Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Olivia (Anna Torv) are mourning the death of their daughter, even as Walter (John Noble) works to get another tape free of amber, and Astrid (Jasika Nicole) works on breaking the Observer’s written language.

An Origin Story was written by J.H. Wyman, this episode first aired on 2 November, 2012 and takes Peter in a whole new troubling direction. Determined to wreak some vengeance on the Observers, Peter finds a way when Anil (Shaun Smyth) one of Etta’s contacts reaches out with information.

It seems the Observers have a stable wormhole that they use to transport things from their future time to our present. If Peter can close off this end of it, it will cause a vacuum on the other end, and cause some serious problems and destruction for the Observers.

If he can pull it off.

As such, he interrogates an Observer (John Prosky), but is he being played? By the episode’s end, Peter is taking an enormous risk, injecting Observer tech into his own mind to give himself, hopefully, their powers, something he plans to use against them.

Olivia, thanks to a different tape given to her by Walter, goes through her own emotional arc and rediscovers her love for Peter, and helps her process her loss of Etta.

This episode plays very much into the serialized storytelling of the season as it is all about the continuing arc and set-up for future events. It’s entertaining, but it is certainly not a stand-alone story.

Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There was written by David Fury and originally aired on 9 November, 2012.

Walter discovers another tape, the last in the series, and it leads him to a condemned building, one that has been that way for twenty years since 2016. It is there that he (re)discovers a pocket universe in which he had tucked a very young Observer (Rowan Longworth), who would apparently be a major part of the plan to oust the Observers.

Navigating its labyrinthine corridors Walter is shocked to discover the boy is no longer there.

Meanwhile, Olivia and Peter track him down, just in time, as it seems the Observers are onto them again, and in a startling climax Peter is able to tap into some of the Observers powers now that their tech has made its way into his brain.

But what does that mean for Peter? And what is he becoming?

I’m worried that he’s done something irreversible to himself and that will be a serious issue as we race towards the end of the season and the series.

And will we ever get to understand Walter’s plan? Or is this quest that the tapes send them on nothing more than filler to get us to the series conclusion?

Either way, it’s coming up quick!