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So confuuuuuuused
Okay, Fringe has succeeded in confusing me utterly.
My reaction to the ~magic baby of destiny~ is basically along the lines of HATE, HATE, LOATHE, but even aside from my general dislike of chosen-one, big-destiny storylines in general, I cannot for the life of me figure out how this is supposed to work with the plot up to this point. Not just in terms of little details not quite matching, but big stuff that makes no sense if this is really where it's all been headed.
So, let me see if I'm following this correctly:
September sets the events of the series in motion by distracting Walternate at a key moment, causing him to fail to cure Peter, and thus our Walter tore a hole between universes and brought Peter over to this one. According to September, the reason why this was bad was because Peter and "Fauxlivia" eventually had a child (Henry) who should have been our Olivia's child instead.
With spacetime unraveling and a whole bunch of people getting killed, Henry's birth is really the worst possible thing about this situation? Ahem. Anyway, it also leaves us with these problems:
* If Walter hadn't opened the way between universes, how were Peter and Olivia supposed to meet? Peter was already in the same universe as Fauxlivia, so if he was going to meet and fall in love with an Olivia, shouldn't it have been the one he already had? (Actually, this might not be as much of a hurdle as I'd thought when I watched the episode last night - someone in the comments to one of the reaction posts I was reading elsewhere suggested that maybe Olivia was supposed to use her dimension-warping cortexiphan power to cross over to Peter's universe, and they should have met that way instead. Which would work, I guess.)
* One thing the show has always been very consistent about is that different-universe versions of a person are not the same person. This is one of the things I've loved most about the show's cosmology, actually, because it stands in contrast to the way that alternate realities are often handled in sci-fi, where it's often about "fixing the timeline" to put things back like they were (thus erasing different versions of the characters who were "never supposed to have existed"). In fact, the entire first two seasons of the show are a deconstruction of the idea that a lost loved one can be "replaced" by a copy from another universe.
But now, all of a sudden, Henry (should I call him Henry Prime?) should never have been born, and Peter is supposed to have a baby with Olivia instead, which would be ... not the same baby. I guess that's the point, sort of, but it doesn't mean that the existence of the two babies is mutually exclusive. Peter can have a baby with Fauxlivia, and he can also have a baby with Olivia, and they can even name them both Henry, but they're still two different babies who will grow up to be two different people. Changing history so that Henry (Prime) was never born to Fauxlivia isn't going to necessarily mean that Henry will now be born to our Olivia, because that's not how Fringe works! At least, not up until this point.
* If the Observers need to wipe out Henry Prime to keep the timeline from going off the rails, shouldn't they have been able to do it in a dozen simple, easy ways while Fauxlivia was pretending to be Olivia? Like, say, leaving Peter a note that says "She's not really Olivia"?
* September claims that it's vitally important (of universe-altering importance!) for Henry to be born to Blueverse Olivia. He claims that his mistake was changing history so that Henry Prime was born to Fauxlivia instead, and that the timeline has to be reset so that Peter and Olivia get together and have a baby. But the rest of the Observers clearly don't agree with him. The rest of the Observers are trying to make sure that Peter doesn't exist and never has any children at all.
Augh. My head hurts.
Assuming that the writers have a coherent plan for the Observers (which I'm reallllly not so sure about), what in the world are the Observers up to? They're not trying to put the timeline back like it was, before September messed with it, because without September's interference Peter would have lived out his life like normal, and presumably had baby Henry with Olivia (somehow). Then September interfered, and all of a sudden Fauxlivia had Henry instead, and this was Very Bad, so the Observers decided to nuke Peter out of the timeline entirely, because apparently no Henry at all is preferable to the wrong Henry. And September is trying to reset it to something close to how it was before.
Actually, come to think of it, once September changed things in the first place, Peter should (without further interference) have died in the lake, thus invalidating all future Peter storylines, Henry-related or otherwise. This is the version of reality that the Observers are trying to restore.
