By Daniel
Well, of everything I expected from a season finale that feels like it was supposed to be a series finale, Walter shooting Olivia in the forehead wasn't part of it. I did think Astrid might be in jeopardy much longer than she was, but as we kick off, she's in the hospital thanks to an anonymous 911 call, but she has no idea where Walter is, because he's aboard William Bell's Tramp Steamer of Manmade Animalbominations, where he listens in horror to Bell's grandiose plan to collapse both universes to create a new one -- maybe shutting down the bridge was a little premature, hey?
Peter and Olivia, after talking to Astrid in the hospital, work to track down Walter. Along the way, they're led back to Jessica Holt, who isn't just a potential nanite victim but apparently has been working with Bell. She plays the victim, saying someone is following her -- that someone turns out to be September, who Jessica traps with stasis runes on the floor, because I guess those are a thing, now? September demonstrates his bullet-catching ability, and when Jessica uses tech from Bell that fires bullets too fast for September to catch, Olivia telekinetically flings them back at her, killing her. That's unfortunate, because she was their only lead or whatever, and we finally getting back to using Massive Dynamic tech to questioning the dead, leading to some skin-crawling asynchronous eye movement.
So: eventually they find their way to the boat, which is already caught in some sort of trans-world nexus; Peter can see it, being from the other universe, and Olivia -- who Bell has been Cortexiphanning up so she can be the power source for his collapsing-universes plan -- can transport them there, because that's a thing she can do. They do a trust fall to the deck of the ship, and then bust in on Bell, who says he wasn't planning on having any humans in his new universe, but nevertheless he offers them the chance to be Adam and Eve. They decline; there's not likely going to be any places to buy a Bugaboo stroller in Bell's batshit new world.
But there isn't any way to stop the collapsing of the universes. Well, there is one way, and Walter figures it out: he shoots Olivia in the forehead, killing her. The universes snap back into alignment. But Olivia's dead, which would seem a little more traumatic if the show hadn't just conspicuously revealed Cortexiphan's tissue-regeneration capabilities in the first half of the finale. Although it was a little disturbing to watch Walter jam a letter opener in the back of Olivia's head to free the bullet and allow the Cortexiphan to do its work.
He does, and it does, and Olivia's all better, and Peter has found a place for them to live, and Olivia's pregnant. Everything's wrapped up in a neat little package, as one might expect for a series finale. So the final scene feels a little hastily tacked on, although not quite as much as it would have been except for the dystopian future episode in the Episode 19 slot this season. September visits Walter in his lab. “We have to warn the others. They are coming,” he says. Walter: “Who's coming?” And then we're done for now.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He goes from this right into The Bachelorette. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
We open on a bucolic scene of mountain, lake and meadow -- the kind of place beer companies pretend to get their water from. The only sour notes are the strange creatures grazing (jerkily animated) -- they look like some kind of panther dinosaur with a long tail. Oh, and there's a porcupine bat flying overhead!
And there are Walter and Bell taking it all in, but the greenscreen effect is noticeable and takes me out of it somewhat, making it difficult to pay attention to Bell nattering about how it took God seven days to make his universe, but it took Bell "considerably longer." Sure, but that was before God had to spend most of his time winning Super Bowls and Grammys for his devoted Christian followers. It would probably take him much longer today.
Then the whole scene shuts off and we see we're actually in Bell's cabin on the ship and he was projecting it with some sort of science-magic thing. "I can't wait for you to see the real thing. It's going to be magnificent. As soon as I finish making it. I just have to hook up the Blu-ray player and the sound system and then it's gonna be sweeeeeeet..."
Walter looks less than convinced at Bell's sanity -- for good reason, I suppose -- and tells him he can't do it. Bell says it's done, that the final piece has been set in motion and he couldn't stop it now if he wanted to... which he doesn't. Instead, he wants to babble on about how they as scientists are taught that there is no such thing as divine intervention, but the fact that Walter -- his trusted colleague and dearest friend -- being there to witness this seems like the hand of god.
