Fringe thoughts - half incoherent.
Fringe:
In my thirty plus years, I never loved a series as much as I loved Fringe. I’m in mourning - which is ridiculous and stupid, it’s a bloody TV show. A series shouldn’t affect me this hard but I bawled like a baby yesterday, and today, I’m flat, don’t have a single story idea in my head, and no desire to write, which is odd for me post ep.
Bullet points regarding the end, there were two possibilities for the reset, although like Mona by the end of the series I was hoping they’d chose neither and resolve the conflict in the present day (cough, I mean 2036) rather than wiping out the last twenty odd years and restarting at 2015. And if they had to do a reset, I was personally hoping it would be a complete reset - Walternate saves Peter without the Observers - and he grows up in red verse. Mostly because shipping isn’t the be all and end all for me, and secondly because that path led to a whole slew of possible fan-fics. But putting personal preferences aside, the ending they did choose, concluding with that day at the park, I’m happy with, ecstatic even, because it was beautifully acted, and oddly enough, the story makes sense.
A lot of fandom's discontent seems to stem from the idea that if there are no Observers - then there’s no one to rescue Peter and Walter from the lake when they cross over - and no, I don’t think the writers forgot about it, season four in fact, already dealt with it - because there were no Observers at the lake when Peter and Walter crossed over - and yes, the red Peter who should have been raised in the new amber timeline did in fact die. Walter lost both Peter’s in 1985. There were no survivors. Without September there - without the Observers - Peter drowned in Reiden lake, aged seven, and without the Observers, Walter managed to drag himself onto the ice and save his own life. All of this was accomplished (or lost) without interference, all of this was established in season four.
But the Peter we have on our screen isn’t the amber Peter. He’s blue-ish, with the blue history and the blue memories. He’s the original paradox.
Note the word - and the word Fringe has always used - is paradox, definition: a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement. 2 a person or thing conflicting with a preconceived notion of what is reasonable or possible.
He should have ceased to exist (and briefly did) when his timeline ceased to exist, except Olivia, through cortexiphan or love or some magical combination of the two wouldn’t let him go. He shouldn’t be there at all - and yet he is. It doesn’t matter what they do to his 'past' in amber because Peter was never there to begin with, he arrived fully formed as an adult in the amber timeline in 2012. So far, so good, the Fringe writers haven’t done anything wrong, and if you accepted Peter in season four under that premise (Olivia saved him. Or if you're not a shipper, the Machine protected and spat him out in the newly reformed world), then there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t accept his continued presence post re-set in season five.
He’s not part of this timeline - he’s the flotsam and jetsam - the remaining debris of blue.
The second argument is a little more tricky: and that’s when you take it one step backward and ignore the crossing at the lake and focus your attention on Walternate being distracted by September in the lab.
If the Observers never exist - which is Walter’s and September’s end-plan in season five - then Walternate was never distracted at the lab. He would have found the cure for his own son in Boston, while Elizabeth and Peter were at Reiden Lake. Peter would have been raised in red-verse, and our amber/blue Walter would have had no reason for crossing over in the first place (the scenario I was personally hoping for). I liked it as a theory because it’s nice and neat and a solid argument - it doesn't involve the word 'paradox', ironically it's logical, not messy at all. But having said that, (and liked it) there are rebuttals for it, too, the most important of which is this - the telling of Peter’s ‘kidnapping’.
There are three different tellings of this story, retold over the first three seasons of Fringe, and in each season, the story is subtly different.
Season 1 (There is more than one of Everything): "Around this time, something was lost to me, Peter. Something precious. I became convinced that if only I could cross over myself, then I could take from there what I had lost from here."
I watched the first two seasons of Fringe on DVD, and I remember my first reaction to that scene - specifically the wording and the emphasis - indicated that it was an out-and-out kidnapping. That the mad Walter, the Walter that was, the one hinted at but never seen on TV, (the one who shocked Peter as a boy, who thought human experiments and experiments on children no less was perfectly acceptable, the one who Walter was terrified would collaborate with the Observers in 5:09, the one filled with his own hubris - the one who, unlike Walternate, removed pieces of his brain to change who he was becoming) was motivated by loss. He saw a chance to take another person’s son and replace what he, personally, coveted. That he went over there with the express purpose of kidnapping Peter. I was dead certain of it when we first glimpsed Walter with his full brain function in season two's Grey Matter, that showdown between Walter and Newton remains one of my favourite scenes to this day - and gave me chills with just how coldly indifferent Walter was portrayed. I actually believed that theory right up until I saw the episode Peter and then I thought bugger - got that one completely wrong. Because version two of that story was no longer - then I could take from there what I had lost from here - version two of that story was, my son was dying, and I was the only one who could fix him; crossing over was an act of compassion, best intentions gone wrong, version two of that story was:
"And I realised at that moment that despite what I’d promised, what I fully intended to do….that I could never take Peter back. The way she looked at him, I saw in her what I feared most in myself when I saw him…that I couldn’t lose him again."
Suddenly it isn’t about taking something that was lost, it’s about saving something, and then being unable to return it, having a version of their son right there with them, living and breathing, and deciding to keep him, despite the ethical wrongness. By the time season three rolls by, the story has evolved one more time:
"These lies were supposed to be a temporary measure. We were supposed to have him home well before it got this far." It’s no longer I could never take Peter back….I couldn’t lose him again - instead it’s ‘I have every intention of keeping my promise.’
All three versions exist within Fringe’s parameters - this is how it happened, this is how it happened, and this is how it happened - Walter's id, ego, and superego, all three versions are extremely plausible. Suffice to say, if it’s the original version of the story you're looking at - then you don’t need September in the lab, or any other Observer at all - because the Walter that was would cross over and take that boy regardless, setting the original chain of events in motion. Because he can, because he doesn't care about the consequences, because he wants his son back.
Blue Peter is always stolen. Amber/red Peter always dies at the bottom of Reiden Lake, because there were no Observers.
Peter is the: one person or thing conflicting with the preconceived notion of what is reasonable or possible, he's the original paradox, the sole survivor of a reality that happened, but was over-written, and it isn't logical. To quote Elizabeth, in the episode that first introduced the concept of the White Tulip to the audience, at its centre Fringe is about: a scientist who used his heart and his imagination to shape the world he wanted, at it's core, Fringe favours feeling over logic and always has.
As a pre-existing paradox - the only character who's not a part of the amber timeline (or at least, not before 2012) - Peter's the most logical person to take Michael into the future - ideally you want to limit your number of walking contradictions, not increase them to the number of two - except Peter’s already made the sacrifice of resetting time once before, the very thing that made him a paradox to begin with, and Walter won’t allow, or ask his son to do it again, not when he has Etta and Olivia, not when he finally etched a home for himself