All of which is starting to make September look less like an ally and more like a sort of crazed lone-gunman type. Back when it looked like he was basically motivated by sympathy for Peter et al, he seemed a lot more sympathetic -- the one Observer who couldn't stand by and watch an innocent eight-year-old child drown. But that's not what's going on at all. September saved Peter because he thinks that Peter and Olivia have to have a super-special child at some point in the future. But the rest of the Observers don't agree, and since they can ALL see the future (all possible futures, isn't it?) you'd think they'd know. It would be easier to understand September's point of view if the rest of them were fanatically trying to put the timeline back into its original shape, in slavish fixation on an ideal sort of order to everything, but they're not -- from the look of things, they're just going with the easiest fix in order to avert some sort of unspecified calamity. September is the one who's obsessively running around messing with things in an attempt to get the timeline back to the way it was before he interfered with it.
hahahaha. So that's my headcanon at this point, I guess. September is completely delusional and everything he says should be treated as conspiracy-theory ravings and/or lies. First, he altered the timeline. Then he messed it up even worse by rescuing Peter from the lake, in an attempt to restore it to how it was before (which was dumb anyway, since there were a number of other ways he could've intervened before it got to that point -- just giving Walternate the cure, say). Since things were now on a rapid downhill slide, the rest of the Observers did the easiest thing at that point (if not the best or most elegant), which was just to eliminate Peter entirely; too bad for Peter, but okay for the timeline as a whole. But September is still running around, desperately trying to restore Peter and get Peter and Olivia together, pursuing his unfounded belief that the timeline will go to hell if Peter and Olivia don't have a baby ...
I don't think that's what's actually supposed to be happening in canon, but "September is crazy and completely mistaken about this whole destiny thing" is the only theory I can think of that makes any sense at all. *g* Things are still kind of a mess, but at least they're not completely self-contradictory.
Uh, so what do you guys think, anyway? Am I forgetting vital bits of canon that would make sense out of this? Has this show, like every other JJ Abrams show, finally come completely unglued? Discuss!
My reaction to the ~magic baby of destiny~ is basically along the lines of HATE, HATE, LOATHE, but even aside from my general dislike of chosen-one, big-destiny storylines in general, I cannot for the life of me figure out how this is supposed to work with the plot up to this point. Not just in terms of little details not quite matching, but big stuff that makes no sense if this is really where it's all been headed.
So, let me see if I'm following this correctly:
September sets the events of the series in motion by distracting Walternate at a key moment, causing him to fail to cure Peter, and thus our Walter tore a hole between universes and brought Peter over to this one. According to September, the reason why this was bad was because Peter and "Fauxlivia" eventually had a child (Henry) who should have been our Olivia's child instead.
With spacetime unraveling and a whole bunch of people getting killed, Henry's birth is really the worst possible thing about this situation? Ahem. Anyway, it also leaves us with these problems:
* If Walter hadn't opened the way between universes, how were Peter and Olivia supposed to meet? Peter was already in the same universe as Fauxlivia, so if he was going to meet and fall in love with an Olivia, shouldn't it have been the one he already had? (Actually, this might not be as much of a hurdle as I'd thought when I watched the episode last night - someone in the comments to one of the reaction posts I was reading elsewhere suggested that maybe Olivia was supposed to use her dimension-warping cortexiphan power to cross over to Peter's universe, and they should have met that way instead. Which would work, I guess.)
* One thing the show has always been very consistent about is that different-universe versions of a person are not the same person. This is one of the things I've loved most about the show's cosmology, actually, because it stands in contrast to the way that alternate realities are often handled in sci-fi, where it's often about "fixing the timeline" to put things back like they were (thus erasing different versions of the characters who were "never supposed to have existed"). In fact, the entire first two seasons of the show are a deconstruction of the idea that a lost loved one can be "replaced" by a copy from another universe.