Walter says there was nothing divine about it; he found Bell. "That's what I said: Providence," says Bell, laughing. My god, he's craggy.
Over at the Harvard lab, Peter and Olivia arrive to find it empty, apart from the uneaten lemon cake on the counter. Olivia can't raise Astrid on her cellphone, but there's nothing suspicious going on except for a vague sense of unease. Peter offers to make a pot of coffee and Olivia accepts, only to remember that his arm is in a sling and she should probably do it for him.
Then he asks if she wants to talk about the "Jedi mind trick" she pulled back on the roof and thank god Olivia appears at least to have seen Star Wars because I don't think I could have handled it otherwise. She says she can only attribute it to Cortexiphan and he's all, Yeah, but suddenly you're able to do all this crazy shit you couldn't do before. She says she doesn't know how she did it and he makes her agree to let Walter run some more tests when he gets back.
In the meantime... her cellphone rings. Private caller, says her phone, which annoyingly started Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" running through my head. It's Jessica Holt, everyone's favorite nanite victim with the sexy red hair and British accent. She apologizes to Olivia and says she didn't know who else to call: "I think someone's following me," she says, adding that it's been happening ever since she met all of them. She's at home and she sent Sarah to stay at her dad's "flat," which is SO CHARMING, you guys! We can see someone behind her, watching and making ZERO attempts to hide and after Olivia tells a relieved Jessica that they'll be right over, we see that it's September watching her. He starts to move forward, but then stops and looks down to see that he appears to be held in place by some kind of orange-glowing symbol on the floor. Well, this is a new one, I guess. FRINGE.
After the credits, Olivia and Peter have arrived at Jessica's home in Quincy, Mass., to find it empty, although her phone and wallet are still there in her purse. But there's less house than normal, because Peter finds by the back door -- where September was standing -- the section of the floor he was standing on appears to have been cut out and removed.
Olivia comes over to have a look at it and Peter recognizes Olivia's anxiety over Jessica being missing. "You didn't put this woman's life in danger. You're the one that saved her," he reminds her.
Olivia, not looking convinced, answers her ringing cellphone. It's Broyles, tell her that he needs them to meet him at Boston General -- Astrid's there with a gunshot wound. He doesn't know what happened, just that she was picked up after an anonymous call to 911, but she's out of surgery and is in stable condition. Oh and they should bring Walter with them, he says. Well, that's cause for alarm. Olivia tells Broyles that he isn't with them: "We thought that he was Astrid."
Over to the hospital now and Astrid has no idea where Walter is; the last time she saw him was at the warehouse: "We were looking for Bell. Walter thinks he's still alive." Everyone looks confused by this and Peter asks what warehouse she's talking about. And now Astrid is confused: "By the waterfront. Where I got shot." Broyles tells her she wasn't found at the waterfront, which means somebody moved her and called 911 and Peter, squeezing her hand and hopefully not rupturing anything, says it means they didn't want her dead. Well, they SHOT HER IN THE BACK, so let's just say their feelings on Astrid's death are conflicted at best.
Anyway, she figures it was the crew of armed men that shot her who probably took Walter and then, heartbreakingly, she starts to sob as she apologizes to Peter for not being able to protect Walter. Oh, don't worry about it. Walter's not even really his dad!
Astrid gives them the address of the warehouse and says there was something going on: "We heard strange noises, animals that I didn't recognize." Oh, come on. Does Astrid's linguistics expertise include knowledge of all animal sounds, so that she would classify an animal noise as strange? "There's something off about that hippo noise!" At any rate, Olivia figures they're probably gone by now, but Peter wants to go anyway and maybe they'll find something. Well, OBVIOUSLY, Peter. Olivia was JUST SAYING. Broyles promises to let Olivia know if the Boston Police find out anything about Jessica Holt. Peter and Olivia head out the door, with Astrid tearfully warning them to be careful.
