I’m really addicted to Fringe. One thing I like is that it is constantly changing. However, one change seems completely unnecessary. Peter being erased out of existence (Yes, he’s coming back, but still.)
So, we find out that the way time got rewritten was that the Observer (September) didn’t save Peter from drowning when the ice broke. Although, why didn’t Walter drown?
Uhm, after Peter brings both Fringe divisions together to work on the problem, he had to be erased from time, why?
Reading some interviews with the producers, it seemed they wanted the opportunity to explore how the characters lives would be if Peter never existed. But this isn’t a good reason story-wise.
I know that since the head Observer December doesn’t want the Fringe team to learn that Peter grew up, that hopefully means the writers will give an in-story reason for erasing him from existence in the first place. But to be honest, I’m worried it won’t be a good one.
I’m just worried that the explanation will turn out to be as convoluted and illogical as the recent Doctor Who storyline.
We were already given a reason a long time ago. The Observer interfered by pulling Peter from the lake, and they’re not supposed to interfere. We don’t know why not exactly, but we know that erasing Peter was to put everything back “on course,” if you will.
I’m not crazy about this new Fringe season. This whole story with Peter is silly. Where is he? The future? And he can communicate wth Walter through reflective surfaces?
The future? He’s not in the future. He’s wherever canceled reality goes - Limbo, maybe, or Purgatory. And he’s obviously communicating telepathically: with Walter it manifests as reflections, and with Olivia, it’s dreams.
Yeah, he went to the future (or at least his mind did). Then he came back. He’s not in the future anymore. He’s been erased from the timeline but “fragments” remain.
I haven’t felt any reason to watch any of the episodes this season. I watched the show faithfully the first two seasons, but the whole erasing Peter thing made me lose interest.
The Observer saved Peter from the lake because he needed him to live, to find the machine, to get into the machine, and bring the two universes together to fix the problem of Walter crossing over. After the universes are joined, it seems pointless to now erase Peter.
Going back in time, when Wlaternate was searching for a cure for a dying Peter; Of course once the Observer realized that he prevented Walternate from finding the formula for the cure he could have just given it to him to prevent Walter from crossing over in the first place, but then we’d have no show.
I’m just wondering if the executive producers Jeff Pinkner J.H. Wyman had this sort of talk with the writers.
Jeff or J.H., “You know what would be interesting? Examining everybody’s lives if Peter had never been there. At the end of season three, get rid of Peter.”
Writer, “So, Joshua’s off the show then?”
Jeff or J.H., “No, he’s still on the show. You’ll have to find a way to bring him back in season four.”
Writer, “But if Peter never existed, then he never was able to use the machine to bring both worlds together. So season four will start with that never happening, right?”
Jeff or J.H., “No, both universes will have been brought together because of the machine. Even though Peter didn’t operate it.”
Writer, “How?”
Jeff or J.H., “You guys are smart. You’ll figure something out.”
There’s all that convoluted nonsense, and then this week there was a major continuity error. Last season Alternate Broyles sacrificed himself and died to save Original Broyles, then Faux-livia mentioned him this week when the two sides collaborated on a case. “I’ve been over it a hundred times with MY Broyles” or something like that.
Now I do have to say I have been this kind of disappointed in the past with what seemed to be laziness on the writers’ parts - and then been pleasantly surprised when they wrapped loose ends up neatly for me a few episodes later. So I will hold onto hope that they come up with a really good reason Peter had to disappear, and that someone catches that whole ‘major supporting character that’s supposed to be dead thing’ and writes around it.
Uh, it’s not a continuity error. Alt-Broyles is alive now. We saw him last week. It’s been implied that when Olivia was kidnapped over there, she didn’t join the team as Fauxlivia. So everything over there played out differently.
In the original timeline Olivia, Walter, and the others went over to get back Peter. If Peter never existed then there was no reason for Olivia to cross over, thus, the whole Fauxlivia pretending to be Oliva never should have happened.
Which creates another twisty situation because Olivia and Fauxlivia clearly resent each other and Olivia said something about how she’d been kidnapped and her life stolen. So if Peter didn’t exist, Olivia would never have been in position to get kidnapped because she wouldn’t have had a reason to be there, and and and…
So maybe Alt-Broyles being alive again isn’t continuity, but a result of the timeline being changed. But Alt-Broyles sacrificed himself to help save Olivia, who was there because she’d been kidnapped during their attempt to being Peter back, and she wouldn’t have been there unless Peter existed to cross over and learn about The Machine from Walternate, so…
Yeah - I stick by my original worry that the writing has gotten entirely too complicated with some unnecessary twists, and I hope they can resolve all this. I got my eye on it, but maybe they’re doing exactly their job, making people sit here and think about their show.
Well, the writers are doing a certain amount of “winging it”. There have been a couple of plot lines already that have either disappeared or had less-than-satisfactory or overly hasty resolutions, but I look at this as them realizing when something isn’t working and just dropping it as opposed to keeping an unpopular or nonworking plot line around.
That said, they do seem to be working within the lines at the moment. In the new Orangeverse, Peter died as a child (the general presumption seems to be that he drowned at Readen Lake after being brought over from the Redverse by Walter instead of being rescued by September).
The secret war between the Redverse and the Blueverse still starts (since Peter was still kidnapped and since Walter and Bell’s crossings between the universes still causes damage on the Red side) but there are differences. (For example, Olivia is a bit different because she never met Peter as a child in Jacksonville and Walter is even more messed up because he saw Peter die twice.) In Orangeverse history, instead of coming to to the BLueverse to rescue Peter, Walternate sends his team to kidnap Olivia and put Fauxlivia in her place. So Fauxlivia was still impersonating Olivia but since Olivia never took Fauxlivia’s place in the Redverse she never worked with Broyles and so he never helped her escape and didn’t get killed for it.
