Giant Freakin Robot

With tonight’s episode the Fringe team really did manage to pull off a season finale that (aside from the last two minutes could have been a reasonably satisfying a series finale.  We got a few curve balls, the answers to questions that have been lingering since the introduction of the alternate universe, and an utterly wonderful guest appearance from Leonard Nimoy (who really ought to come back for at least part of season 5).

Fringe is getting all sorts of intense, building up towards the second episode of the two part season finale. Interdimensional terrorists are trying to collapse universes, characters are back from the dead, Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter (Joshua Jackson) are on the verge of moving in together, it’s complete mayhem. To set things up for the conclusion of season four, Fox has released the trailer for “Brave New World: Part Two.” The episode airs Friday, May 11 at 9pm Eastern and Pacific, 8pm Central.

Oh boy.  We knew things would get heated in these last couple of episode, but the penultimate episode of the season pulled no punches.  Nanites! Chess! Death rays! Twists! Another Lost cameo! Twists on twists!  And a shock that left this recapper gasping for breath in the last few moments…

Cold Open

Muzak plays overhead as people pass too and fro.  One man stops to get his regular from a coffee counter but, after a glaring Bones-style bit of product placement, he keels over dead with whisps of smoke coming out from between his charred lips.  Everyone else in the immediate vicinity does the same, until one observant woman tells everyone not move: “I think when they move, they die.”

Now that Fringe has been renewed for a fifth and final season, our brains can turn from that “will they or won’t they” to the myriad of actual questions that always snowball this close to the end of a Fringe season.  To that end, executive producers and Fringe emissaries Jeff Pinkner and Joel Wyman recently discussed the show in celebration of the renewal and to pump everyone up for the two-part season finale that starts this week. As usual, Wyman and Pinkner are coy and cryptic in answering questions, but we do get a few interesting chunks of information.

The last couple of episodes have raised some pretty big questions and concerns in the fanbase having to do with casting. Seth Gabel’s Lincoln Lee decided to stay in the redverse after the bridge was shut down in hopes of making time with Bolivia, prompting some concern about Gabel’s future with the show.  While the executive producers praised Gabel in their chat with TVLine, they refused to say anything about Lincoln Lee’s continued presence on Fringe (or the fate of the alternate versions of the other characters) for fear of spoiling the surprises to come.  Pinkner did hint that the bridge closed because of David Robert Jones’s shenanigans so, “if our team can somehow dispense with Jones, there is absolutely a possibility of that door being open again.”

Similarly, Pinkner and Wyman didn’t have anything concrete to share on the questions raised by William Bell’s cameo in episode 19.  Pre-renewal, Joshua Jackson suggested that episode is the “key” to the story that a season five would tell and Pinkner and Wyman confirm that “[t]that future is important to our storytelling”.  Does this mean that there’s a chance for William Bell to be released from his amber encasement and become a larger part of season five?  Despite rumors that he’ll be returning for the new Star Trek film, Nimoy is “retired” from on-screen work.  Wyman and Pinkner are hopeful, though, that Nimoy will find it in his heart to come back for part of the final season: “We basically erected a sign outside of Leonard’s house that says, ‘Please come back to Fringe,’ and we are hoping that by Season 5 he says yes.”