And yeah, the armed men are probably gone, but since an FBI agent was SHOT IN THE BACK in what world is the FBI not descending on the warehouse with a fully armored SWAT team? I mean, "We assume they're gone" doesn't cut it and even if they're not going to bring backup, you'd think Peter and Olivia would be a little more cautious as they pull up to the warehouse and approach the door.
Instead, they're yammering away about what infecting people with nanites and using the sun's light to ignite an oil reserve have to do with collapsing two universes to create a new one. Peter doesn't know if there's an answer other than to awkwardly shoehorn plot points into clunky dialogue.
So they stroll into the warehouse, with Olivia finally figuring that maybe it's a good idea to take her gun out. But good lord, if you think you need your gun, maybe the guy with his ARM IN A SLING shouldn't be the one leading you into the warehouse where your colleague was shot.
They find September, standing on the chunk of Jessica Holt's floor. This is, it's safe to say, unexpected. Peter asks what he's doing there. "I am not here of my own volition," says September. Before they get any more answers, Jessica Holt steps out with her own gun and orders Olivia to put down hers. Great job, Fringe. Top-notch work you're doing right now.
Olivia doesn't comply, but asks what she's doing. Jessica says she's sure many things are racing through her mind right now, but none of them is as important as what she is about to say: "If you ever want to see Walter again, but down your gun." Olivia does so and slides it over to Jessica. Jesus Olivia, don't over-deliver! Not here!
Olivia correctly surmises that Jessica works for Bell and Peter yells at September that he's obviously here because this is important, so why doesn't he do something. Well, A) he's not one of The Doers and B) as Jessica explains, the "stasis runes" at his feet keep him stuck where he is. So I guess "stasis runes" are a thing now. "Unfortunately for you, this was a future you didn't foresee," she taunts September. Yeah, about that: I guess the Observers see all futures except the most inconvenient ones. Jessica tells Olivia that Dr. Bell said, given how concerned September is about the events in her life and that if they put her in harm's way, September would appear.
Olivia's also figured out that the day Jessica was infected, it was intentional and she never even had a daughter. "I hate kids," says Jessica, which of course makes her even more of a monster in the movie and television world. Then she wants to see how concerned she is about September, she says, and she fires three shots at him, which he stops with his hands dropping three bullets to the floor. Those stasis runes have a very limited range, it appears.
Olivia smiles and Jessica explains that they operate at "hyper-attenuated time" and it looks almost like magic but is really just tech that lets them move very fast. So she whips out a fancy gun that she says is an invention of Dr. Bell's that shoots faster. She fires. September clenches his fist, but he missed the bullet, judging from the spreading bloodstain on his white shirt. I have to admit, I'm kind of curious to see what it will look like if September falls over whilst still stuck by the stasis runes. A frantic Olivia asks Jessica what she wants and Jessica points out that September feels no emotion and possibly no pain. "This won't upset him. But it appears to upset you," she says and raises the gun again.
Olivia urgently yells for her to stop and to tell her what it is she wants. Jessica pauses, but only briefly and then fires three more shots. And this time it is Olivia's outstretched palm that appears to stop the bullets and then, with a slight twitch, fires them back at Jessica. As Jessica crumples to the ground, Peter and Olivia exchange "holy shit" looks, while even September -- who has been shot in the chest -- is looking at Olivia all "Dude!"
After the commercial break, Olivia and Peter are trying to figure out how to help the emotionless time-travelling dude trapped by the "stasis runes" at his feet. Peter has called EMTs and I would really like to see them attend to this guy. Peter asks about the runes, which spark when he touches them. September admits to being surprised that "they" (maybe Bell's crew or any humans in general) knew of the methodology, which is beyond them. Apparently it's not beyond them, actually. Peter grabs a piece of wood, the kind that is usually just lying around empty warehouses and scrapes away at the runes. He only has to obliterate a bit of it before it loses power and September is able to fall from his standing position and let Olivia check his wound. Peter asks if he knows where Walter is. September thinks for a moment, but then says he doesn't know.
