By Daniel
We get a blast from the past this week, as we revisit the case where a man freaked out on a plane and transformed into a porcupine man and perished along with everyone else in a fiery crash. Peter's familiarity with the case (as well as Olivia's memories, via old/new Olivia) both helps -- since he has some idea what's going on — and hinders, as some of the details have changed. In this case, Marshall (Porcupine Man) Bowman transforms back into human on the plane, but goes into beast mode and dies once he's down on the ground and being interrogated by TSA agents.
They're down a body in Fringe division, because Olivia's memory wipe means the FBI is concerned she's not the same agent they licensed. Example: she talks to an FBI shrink about how her sister went back to Chicago to be near her douchebag ex-husband. Except here, her sister is still married and she and her husband have two kids.
Of course, it's not like Olivia's going to let anything like a direct order keep her from working the case, and she shows up at the house of Marshall Bowman's partner, only to find he's a monster already; he attacks Olivia and escapes.
A tattoo of a cuneiform symbol on Bowman's corpse leads Peter to his bookseller friend, who doesn't know him or Olivia (although he can't help himself from hitting on Olivia), and with his help they track the symbol to a cult of whackjobs who are all about improving the human species; mutation by design. This is worrisome for everyone, perhaps most of all Lincoln, who may have been infected in the attack.
That monster has shown up at the home of some woman who, far from being freaked out, helps calm him down and give him an injection, while talking about how perfect they're going to be, like Adam and Eve.
Eventually, after a Massive Dynamic connection (naturally) is uncovered, and the discovery that it was an experiment overseen by David Robert Jones, the FBI finds the creature and kills it, after blinding it when they figure out that the nocturnal porcupine-bat creature would be sensitive to light. Lincoln is almost killed again twice, once by the creature and once by its human girlfriend.
The team's left with some burning questions, boiling down to what's Jones' deal, anyway? And rather than give Olivia shit for getting involved when she shouldn't have been, Broyles says they've decided she can be back on the team, since 60 percent of Olivia is better than 90 percent of everyone else.
We close out with Bowman's sister recruiting some other poor sap to the porcupine-man army, and a floating nightmare: a ship with some kind of collection of animal hybrids that we only get glimpses of. Huge spider legs here, a massive rattler's tail there. Night terrors tonight, folks.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. If we don't see the spider-creature again, he'll be really upset. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.