“As we find [Peter] at the beginning of the next episode, he’s kind of taking a Hail Mary pass and see him [approaching] the one man that he really, really doesn’t want to deal with, which is Walternate, and we see him going through the [motions] to try to convince Walter and Walternate and basically anybody to try to help him get back to his world,” Fringe series star Joshua Jackson previewed when we caught up with him earlier this week.
But if you read our own preview of the first new episode of 2012, “Back to Where You’ve Never Been,” you already knew that. So what we really wanted to get Jackson to weigh in on were the developments at the end of the episode. Primarily how what he learns about Walternate (John Noble) will affect the baggage he has, moving through these two new strange and foreign universes, as well as how what the audience learns about Olivia (Anna Torv) will come into play with Peter and his quest to go home.
Though Fringe is really about one woman (Olivia)’s journey to find herself, Jackson admitted to thinking, at times in the beginning, that it was focused on the unconventional family situation with the Bishops. He has joked that in certain episodes Peter is sort of the “Where’s Waldo?” character, but that it makes sense because it’s not his story but Olivia’s. In fact, Jackson pointed out that in many cases, Peter exists simply to bring out more human sides to characters like Peter (Noble) and Olivia-- to allow the audience to understand them better through him. But right now, it really does appear to be all about Peter. And things are about to get extremely emotionally complex for Peter very fast!
“What’s interesting is that Peter is carrying the baggage-- in every other relationship, Peter has been shifting his dynamic as he comes to understand that these are not his people, but Peter is carrying the baggage of not trusting Walternate at all…One of the really cool things that has come out of this new timeline is that we can redo all of the dynamics between all of the characters, and I think that’s a great opportunity for the show,” Jackson pointed out.
But when he travels to the Other Side and actually has a face-to-face with Walternate, he realizes that he is not the terrible man he had believed him to be, which opens up the possibility of a potential new father figure for this man. In seeing that, Jackson shared that Peter finally has to “be honest with himself that these are all new dynamics, and it opens up the possibility for the relationship that he thought he was getting at the end of season two.”
Similarly, though the father-son bond has been explored exponentially on Fringe, there has always been a hole in Peter’s heart for his mother, grief-stricken and guilty over her fate and the responsibility he, in many ways, feels for it. But to be in this timeline and realize that events turned out differently, and his mother is still alive and within reach to him will toy with him as well.
According to Jackson: “The guilt that this guy feels over his mother, who committed suicide in his timeline, pretty directly relates to the fact that he ran away from home. To have this woman present, in his life again, would be a watershed moment. We’ve explored the father-son bond, but that love across the timeline, or across the universe, maybe-- for her to be the person to actually see him, I think is a really big deal for him.”
Simply having the option of finally having the family you may have always wanted, even at this later stage in life, and even in this “alternate reality,” might be enough for some people to just want to stay there, but Jackson told us that his desire to get home will remain strong. Even when he eventually learns (in “about five episodes down the road”) of what the Observer tells Olivia is her destiny, Peter is not deterred, and he does not choose to divert or derail his mission to try to intervene with the so-called destiny.
But that is not because Peter doesn’t care; he just has other priorities right now.
“I think if any Olivia Dunham-- potentially any Bolivia Dunham-- was in real jeopardy, Peter would be there for her. I don’t know that one precludes the other, and if you really listen to what the Observer said, it’s incredibly ambiguous,” Jackson pointed out.
What do you think, Fringe fans? Are you on the edge of your seat waiting for Peter to find his way back to “his” Olivia? Or are you curious to see if there’s any chemistry to be developed between them in this timeline? Sound off in the comments below.
Fringe airs on FOX on Friday nights at 9pm.
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