Lincoln Lee meeting himself? Charlie? Fauxlivia? Judging by the promo, Back to Where You’ve Never Been will be awesome.
It was also, technically, supposed to be the fall season finale. Instead we left off on an episode that I liked very much, but that very clearly seems to be more about setting things in motion. Thank baseball! Hopefully, Fringe doesn’t suffer too much by the hiatus.
So. Is Amber-Earth really a third alternate timeline, or will Walternate reveal that it was the right one along? Or will he drop an even more unexpected bomb.
I’d really like to see it all resolve somehow. Maybe not literally, but so we actually have some idea of what happened. One thing I sort of didn’t like was that in timeline I, an Observer distracted Wlaternate and Walter saw it and etc. In timeline II, all that is different is that Walter was not successful at saving Peter. So, the Observers were still meddling in Timeline 0 before it branched (apparently). So sup with that?
I hope that at some point, they resolve the time thing somehow – maybe not put it all back together into a cohesive whole, but explain what was up with the observers and the split – what actually happened – and how the timelines and parallel universes are interrelated. Because we don’t have Blue Earth, Red Earth, and Amber Earth – we have Timeline I and II, which both include totally different Red and Blue universes. I also hope they get into the far-out physics as well, as I read a bit about the shape of the Universe and the big bang and bubble universes and Fringe could really go there, the same way Madeline L’Engle does.
Also, they would ideally allow us to see some of the character development we anticipated from Timeline I. I think that’s what can be frustrating about time travel – when it is used as a cop out of a storyline, it bites, which this may or may not turn out to be. When it’s not, time storylines are awesome.
My personal theory is that the Observers are constant. Or rather, if you’re an Observer, you’re outside time, so you can see different points in time, and also all the different possible timelines. Of course that may or may not be the case, but it’s what makes sense to me.
As to the timelines, what would make sense to me (and I think Walter’s original explanation in season 1) would support this) is that there wasn’t an actual specific split, rather that there are infinite universes for all the different possibilities where different things happened or different choices were made. Because the Red Earth existed before Walter figured out a way to look into it, and it was already different, you know?
I guess the thing is that I’ve always seen Red and Blue Earths themselves as radically different timelines, so the way I see it, I guess is that the “Amber Earth” is actually a timeline that is very similar but slightly different to Blue, and the same for Red (Blue 1.5 and Red 1.5??). Of course, there’s people that are saying that Peter probably IS in the right universe, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I guess we have to wait till January to know either way.
But yeah, they haven’t actually explained exactly what it was that Peter did at the end of season 3… to be honest I suspect they might just leave that vague. They dropped the First People too, but THAT still needs resolution (SOMEONE has to go back and plant that stuff at some point afterall).
I love Madeline L’Engle. I haven’t read those books in years, but A Wrinkle In Time blew my mind delightfully when I was 12. :)
And you’re right, time travel stories are very tricky to handle, and when they’re botched they end up being really frustrating. I hope Fringe can walk the tightrope. And I do want to know what happened in the original timelines… at the same time, I’m now also invested in the new one, particularly in Lincoln Lee.
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