was created, everything went back to the way it should have been had it continued from the initial crossing over.
Here’s where Olivia’s cortexiphan comes into play. She has similar relationships with everyone she had before the universe changed, and even if they weren’t with the same people (Sister–>Nina) they still served the same purposes. The only one that she didn’t have a surrogate for was Peter.
Now I am making the assumption that when the timeline changed, it was a conversion rather than a rewrite. That is, the entire timeline was converted from one version to another rather than the second one restarting with both Peters dying and naturally progressing from there.
If that is the case, Olivia could be having residual effects from essentially having a huge influence on her life being whited-out and that could have activated her cortexiphan into pulling him through the way they were able to pull images from layers of tape a few episodes ago. Once she pulled him through, he started appearing in her dreams and in visions to Walter.
Now if we accept all of that, Peter isn’t the Peter we remember either. He’s Peter to the extent that Olivia was able to pull him through, and with him come some memories of her old self since this is an imperfect science and wasn’t really intentional anyway. So Olivia is a weird mix of before and after and Peter is mostly the way he was, with any gaps in his memory being filled to assume the people he is interacting with are the way they always were unless he remembers differently (sorta like in Jurassic Park where the gaps in dinosaur DNA were filled with frog DNA). Walter never regains his memories of that timeline because Olivia didn’t have a strong connection to him in the way she did with Peter. Even if she did, he probably wouldn’t change because he still existed in this timeline with her and was more or less the same as he was there.
Here’s the elephant in the room… If the time observers are really time travelers, why didn’t one just travel back to just before the moment in the lab when October observed and distracted Walternate and take him away? All of this would be avoided entirely. We saw in the episode in which the October implanted the chip in Peter’s eye, that they move at the speed of light, so don’t tell me it couldn’t be done.
This is the way I look at it. It can’t be a perfect scenario where everything just magically goes back to ‘normal’ with everybody regaining their memories from the previous timeline. What’s done is done and everybody just needs to make the best of it. Now, even though Walter hasn’t regained his memories he’s still warming up to Peter, his son, and building a new life and relationship with him. It’s not quite the same as it was before, but it is the best anyone can hope for including Peter. Peter is just happy that he can begin a new warm relationship with Walter. This is sort of like how Olivia told Nina a few episodes ago that she would love to make new memories with Nina and grow closer again. However, parental love is a bit different from romantic love. Once Walter decided to accept Peter he immediately loved him. But Olivia can’t do that. So it is possible that given enough time Peter and Olivia would have gotten back together, but it is not a certainty. Yet, Peter was just fortunate enough that Olivia began to regain her memories and cut down on the time it took for them to get back together, and for Olivia to fall in love with Peter again. So in the end what I’m trying to say is that not everything can go back to the way it was because that’s just not natural and not realistic. However, Walter, as a parent, loves Peter and Olivia, by regaining her memories, loves Peter too. And Peter is just happy that his two ‘families’ love him again. It was a miracle that Olivia remembered her love for him again. And Peter needed a miracle to get him back to his Olivia, and that’s what he was searching and hoping for desperately this season. It would take another miracle for the same thing to happen with Walter. But now Peter doesn’t search or hope for this second miracle because even though it’s not exactly the way it was before he still has his father back. And his love is back too.
@Caroline
It’s for the same reason that you can’t go back in time and kill your own grandfather. If they stopped themselves from doing what they did, then they wouldn’t have been in the position to go back and stop themselves. So now that they’ve messed up, they are doing what they need to in order to try to keep history from going too far off track.
It goes to show there are grave consequences to messing with the universe. The observers are supposed to be detached, but some of them after years of observing are developing emotional attachments to the people and events they are observing. This led them to interfere and both Walters’ actions and the observers interference have caused great consequences. The other more objective observers are attempting to correct the mistakes made. But don’t seem to be able to fix things as emotional ties get in the way. Considering that two universes have been put in danger it would have been better for the observers, not to have interfered, but now that they have, it’s hard to undo.
Cortexiphan seems to be the reason why Olivia absorbed memories from her other timeline, but Walter’s dreams and visions of Peter’s face can’t be explained that way. But I can see how Walter’s own oddness and memories of Peter’s childhood have allowed him to accept him as his son. I hope they touch on how they are going to “create” an official identity and Homeland Security credentials for Peter. Real organizaations would not blindly accept him without a verifiable history that can satisfy a background check.
Beyond that, the characters should just stay so busy dealing with crises and enemies like Jones and AltNina that there is no time for self-reflection. 90-hour work weeks ought to do it, and anyway they’re very familiar with strangeness mixed into reality. They can deal.
Hey, it’s cool that our Agent Lee has found an Olivia to fall for. He should stay there.
How Fringe Season 4 Betrayed Us All
The worst thing a writer or creator can do is hit the reset button. Not only are they betraying the energy, time,
thought that they put in but the energy, time and thought of the fans that have followed your story have. You especially
dont do this with an intricate, complicated ongoing epic. I wonder if J.J. Abrams had anything to do with the
alternate timeline in season 4…he rebooted the ONE franchise you ABSOLUTELY NEVER do that to, a franchise as
enourmos, grand, prolific, old as Star Trek. And even though the new movie was good and revitalizing, I have to
ask myself as a Trekker: was it worth it? How can I take BOTH universes seriously?…and I still am unsure of
the answer…{I DO KNOW I dont like many of my favorite characters from my favorite series being ignored in
favor of one of MY least favorite Trek series in The Original series…}
If the season 4 alternatre timeline in Fringe had resolved midway through it would have been ok, even neat, but the
gigantic, transparent cop-out of Peter “realizing” he belonged there was too much, effectively shattering, killing the show….
I was watching season 1 again recently and found myself thinking-what for? None of this really happened.
None of these characters went through this or grew there.All this mythology I’m following will be rewritten…
Peter already was from the parallel universe, now he’s from an alternate timeline as well?…um, no…
despite manuvering well all the complicated realities they were weaving before, it all still tied together
coherently and sensibly and believably….now ALL of that has vanished. Grasping for analogies…its like you
build a building and stop 3/4 of the way through and then stop and build a complete, smaller one 1/4 its size
beside it. Now that first, bigger, unfinished one looks like a big, fat tumor doesnt it? None of it looks good
does it? Or you read a dense, intricate mythology book and 3/4 of the way it stops and the author informs you
he is writing another book, same, characters, but changing them and everything else you’ve previously read
and that one will be what counts…yeah…
The only small hop I hold is that the writers do have some kid of master plan, but season 5 is half over at this
point…and if they dont, itll be the biggest ball drop and screw over in the history of sci-fi. Already almost
every great sci-fi or genre show gets cancelled by 1st season’s end {especially on network tv} and here we
have one of the few that are allowed to make it through to their conclusion only to see them essentially
cancel themselves before they get there?….just wow….and if season 4 was about pandering to new, casual
viewers and ratings?….unforgivable…whatever the reason, jumping the shark, hitting a wall, a simple bad idea,
caving to the network pandering to unloyal viewers….it will be a sad, quiet little tragedy….
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