Last night, I got off work, went straight home and watched the
series finale of Fringe. The series ends with Peter Bishop and his wife, Olivia
Dunham having a picnic with their daughter, Etta. Etta comes running to her
parents, and makes it to them. If you're a fan of Fringe then you know this is a
happy ending , and it also means that Walter Bishop (Peter's father) was able to
"reset time". It's also a highly improbable ending, if not logically
impossible.
The whole Fringe story is based on the idea that Peter Bishop died as a young boy. Walter, being the brilliant scientist he was, had already created a viewer into a parallel universe, that was very much like our own; i.e., there was a parallel Walter Bishop (Walternate) who also had a son, Peter. The parallel Peter had the same terminal disease, and Walter continued to observe Walternate, too see if he was able to cure his son. Walter was unable to accept the fact that he lost Peter, and watching Walternate save his own son was sort of like getting his son back; Water probably would've spent the rest of his days watching the parallel universe Peter in his viewer.
September, a person from the future (a genetically altered person) paid a visit to Walternate, just at the time that Walternate was running a test to see if his proposed cure for Peter worked or not. As a result of being distracted, Walternate misses the test results that showed that the cure worked. September is a good person; he didn't intend for this result (even though he's supposed to be able to predict the future - and Walternate is a bright guy, so you'd think he'd re-run his test).
Walter re-creates the serum to save Peter, and creates a machine that will let him travel to the parallel universe. Walter's co-workers try to stop Walter, because his inter-dimensional travel could destroy the fabric of space, and the serum is lost. Walter still crosses over, so he can bring Peter back to his lab, and save Peter there.
Walter had put his inter-dimensional device on a frozen lake, and had to run over the ice with Peter too get to it. The ice breaks, and Peter and Walter fall into freezing water; it looks like the end. Fortunately, September had been watching them and pulls them out of the lake. September brings them back to their own universe and starts driving them to Walter's lab. Walter wakes up on their way to his lab, and meets September for the first time.
Walter and his wife are unable to part with Peter, so we are left with the story line; somebody from another universe growing up in our universe (Peter is in his late 20s at the start of the Fringe series), and all of the interesting possibilities that arise from that. There are plenty of story lines in Fringe; e.g., the Observers (the group of people from the future that September is a member of). The Observers seem like good guys at the beginning of the series, because the Observers we meet are actually good guys. The original 12 Observers sent to our time, are unaware that the information they are "observing" is to be used in an invasion. So the last chapter of the series casts the Observers as bad guys (September and the rest of the original 12 are still good guys).
Walter has a plan to stop the invasion (21 years after it began); travel in time and stop the development of the Observers. The Observers are genetically engineered people; if you travel to the time when Observers were first created, you can stop that from ever happening. Walter created this plan with September, so September is willing to erase his existence from time too stop an Observer invasion of an earlier time. ...but that means two possible outcomes for the series:
(1) Walternate is never distracted by September, so he cures his son, and Walter never crosses over. That means we never have an adult Peter in our Universe; Olivia never marries (or meets) Peter, and Etta is never born.
(2) Walter still travels to the other Universe (maybe something else stops Walternate from realizing he has created a cure), gets Peter and crashes through the frozen lake. This time there is no September to save them; Olivia never marries or meets Peter (because he died before getting to our universe) and Etta is never born.
If we are to believe the ending of Fringe, then something had to have been planned and carried out to get Peter to this Universe. At the end of the series, Walter has traveled to the year 2167. Did Walter do something in the year 2167 to bring Peter to this universe? If nothing had been planned and carried out to get Peter to our universe, then it had to have been Walter in the year 2167 who did it. September is killed at the end of the series, and it seems to be a surprise to September and Walter, so I don't see September being the culprit who got Peter over here. I can't imagine Walternate transporting his own son to our Universe (though it's hard to think of anyone else in our time that could figure out how do it). Anyway, it leaves unanswered questions; always a good way to re-start a series.