Then Olivia says, "At least now we know how you got shot." September looks confused as Olivia talks about how he came to her at the opera house and said that in every version of the future, she would have to die. September says the conversation she's referring to hasn't happened yet for her, but he'll investigate the future and find out what he meant. He stands up and says he hopes he gets back to her in time. With the sirens in the distance getting louder, he turns and walks away -- and vanishes.
Olivia wastes not a second before turning back to Peter and asking what they should do about finding Walter, because their only lead is dead. As Jack Bauer would put it, "Dammit! That was our only lead!" Peter says that doesn't mean they can't still question her.
And then we're in the Harvard lab, with Jessica's torso plugged full of cords and wires, with Peter directing Olivia and correcting her by explaining that she needs another one "right in the thinker" and tapping his temple. And that's where Olivia injects a needle full of science potion. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" he asks her.
And Nina rolls in with technicians, skipping the small talk and asking how long Jessica has been dead. Peter tells her about twenty-five minutes and Nina tells her assistants to use the "negative prongs" first or else she'll short out. Also, they should start with a trickle of DC and let it calibrate. Nina looks at Jessica's corpse. "Pretty," she says. Yes she was, Olivia. Nina fires some sort of bolt into Jessica's temple and tells Peter there will come a time when she'll ask how Peter knew about this technology. Then she fires a gun into the other side to complete the Frankenstein look and tells Peter to maintain her body temperature at roughly eighty-five degrees.
While Peter goes to get ice packs, Nina sits down with a distraught Olivia to reassure her that if Jessica knew anything about what happened to Walter, they'll find it out. Olivia points out that Jessica took a chance at dying at John McClane Centre for whatever her mission is and that she was counting on Olivia to save her and then use her feelings for Peter to save him too: "Why is he [by which she means Bell] activating her now? Why is he doing this?" asks Olivia.
Nina says that despite the different set of memories she has now, she's still the same girl Nina knew and it's her capacity for feeling that made her a perfect candidate for the trials. "William must want -- no, he needs something from you. Something only you can provide," says Nina.
And we finally get back to the tramp steamer, with Walter asking Bell what he could possibly hope to gain by destroying both universes. Bell says it was all Walter's idea: "Peter died twice! You hated God! 'What kind of god would cause so much suffering?' That's what you said!" Bell reminds Walter that he decided to create a universe that would operate by his own rules and then, when he realized he was smart enough to actually do such a thing, asked Walter to cut out a portion of his brain. Walter's not enjoying the trip down memory lane that Bell is providing, as he explains (with flashback visual aids) that they cut those ideas out of Walter's head to put the genie back in the bottle. As for Bell, he grew older, more cynical, craggier and more cancer-ridden and he realized that dosing himself with Cortexiphan would slow it down, but slowing is not stopping. Fortunately for Bell, he had Walter around to rant about shit, which made Bell realize that God made them in his image and if they are capable of being gods, then it is their destiny to do so.
Walter looks like he's going to be sick and can stomps up to Bell's desk to tell him no, but Bell's not having it: "My dear friend: Even if you deny it now, you have always been playing god. I am." Which I guess makes it Bell's fault that Community only gets 13 episodes year, right?
After the commercial break, the dead Jessica is ready to be questioned. Peter flips the switch on the "filament" or whatever that zaps the Jessica corpse into asynchronous eye movement. She's blinking and talking with a creepy echo and complaining about not being able to feel her arms and legs. "Where is Walter?" asks Peter, but Jessica wants to know what they did to her. Then her eyes close.
