Entrada (S03E08)
Airdate: 2 December 2010
Written by: J. H. Wyman & Jeff Pinkner Directed by: Brad Anderson
Running Time: 44 minutes
After spending the better part of Season 3 hopscotching between parallel universes and juggling two distinct versions of its protagonist, the creators of Fringe clearly decided the time had come to tidy up the narrative sprawl. Episode eight, aptly titled Entrada, arrives as something of a reset button—a carefully orchestrated convergence that promises to restore equilibrium to a series that had grown deliciously complicated. What emerges is an hour of television that manages to tie up several dangling threads whilst simultaneously tightening others, all whilst delivering the kind of emotionally charged storytelling that elevated Fringe above standard procedural fare.
The episode wastes no time dismantling the central conceit that had driven the previous seven instalments. For weeks, viewers had watched Fauxlivia—the alternate universe's harder-edged Olivia Dunham—successfully hoodwink everyone in the Prime universe into believing she was their Olivia. Her deception had been meticulous, her performance convincing enough to fool colleagues, friends, and most crucially, Peter Bishop himself. Yet this carefully constructed illusion shatters spectacularly in the opening moments, at least where Peter is concerned. The crack appears courtesy of the previous episode's cliffhanger: a phone call from a woman who had encountered the real Olivia during her brief, desperate attempt to escape the Redverse. Though that escape proved unsuccessful, Olivia stayed just long enough to pass a message through to Peter. The revelation lands like a thunderclap—Peter now knows, with stomach-churning certainty, that the woman sharing his bed is an impostor.
Naturally, Peter requires absolute confirmation before confronting his doppelgänger lover. He orchestrates a clever test, feeding Fauxlivia a Greek phrase that the genuine Olivia would recognise instantly. Predictably, Fauxlivia stumbles, her failure immediate and telling. Rather than crumbling, however, she demonstrates precisely why she's such a formidable operative—she instantly recognises her cover's been blown and acts with brutal efficiency. Peter finds himself injected with a paralysing agent, left helpless as Fauxlivia bolts for a typewriter shop in the Bronx, her only means of contacting the Redverse and requesting emergency extraction.
When Peter finally recovers, the remainder of Fringe Division mobilises to track their fleeing quarry. Walter Bishop, ever the emotional centre of the series, finds himself particularly devastated by these developments—frustrated by his inability to help and tormented by the knowledge that his Olivia remains trapped in a hostile universe. It's Astrid who provides the breakthrough, recognising some malasadas Fauxlivia had brought as originating from a specific Bronx bakery. This culinary clue proves sufficient to uncover the typewriter shop, where the team discovers the inter-dimensional messaging device and decodes final transmission: instructions for Olivia to rendezvous at Newark train station.
Meanwhile, across the dimensional divide, Walternate has devised a chilling solution for retrieving his agent. His extraction plan treats the real Olivia as mere ballast—a body mass counterweight necessary for the transfer process, disposable enough that she would be killed beforehand to facilitate Fauxlivia's return. When Colonel Broyles learns of this cold-blooded calculus, he experiences a profound crisis of conscience. His discomfort stems partly from gratitude—Olivia had previously saved his son's life—and partly from the dawning realisation that his universe's leadership has abandoned all moral restraint. Olivia manages to persuade him into action, and Broyles smuggles her from the Liberty Island laboratory, racing toward Walternate's abandoned Harvard facility where she might enter the sensory deprivation tank and replicate her previous universe-crossing procedure. Alternate Fringe Division tracks Broyles via a subcutaneous device, yet he chooses sacrifice over survival, buying precious moments for Olivia's escape.
The inevitable confrontation unfolds at Newark station, where Fauxlivia meets a shapeshifter who administers the resonating rods necessary for Redverse transfer. Broyles, Peter, and the team arrive in force, managing to capture their target despite a desperate gambit wherein the shapeshifter assumes a woman's identity and poses as a hostage. Yet even in custody, Fauxlivia proves resourceful—she escapes the police vehicle, her passage home secured by the grotesque counterweight delivered from the Redverse: the mutilated corpse of alternate Colonel Broyles. Olivia, meanwhile, successfully completes her own crossing, materialising in Walter's Harvard lab and receiving medical attention. Peter visits her hospital bedside, their reunion weighted with unspoken trauma. Simultaneously, the typewriter shop proprietor (Stefan Arngrim) accepts Redverse technology that restores his mobility in exchange for delivering a component of the doomsday device to a waiting agent.
Written by executive producers Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman, Entrada operates on a superficial level as a palate-cleanser, granting the series something approaching a clean slate. By the closing credits, both Olivias have returned to their respective universes, and a fragile equilibrium re-establishes itself. Yet the final scene—cliffhanger-like in its ominous promise—hints at apocalyptic developments still gestating on the horizon.
Nevertheless, the episode definitively illustrates how fundamentally different these parallel universes have become, just as the two Olivias have diverged into distinctly different women. The Redverse presents a harsher reality than its Prime counterpart—more dangerous, more paranoid, more willing to sacrifice humanity for survival. Fauxlivia embodies this ruthlessness; she's prepared to kill without hesitation and weaponise her own body as a tool of deception. Walter recognises this disparity and channels his observations into semi-comical outbursts, comparing Fauxlivia to Mata Hari and coining the portmanteau "vagenda"—a moment of levity that barely masks genuine unease.
Yet the episode's most devastating impact comes from Colonel Broyles' gruesome fate. Like his Prime universe counterpart, he attempted to do the right thing, and like so many moral individuals in the Redverse, he paid the ultimate price. Walternate's capacity for literal butchery of his closest associate, coupled with alternate Brandon's casual discussion of murdering Olivia, serves as stark reminder of the stakes involved. The apocalyptic possibility no longer feels theoretical—it feels imminent and personal.
Director Brad Anderson, a series veteran with a respectable film career behind him, handles this material with characteristic efficiency. He demonstrates Fringe's ability to employ streamlined storytelling unburdened by episodic constraints or J.J. Abrams' occasional mandate for obligatory action sequences. Anderson still finds room for fascinating world-building details: an elderly JFK's photograph adorning Walternate's desk, references to a vortex in the East River, and the delightful touch of naming the train station after Bruce Springsteen. The continuity proves equally satisfying, with Peter recalling specific details from past episodes to unravel Fauxlivia's deception.
If Entrada possesses a flaw, it lies in its somewhat anti-climactic and predictable conclusion. The audience understands intuitively that the correct Olivia will find her way home, and even Fauxlivia's survival feels inevitable—villains this compelling prove too valuable to waste, particularly this early in the series' run.
These minor quibbles aside, Entrada is a very good episode indeed—one for which cast and crew had every reason to feel genuinely proud. It honours the complex mythology built over three seasons whilst delivering genuine emotional payoff, and it reminds viewers why Fringe deserved its reputation as one of television's most ambitious science fiction series.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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