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I’m a fairly open-minded guy, but there are things happening here that I can’t even begin to explain and I’m not going anywhere until I can.
~ Peter Bishop about The Pattern.

Peter Bishop is the deuteragonist of Fringe portrayed by Joshua Jackson. He is the life partner of Olivia Dunham, father of Henrietta (and Henry in an erased time loop), as well as the birth son of the US Secretary of Defense Walter "Walternate" Bishop from the Parallel Universe.

After being abducted as a 7-year-old child to the prime universe, he was brainwashed to believe he had invented his former life in his head, despite the subtle, but noticeable differences.

Peter has a recorded IQ of 190. Peter's backstory identified him as a high school dropout, misfit, and nomad, who hadn't kept a job longer than two months. He'd been a wild land fireman, a floor sweeper at a meat packing plant in Tennessee, a cargo pilot, and briefly a college chemistry professor — a position he gained by falsifying a degree from MIT. Despite this, he managed to have papers published before he was exposed as a fraud.

He was setting-up a business deal in Baghdad, Iraq when he was recruited by his future wife Olivia Dunham to gain access to his adoptive father, Walter Bishop who was locked up in a mental institution.

A younger version of the character was portrayed by Quinn Lord (at age seven), and Chandler Canterbury (at age eight).

Abilities[]

He has a genius I.Q. level of 190, and has a fluency in English, Arabic, Persian, Latin, Greek, Cantonese, Russian, and Spanish.

As an entity existing outside of space time continuum, Peter was able to regenerate into a new timeline as an adult through emotional quantum entanglement brought about by the love of the people who were close to him. ("A Short Story About Love")

Weaknesses[]

Despite his intelligence, Peter became a college drop-out with gambling debts, a jack-of-all-trades, and a master con artist. He falsified a chemistry degree from MIT and managed to publish a few papers before his con was discovered.

Additionally, Peter has trouble with the mafia because he owes an undisclosed amount of money to "Big Eddie," a crime lord who had been hunting him for some time.

Background[]

Peter Bishop was born on September 18, 1978, in the Red Universe, to parents Walter Bishop, also known as "Walternate," and his wife Elizabeth Bishop. He was a fan of Red Lantern, and baseball. He went to see the Dodgers play once in Brooklyn. When he came to the prime universe, it angered and perplexed him to learn they played in Los Angeles. ("Subject 13")

Redverse Peter Seen by Prime Liz

Elizabeth sees her deceased son alive in another universe.

In 1985, Peter acquired an extremely rare and savage genetic disease. His father, a brilliant scientist (in both universes), worked around-the-clock to save him.

Revealed in the episode "Peter," the Walter Bishop of the prime-universe watched his own son, the prime-universe version of Peter, die because of the same disease. He would frequently watch the other Peter living in the alternate universe via a "trans-dimensional window," which could allow someone to view the Other Side. Eventually, Walter formulated a compound and opened a doorway into the other universe, with the intentions of saving the other Peter from death. However, the vial containing the compound shattered on his way over to the Other Side, so he was forced to kidnap Peter, bring him over to the prime-universe, cure him, and then return him. But, after curing Peter on our side, he and his wife could not find themselves able to return him, so they raised him as their own.

Though at first resistant to this, Peter later grew up oblivious to Walter's deception, apparently forgetting it happened. He repeatedly told Olivia Dunham that he was never fond of his father, and even recalled times when Walter experimented on him. It is implied that Walter did this to see how Peter's body reacted to moving between universes. In 1991, Walter's lab assistant, Dr. Carla Warren, was killed in a fire in his lab, and Walter was locked away inside St. Claire's Mental Institution. Peter later admits to have never visited Walter, and continued to grow up despising his father. His hatred towards Walter grew to the point that Peter took books belonging to Robert Bishop, Walter's father, and sold them for money, an action that affected Walter greatly when he discovered this in 2009.

The only time he spoke to his father during Walter's initial 17-year stay inside St. Claire's was when Walter phoned to tell him that Elizabeth had died in a car crash, though Peter later discovered that she actually committed suicide because of the guilt she carried from keeping him in this universe ("The Man from The Other Side")

Arc[]

Storyline[]

Once the existence of a parallel universe becomes evident and needs to be investigated, Walter shares with Olivia that he adbucted Secretary Bishop's son from the parallel universe when he was 9 years old, shortly after Walter's real son, Peter, died of a rare disease. ("Peter")

Peter Meets The Man Who Raises Him

Peter unknowingly meets his adoptive father.

Peter's existence is the perfect counterpart, and soul mate, to Olivia Dunham's existence. Together, their emotional bond, willingness for self-sacrifice, and ultimately, their parental donation leads to the healing between universes and the redaction of time-travelling exploiters from the future.

Polivia's Leap of Faith 422

Leap of faith: Peter and Olivia track down Bell.

His unique alliance with the Observer saves mankind from destruction in one timeline, only to place mankind in peril again in the aftermath - an adjusted timeline where he does not exist. So critical to the continuance of everything that is, or will be, Peter emerges into the final timeline after an absence of almost three decades following his childhood death. The lives of those that knew him as a boy are capsized. The lives of those that should have known him as an adult are righted. As a result, both universes are 'course-corrected' from the karmic fate they would have suffered otherwise.