Peter asks if she fainted and Nina's all, "No, that's not possible. She's not alive. She can't faint" and nobody points out that usually death precludes blinking and TALKING. And then Jessica comes to, with her eyes rolling around independent of each other and calling for her mom. Or, as the British say, "mummy." While Peter and Olivia badger Jessica over where Walter is, she natters about her blue bicycle with a bell on it and how she left it in the rain and it rusted. Nina asks where William Bell is and Jessica says, "He's all wet, I expect," and sings a song about man being blind or out of his mind to go out to sea. Peter translates that to mean that William Bell is on a boat. Jessica spews nonsense about Bell being a brilliant man and says something about the birth of a new world born of the collapse. Olivia asks how Bell is going to give birth to a new world if they closed the bridge between the two universes and I'd like to point out to her that it's not like it was a fact that closing the bridge would fix things, but just an assumption of Walter's.
At any rate, Jessica says something about Bell needing an energy source and then babbles about Noah bringing onto the ark every creature he needed to populate the new world. "Dammit, Jessica, what energy source?" shouts Olivia, grabbing Jessica's arm and answering her own question when her fingers flash and the electrical circuits reanimating Jessica short out, not to mention sending a shower of sparks out of every overhead light in the lab. Everyone appears to figure out what's happening at the same time and a Gauss meter confirms it, based on the extraordinary electromagnetic energy she's giving off, that she's the power source. "Bell's going to try and use me to collapse the two universes. That's why he's been activating me," she says. Well, maybe the folks from Earth-2 can help. Oh wait, you closed the bridge because of Walter's conjecture. Anyway, Nina thinks that if William is using the energy Olivia's generating, she thinks she knows how to find him.
Over in the Fringe situation room, Broyles gets a report from an agent that a general cargo freighter left Boston Harbor this morning and then fell off the radar fifteen minutes later. Peter grumbles that it was six hours ago and could be two-hundred miles off the coast by now. Fortunately, Nina's there to "explain" to Broyles that Olivia's giving off an exceedingly strong and specific electromagnetic field. "I assume you can't turn her off," says Broyles. Hey, if you wanted to turn Olivia off, I bet Lincoln Lee would prove useful right now. Nina says they can use her to find Bell an Walter, because the frequency at which Olivia is resonating will also be the frequency at the epicenter of the dimensional intersection, so they can identify the exact location where the universes overlap, which is where Bell will be if he wants to survive the collapse.
Peter and Olivia wait, anxiously, for the special satellites to come online and then some agent reports a squall about eighty miles offshore east of Boston and another reports three microquakes: Albany, New York; Waterville, Vermont; and Worcester, Massachusetts. "It's started. The universes are colliding," says Nina. George is getting upset! Peter looks around the situation room for Olivia, but she's suddenly vanished.
He finds her alone in a quiet office, fretting about what Bell has in store for now, which means it's time for some extra-strength Peter sensitivity. He pulls up a chair and tells her that it's gonna be OK, but she says that for the first time she doesn't think it is.
She says she remembers being in the lab in Jacksonville when Walter and William were doing the Cortexiphan trials. "I remember how it smelled, how I felt, how scared I was, how all alone I was," she says and now it's years later and nothing has changed; she's still that little girl and William Bell is still doing experiments on her and she's still being used.
Peter tells her that something has changed: "This time, you're not alone." Olivia half-smiles, looking like she wants to -- but doesn't quite -- believe that it makes a difference and then goes in for a hug anyway.
Back on the tramp steamer, Walter is looking at a pistol and bullets that William Bell has displayed under glass in his office when Bell calls him over to look out the window. Or "porthole," FINE, whatever it is. He's reluctant, so Bell appeals to his pure scientific curiosity: "You've never seen anything like this. It's marvelous." Walter looks outside. We don't see yet, but he asks, "How?" and Bell says it's Olivia and that Walter was right; she's truly a remarkable girl. We pull back from the boat and see clouds that are, I suppose, encircling the ship, lightning crackling underneath. I guess that means the shuffleboard tournament with the porcupine bats will have to be moved below decks.
After a commercial break, we're back in the Fringe situation room, where they've pinpointed the boat at eighty-four miles due east of Nantucket. Broyles tells an aide to "call upstairs" and tell them they need choppers and he orders Olivia and Peter to get suited up.