But now, all of a sudden, Henry (should I call him Henry Prime?) should never have been born, and Peter is supposed to have a baby with Olivia instead, which would be ... not the same baby. I guess that's the point, sort of, but it doesn't mean that the existence of the two babies is mutually exclusive. Peter can have a baby with Fauxlivia, and he can also have a baby with Olivia, and they can even name them both Henry, but they're still two different babies who will grow up to be two different people. Changing history so that Henry (Prime) was never born to Fauxlivia isn't going to necessarily mean that Henry will now be born to our Olivia, because that's not how Fringe works! At least, not up until this point.
* If the Observers need to wipe out Henry Prime to keep the timeline from going off the rails, shouldn't they have been able to do it in a dozen simple, easy ways while Fauxlivia was pretending to be Olivia? Like, say, leaving Peter a note that says "She's not really Olivia"?
* September claims that it's vitally important (of universe-altering importance!) for Henry to be born to Blueverse Olivia. He claims that his mistake was changing history so that Henry Prime was born to Fauxlivia instead, and that the timeline has to be reset so that Peter and Olivia get together and have a baby. But the rest of the Observers clearly don't agree with him. The rest of the Observers are trying to make sure that Peter doesn't exist and never has any children at all.
Augh. My head hurts.
Assuming that the writers have a coherent plan for the Observers (which I'm reallllly not so sure about), what in the world are the Observers up to? They're not trying to put the timeline back like it was, before September messed with it, because without September's interference Peter would have lived out his life like normal, and presumably had baby Henry with Olivia (somehow). Then September interfered, and all of a sudden Fauxlivia had Henry instead, and this was Very Bad, so the Observers decided to nuke Peter out of the timeline entirely, because apparently no Henry at all is preferable to the wrong Henry. And September is trying to reset it to something close to how it was before.
Actually, come to think of it, once September changed things in the first place, Peter should (without further interference) have died in the lake, thus invalidating all future Peter storylines, Henry-related or otherwise. This is the version of reality that the Observers are trying to restore.
All of which is starting to make September look less like an ally and more like a sort of crazed lone-gunman type. Back when it looked like he was basically motivated by sympathy for Peter et al, he seemed a lot more sympathetic -- the one Observer who couldn't stand by and watch an innocent eight-year-old child drown. But that's not what's going on at all. September saved Peter because he thinks that Peter and Olivia have to have a super-special child at some point in the future. But the rest of the Observers don't agree, and since they can ALL see the future (all possible futures, isn't it?) you'd think they'd know. It would be easier to understand September's point of view if the rest of them were fanatically trying to put the timeline back into its original shape, in slavish fixation on an ideal sort of order to everything, but they're not -- from the look of things, they're just going with the easiest fix in order to avert some sort of unspecified calamity. September is the one who's obsessively running around messing with things in an attempt to get the timeline back to the way it was before he interfered with it.
hahahaha. So that's my headcanon at this point, I guess. September is completely delusional and everything he says should be treated as conspiracy-theory ravings and/or lies. First, he altered the timeline. Then he messed it up even worse by rescuing Peter from the lake, in an attempt to restore it to how it was before (which was dumb anyway, since there were a number of other ways he could've intervened before it got to that point -- just giving Walternate the cure, say). Since things were now on a rapid downhill slide, the rest of the Observers did the easiest thing at that point (if not the best or most elegant), which was just to eliminate Peter entirely; too bad for Peter, but okay for the timeline as a whole. But September is still running around, desperately trying to restore Peter and get Peter and Olivia together, pursuing his unfounded belief that the timeline will go to hell if Peter and Olivia don't have a baby ...
I don't think that's what's actually supposed to be happening in canon, but "September is crazy and completely mistaken about this whole destiny thing" is the only theory I can think of that makes any sense at all. *g* Things are still kind of a mess, but at least they're not completely self-contradictory.
Uh, so what do you guys think, anyway? Am I forgetting vital bits of canon that would make sense out of this? Has this show, like every other JJ Abrams show, finally come completely unglued? Discuss!