Is Peter the EVENT?
Fringe - 120 There's More Than One Of Everything | Theories & Speculation | Posted by ScullyWalter explains that every time you make a choice another branch forms on the ‘reality tree’. And with every choice after there is another fork and so on. The reality that Olivia visits, the reality where Bell is and the reality that Jones is trying to get to are all the same one. But shouldn’t there be an infinite number of realities? So maybe there was one single event, one choice that connected a particular reality to ours. One main occurrence that built some sort of bridge between this universe and one single other universe.
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Peter's Tombstone
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So what was that one occurrence? Here’s my theory…
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We see Walter standing over a tombstone that reads ‘Peter Bishop 1978 – 1985′. Walter has mentioned on a couple of occasions about Peter being very sick as a child, and Peter doesn’t seem to recall any of this. What if Peter died from that illness when he was seven, and Walter grabbed himself a new son. Walter spoke of bringing back a Doctor to save Peter. What if Walter was actually traveling through dimensions to bring back a Peter from another reality? This would explain why Peter doesn’t remember the same things as Walter.
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Walter expected Peter to be chubbier, maybe the original boy carried a few extra pounds. Walter immediately checked Peter’s eyes when they met at St. Claires, was Walter worried that this Peter might also catch the same illness that killed his Peter? Peter doesn’t remember his toys being the same way, like the scar on G.I Joe. What about Peter’s medical records that Walter referred to. Would it be a dead giveaway? Perhaps this Peter had his tonsils out, and the Alter-Peter didn’t, or something to that effect.
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Maybe this is why the Observer saved Peter from drowning…he knew his importance to the other world and to this one. Or, maybe the Observer helped Walter bring Peter through, and in exchange, he would call upon Walter for a favor someday. It’s possible Walter couldn’t do it on his own. Perhaps the car accident was a ruse to cover up what really happened, and help explain Peter’s ‘memory problems‘. A little amnesia is common for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
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What about the Walter in that universe? ‘How far would you go for someone you love? ‘ Is it possible that he is flashing back and forth between the two worlds trying to get his son back? Maybe this is the Alter-Walter that Walter saw in St. Claires. Maybe, without the Observer’s help, the most he can do is slip in and out for a moment or two at a time, Much like Olivia at first. That would definitely be enough to drive me insane.
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Alter-Walter at St. Claires
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OK, I’m rambling now. My point was that perhaps it was the kidnapping of Peter from the other world that set in motion a chain of events that led to the catastrophy that Olivia was witnessing in that world. I’m not sure how, but you know what they say ‘…step on a butterfly…’. I think Peter is much more important than we realize.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:54 am
i mentioned something similar to you on the reply to your email before reading this. and although i’ll take more time with this [because i have something pretty clear in my mind] i want to ask for the detail-specific people of this site: regarding the car accident on the frozen lake, wasn’t that accident on the same lake where the soft spot jones was after was? i’d have to go back [oh if i only had the time!], but when walter told the story about the accident and september, he said peter died [not almost died or could've died, but WAS DEAD], and that september brought him back, and that it was on [insert lake], and that he owed him. again, confirmation on this would be swell!
i think that pretty much covers that part of the mystery..we might’ve known it all along
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May 14th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Sorry, Di, the story is actually very vague. You can find it here http://www.observersarehere.com/104-the-arrival-transcript/2008/10/#more-1905 It doesn’t even specify a lake, just “icy water”. Walter also says “We were dead, Peter, you and I.” What strikes me about this story is Peter remembers it while he doesn’t remember being sick. So this would have been post-kidnapping. It also suggests that Peter is meant to be here if the Observer intervened to save them both. His usual attitude is “I can only observe.”
May 14th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
If Peter is the event, then that must be Ted Kennedy or another, and not JFK or RFK.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Maybe bizzarro-Walter is taking LSD to cross over briefly.
Maybe that’s how our Walter found out about Peter being alive in other worlds.
There should be infinitly many worlds, but if Walter stole Peter from one of them, then perhaps they become linked. Although, they would have spread into an infinity of linked worlds almost immediately.
May 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Peter has always been very distant with his father. Is it only because Walter went to jail and left Peter all alone?
