Last Friday’s Fringe seemed like it could have been act 2 in a series finale (thank god it isn’t) and should lead to a nice climax this week. As the machine continues to churn away destroying our universe, the Fringe team scrambles to try and prevent the approaching apocalypse. With an added bonus Olivia has begun using her Cortexiphen powers again. Turn back now if you don’t want spoilers. You have been warned!
“The Last Sam Weiss” starts with a massive lightning storm causing disturbances across the eastern sea board, as Walternate continues his attempts to destroy our world. Olivia learns from Sam Weiss that the Machine is not engine of destruction as we have been lead to believe all season. He explains that the destruction and Peter’s electrocution is due to the machine getting confused. A force field is protecting the machine and they need a proverbial crowbar to break it open and let Peter in. Sam and Olivia track down a picture an ancient picture of the crow bar. It turns out Olivia is armed with her super powered brain, is the missing peice. Meanwhile Peter wakes up from his coma confused as to his identity and journeys from Massachusetts to New York. He only emerges from his confusion when he sees Olivia. He of course gets plugged into the machine in an effort to save the world, and then the mind trip begins. He wakes up 15 years in the future in front of the Freedom Tower, is referred to as “Agent Bishop” and the streets of Manhattan are a war zone.
I know I tended to be a bit spoilery with this review, but so much happened that raised questions. Peter’s significance to the machine has always been a mystery. How is something designed before recorded history exclusively designed for him? This mystery is only furthered by the fact that Olivia is included. Why are modern people depicted in it. Sam Weiss claims to be the last in a long line of Sam Weisses (hence the title). I would like to propose something a little more sci-fi. How is one machine capable of destroying an entire universe? Maybe it has something to do with time travel. Maybe it gives the user the ability to go to different time lines. Maybe Sam Weiss is a time traveler and went to the distant past and built the machine. It would explain how something made millions of years ago could be designed only for Peter and show pictures of Olivia. Peter’s confusion could have been the preliminary time travel making him have memories of what his life would have been if he were on the other side. The future he finds himself in might be what happens if he doesn’t fix the world. Even with the other Earth gone, ours is still falling apart. The way for him to fix the universe would be to prevent him and his counterpart from dieing thus changing everything.
Another theory behind the future that Peter goes to is that it doesn’t actually exist. I remember an episode of Angel where, the titular heroic vampire needs information from his villianous alter ego Angelus to defeat an unstoppable demon called the Beast. For those of you not familiar with Angel mythos, Angelus was one of the cruelest and most sadistic vampires of all time. The family of one of his victims placed a curse on him so that the would feel remorse for his sins and restored his soul. The curse could only be lifted when he experienced a moment of pure happiness. He hires a shaman to remove his soul magically only to find out he was an agent of the Beast. The clue leads them to the one weapon that can defeat the demon. While on the quest Angel reconciles with his estranged son, kills the back guy, and makes love to the woman he has fallen for. The moment he has sex with her, the curse kicks in and removes his soul. It turned out that the whole episode was a dream created by the shaman to give him the happiness and activate the curse. In Fringe what if this future is only a glimpse of what may occur? If the machine has the grave power to create and destroy universes, maybe its warning Peter against misuse. Untill the next ep…
On a scale of 1 to Epic (epic =10) this episode gets 7.7