I co-wrote this piece with a friend over the summer. Spoilers for season 4 of Fringe. Enjoy, and please feel free to leave comments below.
We noticed a marked difference in Future!Walter in “Letters of Transit.” He was much more like Secretary of Defense Walternate than he was the Walter that we are familiar with. However, this difference only comes after the Future!Fringe team has regenerated his brain using the tissues from the brain sample that we now know contained the plans to create the New World.
Now that we know that the “man he didn’t like that he was becoming” was related to a concentrated series of ideas as opposed to a holistic character trait, might we see a Future!Walter next season who tries to recapture that idea and escapes from the world overtaken by the Observers by creating an alternative universe?
It would be an interesting symmetry and move for the character—to go from being responsible for the near destruction of an alternate universe to the creation of a new one.
And we, the audience, will be okay with Walter’s work to create a new universe because he will do it to save mankind. Fringe has always played with ideas of moral and immoral science, and in season 5, we will see this boundary bend and shift.
Originally, we were asked to believe that crossing universes was a bad thing. Walter upset the balance and both worlds suffered because of his actions. But in the past four years, we have also seen positive outcomes from crossing over: Peter and Lincoln found their “homes” in the universe where each man was not born. The dopplegangers worked together and shared experiences. Both Fringe divisions were better for it. Walter and Walternate found forgiveness and reconciliation for their past actions.
We’re okay with the outcomes of crossing universes, but we’re having a hard time sympathizing with Bell’s attempt to destroy the universe and make a new one. And we know why: he didn’t have a reason for what he was doing, except that he could. (Bell said so in Brave New World, Part 2: “God made us in His image. If that is so, if we are capable of being gods, then it is our destiny to do so.”)
So along with the moral/immoral boundary, we have this question of “If you can achieve something through science, should you?”
This is where the push comes in and we’ll bend that boundary between moral and immoral. We’ll be okay with Future!Walter if he creates a new universe in order to defeat the Observers and save everyone because he will be pushing the boundary for the sake of something good—not only because he can. We might be concerned with what the other characters will think and if they’ll allow Walter to carry out his ideas. But we’ve seen that Olivia will do whatever it takes to save the world, and so will Peter, Astrid, and Broyles.
We wind up having to reassess the situation and change our position on its morality when it becomes re-contextualized. Everything must be considered in its context, and new situations each have their own context (sometimes as a result of past events or decisions, sometimes entirely new). The writers complicated (and then made irrelevant) the morality issue when they re-contextualized it within an argument on survival: should the Fringe team work to preserve the established world or create a new one? One issue collapses, and then we get tangled into new ideas.
So what we’re really saying in the end is, “science for the sake of science” is immoral, but science for the sake of humanity is justified. That’s interesting since the premise of the show is based on experimental science. The Fringe Division started out fighting the outcomes of experimental science, and in season 5, experimental science will become their weapon to fight the Observers (we hope).
We noticed a marked difference in Future!Walter in “Letters of Transit.” He was much more like Secretary of Defense Walternate than he was the Walter that we are familiar with. However, this difference only comes after the Future!Fringe team has regenerated his brain using the tissues from the brain sample that we now know contained the plans to create the New World.
Now that we know that the “man he didn’t like that he was becoming” was related to a concentrated series of ideas as opposed to a holistic character trait, might we see a Future!Walter next season who tries to recapture that idea and escapes from the world overtaken by the Observers by creating an alternative universe?
It would be an interesting symmetry and move for the character—to go from being responsible for the near destruction of an alternate universe to the creation of a new one.
And we, the audience, will be okay with Walter’s work to create a new universe because he will do it to save mankind. Fringe has always played with ideas of moral and immoral science, and in season 5, we will see this boundary bend and shift.
Originally, we were asked to believe that crossing universes was a bad thing. Walter upset the balance and both worlds suffered because of his actions. But in the past four years, we have also seen positive outcomes from crossing over: Peter and Lincoln found their “homes” in the universe where each man was not born. The dopplegangers worked together and shared experiences. Both Fringe divisions were better for it. Walter and Walternate found forgiveness and reconciliation for their past actions.
We’re okay with the outcomes of crossing universes, but we’re having a hard time sympathizing with Bell’s attempt to destroy the universe and make a new one. And we know why: he didn’t have a reason for what he was doing, except that he could. (Bell said so in Brave New World, Part 2: “God made us in His image. If that is so, if we are capable of being gods, then it is our destiny to do so.”)
So along with the moral/immoral boundary, we have this question of “If you can achieve something through science, should you?”
This is where the push comes in and we’ll bend that boundary between moral and immoral. We’ll be okay with Future!Walter if he creates a new universe in order to defeat the Observers and save everyone because he will be pushing the boundary for the sake of something good—not only because he can. We might be concerned with what the other characters will think and if they’ll allow Walter to carry out his ideas. But we’ve seen that Olivia will do whatever it takes to save the world, and so will Peter, Astrid, and Broyles.
We wind up having to reassess the situation and change our position on its morality when it becomes re-contextualized. Everything must be considered in its context, and new situations each have their own context (sometimes as a result of past events or decisions, sometimes entirely new). The writers complicated (and then made irrelevant) the morality issue when they re-contextualized it within an argument on survival: should the Fringe team work to preserve the established world or create a new one? One issue collapses, and then we get tangled into new ideas.
So what we’re really saying in the end is, “science for the sake of science” is immoral, but science for the sake of humanity is justified. That’s interesting since the premise of the show is based on experimental science. The Fringe Division started out fighting the outcomes of experimental science, and in season 5, experimental science will become their weapon to fight the Observers (we hope).
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