(Contains plot spoilers)
Episode 14 “The End of all Things” leads on from the previous episode where Olivia has been tied up in a room with Nina, held captive by none other than David Robert Jones at his crew! Nina tells Olivia that she was kidnapped the night before and reveals to Olivia that the conversations they’ve had recently was with the other Nina!!! Jones enters the room and tells Olivia that the reason she has been abducted was due to her ability displayed through using cortexiphan and presents the light box test in front of her (that Olivia managed to get to work in a previous series). Olivia, due to her sudden memory gains, is obviously aware of what she needs to do with the light box, much to Jones surprise, but warns her that whatever ability she thinks she may have, it is more great and wonderful than she can imagine. Jones’ crew begin to torture Nina in the hope that it will invoke a heightened emotional reaction from Olivia, which they know then brings on her ability, but she says she can’t do it as she’s tired! Jones then allows her to rest for an hour!!! How generous!
Whilst on their own, Olivia asks Nina to recount some of their memories together as Olivia says she is struggling to remember and that the memories she has with Nina when she was a child are starting to fade. However, Nina gets a detail of their lives together wrong, one that Olivia actually remembers, which leads Olivia to believe that she is the evil Nina from the parallel universe. Olivia continues to play along, and tells Nina that the only time that she’s ever been able to bring about her abilities was when Peter was with her. All of a sudden evil Nina pretends that she’s having some sort of spasm, and is moved from the room by Jones’ crew, leaving Olivia behind. Obviously she makes a miraculous recovery and tells Jones that they need to get Peter!!!
Meanwhile, Peter is frantically trying to find out what’s happened to Olivia and who has kidnapped her, with the finger firmly pointed at our Nina. After searching Olivia’s apartment, they come across a surveillance camera, hidden in a smoke detector, and after analysing at Walter’s lab, come across some images on the memory card.
Lincoln and Broyles take Nina into custody after finding out that someone has recently been accessing the cortexiphan samples, stored at Massive Dynamic, with the log recording that it was Nina’s bio-metric signature that was used to gain access. Nina is obviously surprised by this and quickly figures out that Broyles and Lincoln are going to pin this on her, and refuses to talk anymore until a lawyer is present.
As Peter continues to try and extract information from the memory card, Walter has a go at Peter again for what Walter believes Peter is doing to Olivia through imposing his memories unintentionally onto her. Peter then identifies someone on one of the images from the memory card to be Leland Spivey, who has connections with both David Jones and Nina Sharp, with Peter deducing that Nina and Jones have been giving Olivia the cortexiphan drug for some evil purpose. Suddenly the Observer September appears, still with the gun shot wound to the chest and collapses in front of them.
Walter and Peter try to save September but as they think it may be too late and with time running out, Peter asks Walter to help him go into September’s consciousness to try to find out where Olivia is. Once their minds are connected, Peter enters a glass room with what appears to be clouds of different colours outside. September appears, and Peter witnesses was appears to be the creation of the universe, learning that the Observers are simply scientists from the future, travelling back in time to learn and observe major events in history and witness the creation of all things. Peter realises that September has done much more though than observe, and September begins to explain that it all started when he went to observe Walter creating the cure for Peter’s illness when he was a child. However, he accidently interrupted Walter, during which time the cure had been created, but Walter’s back was turned and therefore had not realised. This set of a chain of events where September tried to rectify his mistake and ultimately resulted in the conflict between the two universes. Peter also finds out that before he was erased, he had had a son with Fauxlivia, Henry, and September tells Peter that this should never have happened and would further disrupt events in the future. So when Peter was erased from the universe, Henry also was permanently erased.
September further explains that Peter’s returned existence may be for things to be set right and tells Peter that he must rekindle his relationship with the original Olivia. September suddenly tells Peter that they are coming, obviously referring to the other Observers and that he must leave immediately, telling him to “go home”. Peter then wakes up in the lab and September’s body goes into shock, then suddenly disappears!!
Peter tells Walter that September’s advice to “go home” might actually be literal, and that he was meaning for Peter to return to his house, rather than a timeline, and believes that the answer of where Olivia is lies there. As he returns home, one of Jones’ crew is waiting for him, and they knock him out! They take him to the same place as Olivia is and as they start to torture him, Olivia activates her ability and manages to turn on the lightbulbs in the lightbox. However, she doesn’t stop there and all the lights in the rooms start to flicker, growing stronger and stronger, she turns to Nina and tells her that she knew she was lying when she was recounting memories.
Olivia’s ability peaks, creating electrical peaks that kills one of Jones’ crew, and as Jones and Nina make a run for it, Olivia frees Peter and they try to catch them. As they catch them, Jones has activated a portal to go to the parallel universe and as Nina goes through, Olivia fires at Jones’ neck but it doesn’t wound him, and he crosses over!
As Peter and Olivia go outside and call for medical help, Peter tells Olivia that they can’t be together as he believes that he needs to get back to his Olivia (but this is his Olivia!!! Keeping my fingers crossed anyway!!!). Olivia tells Peter that she loves him, but he has made his mind up and Olivia is left looking totally heartbroken!!! Grr!!! Don’t like unhappy endings!
Well, if anything is to be remembered from this episode, it is definitely Peter going into the Observer’s mind. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I just thought it was fantastic, and a great leap in the Fringe producers giving us some headway on what’s actually going on, particularly September’s strong link into everything that has happened due to his accident meddling. Finally we find out that they are scientists, which is a real welcome explanation to their existence!
I do have a slight problem with this episode though in the fact that Peter has now decided that his Olivia is not the one we are seeing on screen. Didn’t they figure out in the last episode that Peter could not be projecting his memories onto Olivia as she knew things about cases that he didn’t?? Has that just been forgotten? Seemed like a bit of a backward step to be honest. I was also a little disappointed in the way they used Nina. I was really excited at the end of the last episode that there was a bigger story to Nina than we once thought, but it was over and done with within a blink of an eye and really thought they could have done so much more. I love Fringe and want it to succeed but sometimes it just falls short and am left feeling a little disappointed.
However, I am very energised by the story of the Observers and am looking forward to watching how this one develops.
By Kirsty Wavish
Be the first to comment