At long last, the third season of “Fringe” kicks off tonight on Fox.
When we last left things, our Olivia was trapped in the alternate universe, a prisoner of the Walternate. Her double had come back to our world with Peter and Walter as part of the coming war between the two universes.
So, what happens next?
Executive producers Jeff Pinker and J.H. Wyman offered Blastr a few teases about the upcoming third season, including the fact that we’ll have two separate title sequences for the first few episodes. If it’s blue, the story takes place mostly in our universe. If it’s red, it takes place in the other universe.
We loved the idea of opening the show up,” said Pinkner. “Last year, we explored a little bit of what the alternative universe is like. Enough to get an idea of what the conditions are like over there and who the players are over there. We left Olivia there and we brought Bolivia, [or Bad Olivia] back, rather than putting everything back to the status quo right away. We want to explore our character in jeopardy over there. And then our team in jeopardy over here because they don’t known there is a spy in their midst.”
“We got really excited about that, being able to tell two very compelling mythologies,” added Wyman. “One over there and one over here and having two shows about one show, which we felt hadn’t been done before. Like Jeff said, it really enables us to tell some incredible stories over there as well. Because they are in such a state. The universe there is in such a state that it lends to more compelling stories and weird, freaky things than we can do over here. So it has presented itself as a huge opportunity for us.”
Last season was about secrets. This season we’re really going towards the concepts of duality, the concepts of choice, the concepts of who are we as people. What happens when you make a different choice?” asked Pinkner.
“Not to mention we have one of the most unique potential love triangles in that its one guy with two different versions of the same girl,” said Wyman of the love triangle that will develop between alternative Olivia, Olivia and Peter.
And we’ll also see new takes on familiar faces as well as the return of a cast member who died in our universe.
“We get to really spend time with a different version of Broyles. One who is still married and the consequences and how he’s different as a person. We get to really experience what Bolivia’s life is like. Our Olivia was essentially abused as a child. She was given these experiments which changed her worldview. Bolivia, that never happened to. Charlie on the other side is still alive and has a different life,” said Pinkner.
And while the new season will be rewarding to the faithful fans Pinker and Wyman acknowledge there’s still room to hook new viewers.
“It’s very important to constantly try to attract more viewers and to try and not make the show alienating… Our solution came in the form of ‘White Tulip’ and episodes like that, because we realized what we need to do to satiate both our hardcore fans and our financial responsibility is to create a term that we coined a ‘mythalone,'” said Wyman. “It sounds really simple when you say it now, like, ‘Yes, sure, you have a great standalone case, plus you thread in some great mythology.’ But I’ve got to tell you it took us a long time to get there and realize it. Now we have that our template for telling stories that we think satisfies both parties.”
“If we can in 43 minutes and 25 seconds, or whatever it is, give our audience moments of being scared and moments where they laugh and moments where they’re grossed out and then moments where they’re moved emotionally, we’ve done our job. And we think that we now have a bigger canvas and new actors that we’re really excited to be joining our cast to tell those stories,” says Pinker.
The new season debuts tonight at 9 p.m. EST on Fox.
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