Welcome to Westfield
| "Welcome to Westfield" | |
|---|---|
| Fringe episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 12 |
| Directed by | David Straiton |
| Written by |
J. R. Orci Graham Roland |
| Production code | 3X7012 |
| Original air date | February 10, 2012 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
|
|
"Welcome to Westfield" is the twelfth episode of the fourth season of the Fox science-fiction drama television series Fringe, and the series' 77th episode overall.
The episode was written by J. R. Orci and Graham Roland, while being directed by David Straiton.
Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) has been trying to understand and use the Machine to return to his original timeline, with Walter (John Noble) having become more open and willing to explore the nature and mechanics of the device. Olivia (Anna Torv) is curious about the state of her relationship with Peter in his original timeline and tries to learn more from Peter.
Several drivers find their cars malfunctioning along a stretch of highway in Vermont, followed shortly by a crash of an airliner nearby. The Fringe team is called to investigate; Walter coming along for the first time in years. Walter identifies that the cars and plane were influenced by a strong electromagnetic field. Olivia, Peter and Walter travel to a nearby small town, Westfield, to gather evidence. While stopping at a diner for a bite to eat, the proprietor, acting delusionally, turns on the group and they are forced to kill him. They find other bodies that, like the dead cook, exhibit double irises or a second set of teeth. They free a survivor, Cliff (Tim Kelleher), from the back room. As Walter tends to Cliff's wounds Olivia and Peter realize the town is practically deserted and communication with the outside impossible. They find themselves unable to leave the town when they try to drive Cliff to a hospital: leaving on the main road brings them right back into the town.
As Cliff recovers he explains that three days ago the population started suffering from a delusional outbreak, acting as if they had lived a second life and killing friends and loved ones as if they didn't know them. They regroup with survivors at the local high school where Walter takes blood samples to try to identify the cause. A survivor kills herself after coming down with symptoms of the malaise and Walter realizes that those affected have twice the normal count of human DNA and have a higher rate of mitosis which is creating duplicate body organs. Walter concludes that the infected have somehow merged with their doppelgangers from the parallel universe, giving them this novel biology and a new set of memories; the few who remain unaffected, like Cliff, likely did not have a doppelganger in the parallel universe's version of Westfield. Due to the inability to leave town, Walter surmises that someone has merged the two realities into a single location, an experiment that he and William Bell had performed on a much smaller scale years ago when studying the parallel universe. Olivia, who had earlier felt the onset of a second set of memories and other delusional effects that Cliff described, is relieved to hear from Walter that her biology is normal.
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