September 9, 2008, on Fox, a nightmarish biological attack infected a plane that left those onboard a gooey, skeletal mess. The attack in this pilot belonged to Fringe science, where sci-fi met biology and technology, often with horrific consequences. The series Fringe took its name from this field and explored imaginative concepts with just as much humor and pathos. Having J.J. Abrams as one of the series creators, it wasn’t hard to see similarities to Lost, and Fringe had to escape from the shadow of The X-Files. Over five seasons, it did just that. It also struggled with ratings, but a devoted fan base and passionate figures behind the scenes kept it alive. Fringe told risky stories, ones that could alienate new viewers and maybe their fans too.

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The First Season of ‘Fringe’ Went Through Trial and Error

In Season 1, FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) sought the help of Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), incarcerated for decades in a mental hospital; she could only get him released if his adult, estranged son Peter (Joshua Jackson) acted as his caretaker. The three formed an unexpected partnership as they investigated bizarre and grisly cases. Season 1 was a hit-or-miss depending on the episode, but it hit a stride when it moved away from what made The X-Files work (standalone episodes) and embraced a serialized mythology about a parallel universe. The plan was to tease it out longer, but the decision to bring the plot line in sooner was the right call, even if the studio was concerned. In a TV Guide oral history of Fringe, Fox’s Entertainment president Kevin Reilly remembered how he didn’t want the focus to go onto the sci-fi concept, but he trusted the writers in their decisions.

Season 1 was linked, sometimes loosely, by weaponized experiments from a bioterrorist group. In the finale, it leaped fully into a bigger story with the reveal that a Parallel Universe existed and Walter had taken Peter from “the other side” years ago. In an early risk, Olivia crossed over at the finale’s end, where she realized she was on the upper floors of the Twin Towers, the buildings standing untouched. It’s a shocking image, one Fringe never figured out how to beat, and it represented the different choices and outcomes in this alternate version of Earth. With Season 2, Fringe put out “mythalone” episodes, which integrated the central storyline into cases-of-the-week, done to ease in new audiences and engage dedicated fans. Executive producer J.H. Wyman expressed why this episodic format was important, saying, “You’re watching a compelling story, and it’s Fringe-like, and you’ll get the benefit of that creepiness, and that’s a far out idea – but you’re also going to have the through-lines of the mythology of Walter dealing with the secret of Peter.”

“White Tulip” is an emotional, highly regarded mythalone story that saw Walter search for a sign of forgiveness over his kidnapping of Peter. He desired to earn it by receiving an impossible symbol: a white tulip. In the end, Walter got a drawing of it, the “how” was purely Fringe, and the white tulip endured as a symbol for the series. Onward, Season 2 reached a finale where there would be no coming back from. A rescue mission brought the main trio of Olivia, Walter, and Peter into the Parallel Universe, a place that the show’s writers made sure wasn’t simply a “bad version” of the Prime Universe, nor was it just a spectacle either.

There was plenty of creativity in the differences to this “other side,” from comic books to the long-running Broadway hit Dogs (instead of Cats) to having zeppelins in the skies. Equally important, it was another way Fringe dived into messy, endearing human emotions too. Life is full of choices, sometimes people choose good ones that can fulfill them, or bad ones that will haunt them. Fringe never forgot this, even when it went into odd places, like in a special tradition that involved Episode 19. There was a noir, jukebox musical in Season 2 where reanimated corpses performed “The Candy Man” and Anna Torv sang a Stevie Wonder hit. Season 3 had a heavy use of animation within an Inception-style adventure, and Season 4 went into a dystopian future, influenced by Blade Runner. What made even the most outlandish of plots work, was the main acting trinity who were always fantastic.

Anna Torv, John Noble, and Joshua Jackson Were Standouts on ‘Fringe’

Although the studio worried about the Parallel Universe inclusion, Fringe never looked back. Season 3 became a highlight, where episodes alternated between the Prime to the Parallel Universe, bringing out the best talents in Torv and Noble when they played OG characters and their doppelgängers. There is the restrained Prime Olivia, opposite to her laid-back double. There is the foodie, wandering mind of Walter, far away from the double he referred to as Walternate, who has masterminded a doomsday plan for the Prime Universe. While Jackson never got to play a double, his role remained crucial.

