Sorry Charlie

Things are beginning to make sense on Fringe, which means that in a little over a season, I understand a lot more about this show than I do after 5 seasons of Lost! Things were all coming back to Olivia this week and that means a lot of blanks were filled in for us as well. When she traveled to the alternate universe (or rather, when she was yanked into the alternative universe), she met with William Bell. This much we knew, but what we didn't know was what they discussed. He explained A LOT! Like, 10x more than Lost has explained in 5 seasons! When Olivia was a child, Dr. Bell and Walter experimented on children and one of those children was her. They were looking for a saviour -- someone who was strong enough to survive the transition between the universes and could, therefore, counteract the coming storm that Bell predicted. He knew that one day, those from our universe would cross over to the other and build an army of human/machine hybrids who would wage a war with our universe. And according to the Pauli Exclusion Principle, no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, so one of those universes is going to lose.

Those aforementioned human/machine hybrids are what Olivia and co. have been calling the Shape Shifters (a.k.a. Charlie) and they're on a mission to find their leader. Apparently, their leader's head was being kept on ice in a cryogenics lab in our universe. Olivia knew where, but she couldn't remember. She finally recalled the location, but received a sudden text from Charlie telling her that Nina (whom she was in the middle of conversing with) was the Shape Shifter. She excused herself and met Charlie outside. She, unfortunately, filled him in on the location before she got the text from Massive Dynamic that showed Charlie was the true Shape Shifter. After she killed Not-Charlie, she was racked with guilt. Even worse, the human/machine hybrids got the head and were in the process of re-attaching it to the body. Looks like there's about to be an inter-universe showdown.

Huh? Moment of the Hour: Walter's former test subject reactivated her ability to spot the Shape Shifters (they appear with a light around them) and suddenly discovered that Peter had that same light around him. Walter had mentioned earlier that her ability simply allows her to spot those who don't belong and we know that Peter is really Alternate Universe Peter. Could this be why he was giving off the outsider glow?

Fringe airs Thursday nights on Fox. If you missed this week's episode, you can watch it for free at Fox.com.