Or what if Peter actually remembers being plucked from the one reality and brought into the new one? What if he knows that his other reality self had died? Maybe that’s why he can’t call Walter dad because this reality Walter isn’t really his dad?
I think Peter was the event. It sounds fairly plausible to me.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
ok, but where is the mother in all this? if you notice he cleans the dust from only half a picture on the beach house, only where him and Walter are. but the mother, i’m assuming, would’ve seen this reality’s peter die, because she was there after walter got committed and of course that was ‘new’ peter. when will we hear anything from her?!
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May 14th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I thought she died or something…maybe Walter just told Peter that his mother died and this was his step mother, or maybe the alter-Peter had the same parents so it wasn’t so much of a shock? He just wrote it off as dreaming?
May 14th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
I saw that too, Di, and it also struck me as odd. To me, it points to a rift between Peter and his mother. She would have had to know one Peter died and then another Peter reappears, how could you keep it a secret from a mother? Maybe she felt guilty about stealing another person’s child and told him the whole story? We have discussed before how he seems to know more than he says and he didn’t even ask Walter what was lost to him. It could also be what made him go crazy a few years back with the gambling; it surely would have been a bombshell.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Or, they haven’t cast his mother and didn’t want to show another actress in the picture.
This happened on BSG where Tigh’s wife was shown in a picture and then another actress was cast to play her. They had to reshoot the scene where it was shown (because they used it a lot in the “previously on BSG” clips.
May 15th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Avoiding a Fringe fumble? Makes sense.
I’m glad Scully brought up alterWalter again. Some ideas about that situation have been rolling around in my noggin. There’s definitely some details in the lab notes that support the idea of a completely live version of Walter slipping back and forth between the worlds. For example, as far back as “Power Hungry” Walter writes “how fitting that the other Walter also meditated upon migratory patterns” which suggests that somehow there is an awareness of each other’s existence possibly through communication, perhaps an actual meeting. Remember this conversation from “The Ghost Network”?
ROY MCCOMB: Doctor Bishop, you look really familiar to me.
WALTER: (administers sedative) I hear that a lot – in the mental institution where I lived.
Were many of the patients there also test subjects of Walter? Remember the patterns of the dominoes, crayons, drawings, etc.? Both scenes seem to suggest that there is more to learn about the mental institution. Perhaps St. Claire’s is also a soft spot in the universes’ fabric, allowing alterWalter to slip through. I believe that if St. Claire’s is a soft spot, then Walter’s lab might be one too which could be why he writes sometimes as two people arguing and has made a reference to someone “running around” (Unleashed) who isn’t visible to anyone but him.
Or he could be a hallucination. Walter did like his LSD.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Maybe in the process of slipping from that reality to this one they got in the car accident? Like they drive the car from that reality to this one? maybe to insure they both ended up in the same reality?
May 16th, 2009 at 3:48 am
My friend posed an interesting question after watching this episode:
If Walter just went over to another dimension and just plucked Peter out and took him over here, wouldn’t that create an unbalance? The Peter over “there” never died, he just traveled to another reality, but in the one that they live in, child Peter actually died and is in the ground. So if Peter finds out, will this start some kind of chain reaction?
May 18th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
excerpt from 110-Safe transcript:
WALTER: (stares) You nearly died when you were a boy. You started bruising… and your kidneys failed. The doctors didn’t know what it was – the closest diagnosis was hepea – the rare form of bird flu that hadn’t been around for decades. Your mother was beside herself, she stopped eating – she stopped sleeping… and I was worse. After all, I was the scientist, here my only son was dying and I couldn’t do anything about it.
PETER: Walter. I don’t remember any of that.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
That would make sense if Peter died and the man we know as Peter was brought here after that. He would have no memory of being sick, or anything that happened before that time.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
OKay more question than anything else. If our Peter was taken from the other reality wouldn’t there be another Walter turning over the universe trying to get his son back. Could that be a factor in the forces fighting?
May 19th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
@jo
yeah, you would think so. unless alter-Walter was killed during the altercation by our Walter… But walter seems to mention alter Walter in his lab notes… something about how ‘the other Walter’ had been looking into something similar to our Walter.