FRINGE Recap: Anomaly XB-6783746

Despite the Fringe crews best efforts, they simply can’t communicate with Michael, the child observer. Walter is frustrated, he still has no idea what his plan for the boy had been. Olivia is confused, when they met before the boy was able to read her, something is different now. He knew what she needed before and communicated it to her. They need high tech help, so Olivia calls in the big guns…Nina.

Nina leaves her office to meet the crew just in time, Windmark and his goons arrived shortly after her departure. They know that the tech the Fringe team used to access Bell’s storage facility had to have come from someone at her office, and they are determined to find out who is helping the fugitives.  They bring in a device that apparently can track remnants of sounds last heard in a room, and manage to retrieve Nina’s side of her conversation with Olivia. That proves to them that she is the one they are looking for, it’s just a matter of tracking her.

Luckily for Nina, the observers can’t track her phone if she’s underground, and that’s where she is. She takes the crew to a secret lab facility that she has been loaning to the resistance. They have been running experiments on observers, trying (unsuccessfully) to learn how they are able to read their thoughts, or anything that might give them an advantage. There are quite a few observer bodies being preserved there for research purposes.  She has a device they used there to try and read the observers thoughts, but when they attach it to Michael she gets a reading like she’s never seen before. She needs another “halo” from the Ministry of Science, then they can hook it up to one of the team at the same time. Everyone but Nina and Michael goes to get  the device. Once they break into the Ministry’s warehouse, they quickly find what they are looking for. They find something else, too, unfortunately. Olivia spies Windmark interrogating employees. Specifically, she spies him torturing Hastings, the employee who helped them with the tech they had used in the previous break-in.

Nina makes the unfortunate decision to leave the lab and telephone Olivia. Olivia tips her off that her cover has been blown, and she can’t go back to her office or her home. Nina appears shaken, then breaks her phone before returning to the lab. Too late, the observers have already tracked her. When Nina gets back to Michael, he senses something is wrong…he touches his hand to her face and she reacts as though she’s stunned. Before we learn what he did to her, they notice Windmark and his team arriving, and Nina acts quickly to hide Michael before they find them.  At the Ministry, Olivia and Peter bust in to save Hastings from the Loyalists who are preparing to make an example of him. He tells them that Windmark knows where Nina is, and he’s headed there. They rush to get back to her and Michael.

Windmark thinks Nina and the others are animals, experimenting on observers in their lab. He interrogates her, tries to read her thoughts. He sees the boy in her thoughts, and wants to know what their plans are for him. In his time, the boy was an anomaly that was supposed to be destroyed, but he disappeared before it could be carried out. It was a big story in his timeline, no one knew what happened to him until now.  He wants the boy and tries to read Nina’s thoughts to find him. Despite his and his teams best efforts, though, they can’t find the boy in the lab. He orders one of his men to restrain Nina, and when the soldier gets close enough to her she grabs his gun. Windmark looks amused, tells her that gun can’t hurt him. Nina replies that she knows, then turns the gun on herself.

When the Fringe team returns, they find Nina, slumped over in her wheelchair, blood all over the floor. They fear that Windmark has Michael, but when they run through the security video they see that Nina had led the boy away before Windmark arrived. They start searching the lab, and find Michael underneath one of the containers holding the body of an observer. The boy goes to Nina, a tear rolling down his cheek.  Walter has been crying over her body, and seems to see the boy as a person for the first time, instead of just a means to an end. They move ahead with their plan and hook up Walter and Michael together in order to facilitate communication.

Walter asks Michael questions, and the boy seems to understand and answer him. As the questioning continues, the boy seems tentative for a moment, then removes the “halo” and approaches Walter. He places his hand on Walter’s face, the same way he had with Nina. Walter experiences flashes of the moments that led them to this place, many of which were from the time when he crossed into the other universe to save young Peter. He hears September’s voice saying the boy is important. We then see someone approach  a man staring out a window…and as he turns we see that it is a much more human appearing September. Walter tells the crew that he knows Donald’s identity. Donald is September.

The final episodes of  will air January 11th and January 18th on Fox.