Olivia and Peter became a couple, two individuals who never opened up to anyone else, but Peter was also the straight man to Walter’s randomness, and his very existence set Fringe in motion. Back in the ‘80s, Walter didn’t save his son from an illness, and knowing there was another universe, he crossed over with moral intentions that turned selfish. He enacted interdimensional kidnapping that left escalating damage to the Parallel Universe’s environment and triggered a cold war between the worlds. Jackson got to play the pained betrayal when he learned what his father had done, as well as the healing process. Despite these charged developments, the viewership never returned to the highs of Season 1.

‘Fringe’ Had Declining TV Ratings, But It Never Backed Down

For the third outing and for those who kept watching, the writers managed to make stories in the Parallel Universe as engaging as the Prime side. While the Season 1 finale earned 9.3 million viewers, the series went through TV slot changes, from Tuesdays to Thursdays, to the dreaded “Friday night death slot.” Ratings plummeted, earning 3.7 million at the back end of Season 3. Reilly remained a big supporter, however; in January 2012, he was quoted in Entertainment Weekly stating, “Fringe has been a point of pride. I share the passion for the show the fans have. I love that Fox, after letting down genre fans over the years, [came through with Fringe]. I love that fans stuck with it after it moved to Friday. It has vastly improved our Friday night.”

That part about letting down genre fans would be about the network’s treatment of the short-lived sci-fi western Firefly, which aired episodes out of order and rapidly failed in the “Friday night death slot.” Although loyal fans stuck with Fringe, some risky storytelling was less successful. Season 3 ended with Peter unknowingly sacrificing himself to form a truce between the two worlds, which got him deleted from existence. When Season 4 aired, it introduced an alternate timeline with an upended dynamic that had Jackson temporarily MIA and Olivia and Walter made colder.

Not Every Risk Paid Off on ‘Fringe’

Fringe could be epic in its grand interdimensional scope, where key episodes were marketed with a movie trailer-inspired promo. It could also be very sappy. Love was such a powerful force that it factored into character agendas (Walter’s kidnapping); for Peter, it yanked him back into existence because of how much he meant to his father and Olivia. It was a risky idea to put into a sci-fi premise, but it didn’t feel as wonky as it could have, primarily because of how much careful attention Fringe paid to the family drama. Still, the fourth season never returned to the original timeline, instead, Olivia and Walter regained their old memories of Peter. By far, the strongest element of Fringe was the casting, and while the main trio was never forgotten, there was a miscalculation in how one character never got the respect she deserved.

Lab assistant Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) dealt with Walter’s oddball mannerisms, and many times the show forgot she was an FBI agent too. She bonded with Walter for a sweet friendship, but there was a negative side to Astrid’s glaring underestimation. Nicole later revealed the racism she felt behind a running gag in how Walter never said her name correctly — going from Astro, Aspirin, to whatever else popped into his head. TVLine eventually published an article on the criticisms the actress posted to Twitter: “As a black woman with a name that white people seem to find incredibly difficult to pronounce, sometimes knowingly using the wrong name for me, I always thought it was a pretty tasteless joke.” Fringe came to realize the importance to Astrid, but the name blunder was never fixed.

The Last Season of ‘Fringe’ Was a Gift for the Fans

Perhaps more challenging for audiences would be two dystopian futures Fringe put in place. In Season 3, Peter experienced what would happen if the two universes caused doomsday to one or the other, the results catastrophic. This future, set in 2026, was meticulous in world-building, with big and small details, but could an extended stay in a bad future work? The show’s fifth season, with a limited episode count, took this gambit by going into another dystopian future, this time in 2036, where it stayed until the finale. Olivia, Walter, Peter, and Astrid spent the culminating episodes trying to avert the tragic violence of this bleak future. Maybe it didn’t work for every fan, but it paid off several answers that it posed since the first season. The two-hour finale got the biggest ratings of the fifth season, with 3.2 million viewers; for those who watched, everything came full circle with the relationships that were essential to the best episodes.

In the series finale, Walter must commit a great sacrifice to right the many wrongs he made in the past. He shares a goodbye with Peter, telling the son he took because he couldn’t recover from losing his child the first time, “The time we had together we stole. I cheated fate to be with you. And we shouldn’t have had that time together, but we did.” The dialogue worked for a heartbreaking and heartwarming scene between the two, but it worked just as well to acknowledge the fans. The long-form storytelling mostly paid off in revelations it teased out and finally answered during the run, while it was never perfect, it did the rare feat of telling the complete story it wanted to. Fifteen years later, Fringe is a sci-fi gem that wasn’t afraid to take audiences through wormholes fueled by family dynamics. Conflicts over interdimensional crimes, alternate timelines, and dystopian futures were big, but the personal stakes felt infinitely bigger.