And here comes Fringe to save the day! With, uh, three helicopters, one of which carries a pilot, Nina Sharp and Peter and Olivia. Well, it's only TWO UNIVERSES COLLAPSING, guys, so I can understand you guys waiting for a REAL emergency.
Onboard the Talos, Walter urges Bell not to do this and Bell is starting to go from persuading to irritated. "We deserve this," he says. Walter's disappointed, although he might come around if Bell splices together Berry Boom with Red Vines.
Up in Peter and Olivia's chopper, the pilot has arrived at the coordinates, but he's "got no visual," which means he can't see anything. Olivia asks about the uplink and "maybe they're jamming us" whatever any of that means. Meanwhile, Peter is all "Are you kidding me? It's right there!" but no one else can see anything.
Nina figures it out: "If William is trying to collapse the universes, it stands to reason that the fabric between the universes is growing thin here where his ship is," she says, and Olivia's all, BUT THERE'S NO SHIP, and Nina says "not in this here." The ship has already phased entirely out of sync with our universe, she says, and Peter picks up on it. "I'm from the other side, so I resonate at a different frequency," he says.
I'm not sure this entirely makes sense. I mean, why doesn't that mean Peter just sees stuff from Earth-2 all the time? But it's a little late to be arguing that point and at any rate they have a bigger problem: If it has already crossed into the other universe, there's no way for them to go to it, what with the bridge being closed.
And then Olivia reminds them that she's able to cross over and Nina concurs, since Olivia now has as much activated Cortexiphan in her system as the Olivia from the original timeline. So with Peter being able to see the ship and Olivia being able to reach it, they can do it together, says Nina, one of those great moments on Fringe where it's "We've never experienced this supernatural situation before but we will make ironclad proclamations on how to handle it."
Olivia doubts her ability to do it so Nina babbles some clichéd bullshit about how she's had the power all along. Good enough for me! Olivia and Peter exchange glances and then take off their ear protection, open the door and get ready to jump. Olivia tells Peter that if he's lost his mind, now would be the time to tell her. He smiles and tells the pilot to "take it to port, about three yards," and then he yells "Now!" and he and Olivia jump. You know, they could have taken a life preserver along in case it didn't work. Better to take one and not need it, then need it and not have it, right?
But it works; as they plummet, there's a flash, and suddenly they're landing on a shipping container on board the Talos. Peter almost slides off, having much more difficulty hanging on, thanks to his bum arm. Olivia helps him back up. "It worked!" he says. Olivia asks if he's surprised and he admits he is. Also surprising her; he lifted a handgun from the pilot, saying she can't be the only one who always gets to carry one.
SO they make their way below decks, through the menagerie with the hay strewn all over the floor. "I think this is his ark," says Peter.
Fortunately, they're in time to catch some of Bell's speechifying, which is still going on. He's reciting Yeats with his eyes closed, which gives Walter the chance to remove and the load the Luger from its display case, but before he gets a chance to use it, Olivia and Peter burst in, Peter with his gun leveled at Bell, who sniffs that he wasn't planning to have any humans. "What a troublesome species we can be, after all," he says, like those porcupine bats are going to be so simple to look after. Jesus, come to think of it, I'd hate to be the one who has to mop out the stalls in the Talos menagerie.
Bell explains that he figured he and Walter would die off (beats the two of them figuring out some weird way to impregnate themselves, I suppose) and then his new universe would be unencumbered by mankind's savage whims.
But now the fact that Peter and Olivia have made it his far has made Bell impressed by humanity's ability to persevere and survive and you kinda think that maybe as a scientist he'd already be at least somewhat aware of mankind's adaptability. At any rate, he tells them that they've earned their place in the new order, as a final breeding pair -- a new Adam and Eve. But Bell and Walter will still be there, right? Because we'll finally have the Adam and Steve couple that the bigots are always going on about.
