This is an episode that could have gone either way: horribly disappointing or deeply satisfying. Standalones and trapped-in-a-town narratives can provide a welcome relief from an overarching mythology, or a frustrating sense that the writers are dragging their feet.
We can think of Westfield itself as something of a metaphor for Season Four. We thought we were going somewhere, leaving behind old stories to pick up new ones, at the end of Season Three, just like Peter and Olivia thought they were leaving town. But we wound up looping back around on ourselves, meeting new iterations of Olivia, Walter, Astrid, etc., and in some ways re-living old cases with new twists.
But the Westfield situation resolved itself, albeit with a few smooshed people as casualties. And now it looks like the erased timelines/reversed timelines/new timelines confusion is starting to resolve. Olivia has her memories back, or is merging with the version of Olivia we knew in seasons 1-3, or something else. I think she’s merging with seasons 1-3 Olivia, with the caveat that seasons 1-3 Olivia (Originalivia?) hasn’t existed, properly speaking, since the end of Season Three.
Cliff said that the people in the high school needed hope above all. That’s awesome. Thank you, Mr. Jones! That is, if I’m right. And if whatever’s happening to Olivia doesn’t somehow cause, y’know, the end of the world, which it just might. Do you think Jones created the Westfield situation to force Olivia’s merger? Was the plane crash just to get their attention? Questions.
And: how tragic would it be if the Machine’s new purpose is just to re-set the world yet again, creating a constant loop in which Peter must, again and again, return to a foreign world and re-assert himself, coming closer and closer to a solution but never quite reaching it?
Hopefully the events in Westfield indicate that a more stable solution is forthcoming. Some people in the town did survive, and Cliff emphasized just what makes their survival possible: family and the love that binds people together. The intersection of the deeply personal and the scientifically impossible is one of the hallmarks of the Fringe universe, and it looks like we’re finally approaching a smooshed solution to the questions that have been plaguing us for weeks: just what’s going on, and what does it mean for our beloved characters?
- Two quibbles: Cliff needed a blood transfusion, but then got magically better.
- And schizophrenia isn’t the same thing as multiple personality disorder.
- Walter on the high school PA.
- Walter was already acting like Originalter by leaving the lab.
- Cliff got loaded with a lot of exposition, but the actor really made it work.
- Two rows of teeth! Ewww!
- No Lincoln Lee. Sigh.
I could list all the episodes of Fringe and other shows that “Welcome to Westfield” reminded me of, but the list is too long, so I’ll let all of you put your own in the comments. This is a hard episode to rate. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. And it looks like it’s heading us towards a much longed-for solution. But there are many, many unanswered questions. Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter.
