After a long break over the summer, Fringe finally came back to us. Finally we would get some answers to the millions of questions that arose when Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) just vanished into thin air in the end of last season … right?

Of course not; that’s what all season is going to be about. Joshua Jackson is off recording Lay the Favorite with Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones and a bunch of other big-shots, so he’s not going to be on Fringe all that much these next few weeks. We get a glimpse of him in a reflection on a television screen, something that sends Walter (John Noble) into deep shock. He’s obviously a broken man, far more so than he used to be.

This season presents us with a world quite different from the one we’re used to. FBI agent Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel) makes a reappearance, and it turns out that Olivia (Anna Torv) has never met him before. Already now we know that many things that used to be true aren’t any more, and it all has to do with Peter missing from our Universe.

On the whole, the episode’s plot itself isn’t all that exciting. A translucent-looking man is killing people because they’ve got metals in them, and then it turns out that he’s half machine, so Olivia thinks he’s from the other universe. It’s probably something that’ll be returning over and over in this season, but it doesn’t do much for the overall story except introduce Lincoln Lee as a new Fringe team member while Peter’s away.

Meanwhile, the Observer (Michael Cerveris) that once saved Peter from drowning with Walter is building a device that is meant to erase all traces of Peter from the universe. He manages to finish the device and sits down to activate it – but cannot. He seems to have feelings for Peter in some way and doesn’t want things to play out this way.

One thing that confuses me, though. In the last episode of season three, they said that Peter had “never existed”. In this episode, they seem to hint that “our” Peter died from the disease that plagued him, that Walter crossed to the other universe to kidnap “their” Peter, came back with him and saw him drown in the accident that the Observer previously saved him from. It’s all very confusing.

How did you like Fringe – Season 4, Episode 1?