Walter (John Noble) is in crisis. He’s trying to recall his plan to defeat the Observers and along the way, he decides to drop some LSD that he’s rediscovered in his lab. What follows is a troubling confrontation with himself as he, Astrid (Jasika Nicole), Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter (Joshua Jackson) continue in their struggle to defeat the invaders.

Black Blotter was written by Kristin Cantrell and first aired on 14 December, 2012.

While the team hunts down an encoded radio signal that leads them to the young Observer from the pocket universe, named Michael (Rowan Longworth) by his caretakers. He recalls the encounter, but the road to find him was troubling, as the team finds evidence of fallen friends and Observers along the way.

Through it all, Walter is tripping and having a dialogue with his lab assistant Dr. Warren (Jenni Blong) and Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) as Warren pushes him to set aside this gentle personality and re-embrace his old self now that his brain has been restored.

Become your old self, and that may be the way to save the world. It may be the key to everything, but Walter dreads becoming that person again.

This ends up being an engaging and well-written episode, with a wonderful nod to Monty Python and their animation style partway through, and we can see that some drastic choices and actions are going to be made and done before we come up on the series finale… only four episodes from now!

Anomaly XB-6783746 first aired on 21 December, 2012. It was written by David Fury.

As the team tries to figure out how to communicate with the young Observer, they turn to Nina for help. Unfortunately, there are Loyalists working in Nina’s office who contact Windmark (Michael Kopsa) and through interrogations, work to track her down.

Nina leads the group to a remote lab, that contains an anomaly, a dead Observer, but they believe there may be a way to communicate with the boy through a neural link.

As the Fringe Team goes to work on assembling what they need, Windmark arrives while Nina and the young Observer are still in the lab. To protect them both, Nina takes her own life, something that shakes Walter when they discover her when they return to recover her and the boy.

When they begin to test the link on the boy, it rouses the young Observer, and when he touches Walter, Walter is shown his life, his connection to not only Peter and Olivia, but a recurring presence throughout it all, September (Michael Ceveris).

That is who they are looking for.

Next time, we dive into the final three episodes of Fringe and see how it all wraps up.