Joshua Jackson Calls Fringe Finale Necessary
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The series finale of Fringe will hit the airwaves on January 18, 2013, with an epic two-hour send off that is sure to blow some minds, cause some tears, and end in some way that you didn’t see coming. So far the fifth and final season has gone to places that you wouldn’t expect. Instead of resting on their laurels in the present, the Fringe team has been transported to a totalitarian future. They’ve killed off important characters, staged tearful reunions, gone to dark places, and generally thrown in a whole bunch of twists and turns.
And this mayhem has all been over the course of five episodes. You can bet the show will continue to push to the limit in the remaining eight.
This past week you saw Peter (Joshua Jackson), driven by desire to avenge the death of Henrietta (Georgina Haig), cross the line to make the Observers feel even a sliver of his pain. And because the pasty, bald bastards are always one step ahead of the resistance, he starts down a treacherous slope he may not be able to recover from.
By removing the bit of tech from the Observer and implanting it in himself, he may be able to harness their abilities, and give his team an advantage for once. The big question is, at what cost? What will he have to become in order to achieve victory?
Talking with E! Online, Jackson teased the conclusion of the show, both for his character, and others: “The place that they’re trying to take the characters at the end, at least for me, seems like a satisfying and in some ways almost logical, sort of necessary ending for each one of these characters.”
In reality that doesn’t say much. “Satisfying,” “logical,” and “necessary” are key words to focus on. Fans of the series want the end to be all of those things. Nothing is worse than when a show throws some random thing in at the end that feels like a big middle finger to fans (thinking of the “snow globe” scene at the end of St. Elsewhere). But with no context these words don’t really mean a thing.
If there’s one thing we trust Fringe to do, it is strike a balance between the unexpected and the satisfying. Their endings are never the obvious choices, but they do remain true to the spirit of the show, the characters, and the stories. Here’s hoping they pull it off one last time.
