I just finished watching the season finale of Fringe, one of my favorite new shows this year, and I’m not left with as many questions as I expect to after tomorrow’s Lost season finale but there still some swirling around in my head.
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The episodes in the two prior weeks established their sense of a parallel universe/alternate world using an illustration of diverging paths at each possible decision point as a fundamental base. In my philosophical studies, I have come to describe the concept as “possible worlds”, universes in which things may have been and events may have gone differently from how they turned out in our world. It is useful for discussing counterfactuals and necessity. For example, there is a possible world where something composed of elements XYZ is called “water”, not H2O, but serves the same purpose as our “water”. (The subgenre of historical fiction called alternate history is built upon key events happening differently,
Some people, like David Lewis, think these other possible worlds actually exist and are just as real as our own while others feel that they do not actually exist and are only possible because the differences between those worlds and our own did not occur. In any case, most of them agree it would be impossible to move between possible worlds and they can only think about them in speculation.
Fringe appears to operating on the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, although there has been only one alternate world of prominence: the one where William Bell (portrayed by Leonard Nimoy) has been hanging out for the past few months (let’s call it “World B”). This is the world that assumably was being referred to in the ZFT manifesto as the one will soon be at war with Olivia’s main world. Some events have occured the same as Olivia’s own (e.g., Barack Obama becoming president of the United States) while others have clearly not the World Trade Center towers not collapsing. (By pure coincidence, I watched the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire and thought it was very good & entertaining. I recommend it.)
Will we see other parallel universes than World B or are there only two, like in Futurama? (see the episode called “I Dated A Robot”) The ’90s show Sliders banked that there were infinitely many – that worked for stand-alone episodes, such as one where San Francisco is a preserve for dinosaurs, but that became almost meaningless once the sliders began fighting the Kromaggs in the last two seasons.
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The first few times Walter was seen in front of a grave, I had initially thought that it was Peter’s mother (and Walter’s wife). Peter reminiscing about Walter making whale-shaped pancakes at the beach house made that stronger. However, the reveal of the actual inscription – “Peter Bishop 1978-1985″ – made more sense. There has been a theory that the current Peter may be a clone and though that is plausible considering Walter, what about his current age? (I’m assuming that the character is as old as Joshua Jackson, who was born in 1978.) Very little is known about his childhood and neither he nor Walter have said anything about Peter’s mother. I’m thinking that current Peter may be from World B since Walter had to build a “patch” to fill the hole caused by generating a portal to an alternate world and worked with Bell, and presumably others, on such a project.
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The mention of a thinning membrane between the two worlds reminded me of an anime I once watched called Zettai Shonen (絶対少年 - Absolute Boy). In that series, the advance of human development was cited as a cause of Material Fairies and Material Evils appearing, depicted as small floating metal ships. Sadly, I don’t recall exactly how that ended – I think it had something to do with dead peoples’ souls somehow? I’ve been meaning to do a rewatch, anyway.
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Finally, some other questions I have:
Who will be the next ringleader of the ZFT group, now that David Robert Jones was dismaterialised in half?
Where will the next “weak spots” in the interdimensional membrane be found and potentially be exploited?
What will happen with Rachel’s divorce? (Actually, I don’t care that much about that or if she returns. However, her and her daughter’s vacancy from Olivia’s apartment could leave the door open for future romantic moments between Olivia and Peter, which I’m not entirely for but also not fervently opposed to.)
How else is World B different from the main world?
Did Nina Sharp really go “out of the country” or was she attending to some strange incident?
