Talk Fringe with me!

[rivkat]

Fringe: I felt like we got back towards it being Olivia’s story, so I’m not finishing bitter. Olivia Dunham: Excuse me while I power down a city and smash my enemy with the power of my mind! God, she’s still so amazing. Not to mention the return of some of the more memorable causes of death, though I don’t know why the Observer would see the same butterflies …

It was also good to see the alternate universe back to finish up. But it brought back one of the things I never understood: just WTF went on between Olivia and altLivia in the absence of Peter, in the new timeline? They seemed all huggy, which is hard for me to believe if altLivia infiltrated, even if in the new timeline she didn’t sleep with Peter. (Which our Olivia now remembers, while AltLivia doesn’t because she didn’t do it; good to see Olivia getting past that awkwardness.) So did it all go a ton better without Peter? That would make Walternate less likely to order the infiltration/impersonation. But even in the new timeline, Walter did steal Peter, right, thus triggering Walternate’s deep hatred? Peter just died when he was supposed to. Because otherwise how did the rift between the worlds get started in the first place? Or did Walter open the rift but not steal Peter in the new timeline, meaning that it wasn’t in fact his desire to save his son but his lust for knowledge that opened the rift and endangered the universes? Ugh, I am confused.

Comments

[marcelo]

If they wanted to reset time by "showing (future scientist) a better way" I think it should've been Olivia rather than the child Observer. I mean, she's not Observer-smart, but she doesn't need Observer tech to do pretty amazing things, so she'd be an interesting branching point (so Etta could have literally been the start of a better future for mankind, and so on).

I'm kind of confused too (Cortexiphan side effect? :P) but I think that in the last timeline Walter did cross over and steal Peter, who then died. Walternate hates him for the stealing, the death, and the universe-destroying, and he sent altLivia to infiltrate, but without the Peter component, Olivia's feelings are much less involved --- she can forgive the infiltration more easily, I guess, given what was at stake.

[rivkat]

On the LJ version of this post, percysowner gives a scenario like that, though it's still mysterious how they built the machine without Peter. I still think Olivia needs to have both sets of memories, at least, to be ok with Alt!Livia, even knowing that this one didn't sleep with Peter.

[marcelo]

Yes, it's a bit of a paradox. I think whatever Peter did with the machine stabilized spacetime enough that in the new baseline the universes merged near the machine without the machine having to be activated, and this bridge helped keep the universes somewhat safer. Although rereading that phrase, I'm just saying "I think it worked because it worked" :P.

Re: Olivia(s), maybe time had something to do with it? It's been quite a while in subjective time for both of them (less for Olivia than for Alt!Livia, although it hasn't been uneventful) (or do you mean her relationship before the universes split?)

[rivkat]

It's been a long time for Olivia--having a young kid will definitely create a bunch of new memories. Maybe it's just me, but I'd still hold an irrational grudge, even though I think Olivia would work past it. It was just the hugging that seemed a bit over the top to me.

[jenrose]

When I went to my 10 year reunion, someone who had been an actual enemy came up and hugged me and asked me how I was doing. We had a pleasant interaction and went about our ways and are now facebook friends.

it's been 21 years for Altlivia, and Olivia got what she wanted and has had far worse hurts since. So I just chalked it up to "high school reunion" and let it go.

I still wonder how the hell the observers were going to be invented in the future with the observers invading the past, but I'm touchy about time travel paradoxes that way and learned to let such things go a long time ago.