Peter ignores Olivia's obvious fig-leaf appeal and, waving his gun around, orders Bell to shut it down. Bell tells "young Peter" to shoot him if he must, but he can't turn it off, because the chain reaction has begun. There's some talk of Olivia being a "living uncertainty engine" and that every step she takes brings them closer to Nirvana and every beat of her heart tears the world from its hinges. Sounds like an evil Police song that could get mistakenly used as a love song in countless weddings! Peter steps closer and puts his gun against Bell's chest. "Go ahead. I will not be the first god martyred for creation," says Bell.
Peter's shaking because he doesn't really want to do it, but the moment's about to pass anyway. Walter says, "Forgive me," and shoots Olivia in the forehead! Which deserves probably more exclamation marks than I'm comfortable handing out! Can't say I saw that coming! I mean, it's not like even now I had any concern that Olivia was going to stay dead, but at least Walter shooting her was a surprise. "Noooo!" shouts Peter and he rushes to Olivia's crumpled body.
Outside, the ship snaps from the other universe back into the clear skies of ours, with the three helicopters circling overhead desperately hoping that the prevention of Armageddon doesn't rest solely on their shoulders.
Inside, Peter cradles Olivia's head and yells, "You killed her!" at Walter, who turns his gun on a surprised -- and impressed -- Bell. "If that's what you consider learning a lesson from the past..." he says, and rings the ship's bell, "...you paid a steep price." We had one of those in the university bar where I bartended. If someone rang it there, they had to buy everyone a drink. Here, it makes Walter shimmer out of sight. "We could have all been so happy together," he says as he disappears. "You killed her," whispers Peter, hugging Olivia's lifeless body.
After the commercial break, Walter tries to step in, but Peter angrily tells him not to touch her. "We have to move rapidly if we're going to save her," says Walter. Peter points out that she's dead and Walter has to remind him that that means much less on this show than it does on most others. He slaps Peter to get his attention and then directs him to Bell's desk, telling him to get the letter opener and to clear everything else off it.
They lay her body down, and Walter explains that Olivia's brain is saturated with Cortexiphan, making it regenerative, so if he can get the bullet out before the Cortexiphan wears off, he'll be able to save her. "It's like my lemon cake that was so conspicuous by its weirdness as it introduces a heretofore unknown side effect of Cortexiphan last episode," says Walter.
And then, Walter -- and I found this harder to watch than Walter shooting Olivia in the forehead, especially with all the wet sounds being made -- sticks the letter opener in the back of her head to create an exit wound and then jams a metal rod into the wound in her forehead to push the bullet out of the back of her head. Walter pulls the rod out, and blood drips from the hole in Olivia's forehead.
Then, after an agonizing moment or two, the hole starts to close up. "It worked," says Walter, finally starting to sob and he and Peter put their heads together as Olivia's wound disappears and she starts to breathe again. Hey, I'm sure this will be something they'll all laugh about someday! "Walter, remember when you shot me in the forehead? Buy me a beer!"
Over in Washington, Broyles is in Senator Van Horn's office. I suppose the rejiggered timeline means he's not a shapeshifter anymore, right? Van Horn tells him that despite full international cooperation, there's no sign of William Bell, but the biological materials from the ark have been cryogenically quarantined for future study and his team will have full access if that's what he wants.
And then even more significant: because the committee wants to acknowledge the work he and his team have done to protect the country and the world, they're granting his request for significant funding to upgrade their operational and scientific divisions. Broyles may be doing the Dance of Joy internally but his outside remains stoic. "And thank you, Phillip, for keeping us all safe at night," says Van Horn. Broyles says he's welcome.
But wait, there's more! Van Horn stands up and says, "That will be all, General Broyles." Broyles reminds him that it's "Colonel," but of course this is Van Horn's way of revealing that Broyles has been promoted. Broyles finally allows himself to look slightly surprised and/or pleased.
