Warning: The following contains massive and dynamic spoilers from the Fringe series finale.
For a moment there, as the Fringe series finale barreled toward a close, you thought it might play out another way.
But it didn’t.
With Michael back in the team’s custody, Walter, Peter, Olivia et al resumed their plan to assemble a contraption that would transport the “child” Observer to 2167, where he would convince a scientist in Oslo, Norway to reconsider his plan to create what would become the evil invaders. To that end, they needed an “ignition” device, but Windmark’s team beat them to that crucial part, hijacking it from September’s sympathetic (and doomed) cohort December. Cue Astrid’s “shining moment”: the suggestion that they hijack one of the Observers shipping lane, using one of those cool cubes to reverse its flow, allowing Michael to enter, and exit in the future.
But who would lead the boy?
Walter knew it was his fate, in part because “nature abhors a paradox” — and the solution to this one was “deleting” him and Michael.
“You will never see me again,” he informed his son Peter, “to assure the future of humanity. Your future with Olivia. Your future with Etta.
“I cheated fate to be with you,” he continued, calling their time together as father and son was “stolen.” Even so, and given all they’ve been through, and in light of how it must end, “I wouldn’t change it for the world,” Walter professed. “I don’t want to say goodbye, but I will say, ‘I love you, son.’”
Peter, crestfallen, confirmed: So, a world without Observers means you and Michael have to finish your lives in future? “I know in my soul this is what I’m supposed to do,” Walter insisted, as they pulled one another into a strong, warm hug, tears welled in all four eyes. “You are my favorite thing, Peter…. My very favorite thing.”
But as noted above, we were teased with an alternate ending, when Walter later discovered that September had used the last time travel-enabling inoculation shot on himself, so that he could lead Michael to his world-saving destiny. September spoke of the emotions he felt upon being reunited with the boy, and how witnessed Walter interact with Peter gave clarity to his confusion. “When I saw what Peter meant to you, then I understood and why [my feelings] were important,” he said. “When I take his hand and I lead him [to 2167], he’ll know that I love him.” Walter explained, “That’s being a father.”
Reiterating his resolve, September assured Walter, “It’s not about fate, yours or mine. It’s about changing fate. It’s about hope and protecting our children.”
September’s highly altruistic gesture, however, was met with a change-of-fate of its own. As the Fringe team labored to hold off Windmark’s men as the shipping lane opened up — and after the cruel Captain himself was blindsided and crushed by a telekentically shoved truck — September was felled by a bullet just shy of his leaping-off point. Michael briefly mourned his father figure with a playing of the “Greensleeves” music box, then was met by a new leading hand. Walter’s. Peter mouthed, “I love you” to his father as he escorted Michael to the future, and….
We’re back in the park, from the opening scene of Season 5. Only this time when Peter calls for young Etta, saying it’s time to go home, she makes it into his arms, running. And he twirls her, while mom Olivia beams.
It is about hope and protecting our children. It is about changing fate.
I’ll have a more complete recap/additional thoughts posted on Saturday, but until then, this is your place to weigh in on Fringe‘s series finale. Was it, as Joshua Jackson assessed for us, “Correct”?
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