Outside, Nina's waiting for him to ask how it went. Broyles says it went better than expected and Fringe Division now finds itself with a fully funded science division and no one to run it. "Nina, you want a job?" She giggles and takes his arm. Typical government bullshit! Handing jobs to friends without doing a proper search for candidates.
Meanwhile, over at Boston General hospital, Walter and Peter are waiting, presumably to make sure that Olivia's bullet wound hasn't caused any lasting damage and Walter says he thinks that due to the intense energy utilization, Olivia's Cortexiphan levels should be almost negligible. Peter asks what that means. "Well, meaning that she won't be able to run around setting things on fire or doing superhuman things," says Walter, which would be all well and good if this were -- as seemed likely not all that long ago -- the series finale. Since we're going to have a Season 5, I for one would like to see telekinesis and pyrokinesis and anything else superhuman Olivia could do!
Walter stops an orderly passes by carrying jars of a yellowish substance to ask her if its lemon Jell-O and she tells him that they're urine samples. Anyone who's watched this show more than once tenses up and waits for Walter to say something cringe-inducing and he doesn't disappoint: "Oh, well, in that case, no, thank you. I'm more peckish than thirsty.
Peter wants to get back to what they're talking about. Is he saying Olivia's normal now? "Well, the treatments did leave a biological signature, so I suppose some abilities could emerge at some point during Season 5, but for all intents and purposes, yes, I believe she may be," he says.
Astrid, still apparently a patient -- takes someone longer to recover from a gunshot wound when she's not riddled with Cortexiphan, it seems -- asks if Olivia's out yet. Peter shakes his head and asks Astrid how she's holding up. Astrid gives a little groan in response.
A doctor comes out to tell them Olivia's all done and ready to go home, so a happy Peter gets up. Astrid sits down and -- much to Walter's delight -- pulls out a bag of red licorice. I like the suggestion that Astrid has some sort of hookup and therefore a network beyond Olivia and the Bishops, who sometimes kinda forget about her. "Thank you, Astrid," says Walter and Astrid is touched that he called her by her real name and he's barely aware of it. He's probably high.
Peter stomps into Olivia's room with a red circle around a listing in the newspaper, saying he found a perfect two-storey in Brookline and speaking as someone who works at a newspaper, WHO READS NEWSPAPERS ANYMORE? I guess this is easier than pulling out the iPad to show her a listing on Kijiji. She starts to say something, but he rolls right over her say that after everything they've been through in the last couple of days -- hell, the last couple of years -- they deserve a little normalcy. Actually, he says they deserve a "little bit of normal" and can I say at this point that I'm a little tired of using adjectives as nouns?
Anyway, Olivia says it's perfect, and then Peter gets serious and says it looks like the Observer was right, that in every version of the future, she had to die. "But I never want to lose you again," he says. They hug and when they finally come up for air, Olivia's got a little more news to share, only it's something that absolutely everyone sees coming: "Peter, I'm pregnant." Peter stares at her for a moment and then breaks out smiling. He goes in for a kiss and is stopped by Walter clearing his throat -- looks like Astrid and Walter managed to make it to the doorway for the announcement. Then they start making out anyway, which is fun for everyone. Walter puts his arm around Astrid and the two of them beam as they watch what presumably would have been the last shot of the series, Peter and Olivia smooching.
And then we go to Harvard for a scene that I'm willing to bet was added on last minute. Or maybe it wasn't, given this season's Episode 19 and its suggestion of dark times to come.
At any rate, Walter's in a good mood, whistling a lullaby and making a toasted peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich, when he looks up and September is there. He doesn't appear to have a bullet wound. "I don't suppose you're here for a sandwich," says Walter, glumly. September says they have to warn the others: "They are coming." Walter raises his eyebrows slightly and asks, grimly, "Who's coming?" But we're going to have to wait a few months for any kind of answer.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He's torn equally between wishing this was the end of Fringe and glad the end has been postponed. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.
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