Childhood references[]

In Safe, Walter tells Peter that when he was a little boy he contracted a rare disease. The disease was very much like Hepia, a form of bird flu that hadn't been around for decades. Trying to find a cure, Walter discovered a Swiss physician named Doctor Alfred Gross, the only man to ever successfully cure a case of Hepia. Unfortunately, Dr. Gross had died in 1936 so Walter designed a device to reach back in time and bring Dr. Gross back. But the device was apparently not used as Walter said Peter got better on his own.

In "There's More Than One Of Everything", Walter mentioned that "back then" (mid-1980's), when he and Bell took LSD, Walter lost something very precious and wanted to travel to the alternate reality they were envisioning, to get it back. This hints at the possibility that Peter died as a child and that Walter coveted the Peter from that other reality. During his childhood maladies, Peter collected coins as a distraction.

In "Dream Logic", Peter dreams of his childhood. In his dream, he is asleep in bed and is rousted by what appears to be Walter. Decorations in his childhood bedroom suggest he may have been raised in the parallel universe. He disappears from his bed. (Peter claims to have not had dreams during his teenage years).

After Walter was institutionalized in the early 1990's, Peter moved to Allston with his mother because she could not afford the mortgage of their house in Cambridge.

In Grey Matters, Walter is asked to associate words with images he is shown. Three images elicit the response "Peter" - a bowl of custard, a boy playing on a beach, and a child-sized coffin. This, along with the appearance of his gravestone in "There's More Than One Of Everything", appears to confirm that the "Peter" in this world died at the age of seven.

Walter had indicated before that when Peter was a child, he was travelling with him to a family Thanksgiving dinner. Their car slipped off the road onto a frozen lake. The ice broke and the car began to sink. However, in Peter, Walter reveals to Olivia that he and Peter went through the ice as they came back from the alternate universe through a device that Walter had installed on the frozen surface of Reiden Lake. With their fate apparently certain, Walter and Peter were saved by the Observer. As a result, Walter owed a debt to the Observer; there is no suggestion that Peter has a debt of any kind.

Peterless Timeline[]

In the corrected timeline that he established by bridging the two universes in a cooperative mission, he rejoined the universe he grew-up in after unsuccessfully trying to communicate his request for help to Walter and Olivia.

Relationships[]

Nina Sharp told Peter (The Cure) that she knew him when he was a small boy, that she and Walter were once quite close, and that she and Peter spent time together at the equestrian center.

Blueverse Counterpart[]

Prime Peter Bishop 215 Peter episode

The Peter of our world.

His Blueverse counterpart died as a 7-year-old child. ("Peter") The grief of his demise led his mother, Elizabeth Bishop to commit suicide shortly after his death in 1985. ("Back to Where You've Never Been") However, in Peter's timeline where he was raised by his abductee adoptive father, Elizabeth did not commit suicide for another 15 years sometime in the year 2000. ("The Man from The Other Side")

He owned a baseball mitt, something Redverse Peter never had before. ("Subject 13")

Appearances[]

Peter Bishop appears in all episodes of Fringe except "Immortality". Joshua Jackson is also absent for "Peter" and "Subject 13" where younger versions of the character are depicted in flashback episodes, making his episodic count 97 out of 100 episodes. Two episodes account for hallucinatory appearances, and four episodes serve as cameo appearances.

Season 1

  • 1x01: "Pilot"
  • 1x02: "The Same Old Story"
  • 1x03: "The Ghost Network"
  • 1x04: "The Arrival"
  • 1x05: "Power Hungry"
  • 1x06: "The Cure"
  • 1x07: "In Which We Meet Mr. Jones"
  • 1x08: "The Equation"
  • 1x09: "The Dreamscape"
  • 1x10: "Safe"
  • 1x11: "Bound"
  • 1x12: "The No-Brainer"
  • 1x13: "The Transformation"
  • 1x14: "Ability"
  • 1x15: "Inner Child"
  • 1x16: "Unleashed"
  • 1x17: "Bad Dreams"
  • 1x18: "Midnight"
  • 1x19: "The Road Not Taken"
  • 1x20: "There's More Than One of Everything"
  • 1x21: "Unearthed" (bonus special)

Season 2

  • 2x01: "A New Day in the Old Town"
  • 2x02: "Night of Desirable Objects"
  • 2x03: "Fracture"
  • 2x04: "Momentum Deferred"
  • 2x05: "Dream Logic"
  • 2x06: "Johari Window"
  • 2x07: "Of Human Action"
  • 2x08: "August"
  • 2x09: "Snakehead"
  • 2x10: "Grey Matters"
  • 2x11: "Johari Window"
  • 2x12: "What Lies Below"
  • 2x13: "The Bishop Revival"
  • 2x14: "Jacksonville"
  • 2x15: "Peter" (young only)
  • 2x16: "Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver."
  • 2x17: "White Tulip"
  • 2x18: "The Man from the Other Side"
  • 2x19: "Brown Betty"
  • 2x20: "Northwest Passage"
  • 2x21: "Over There: Part 1"
  • 2x22: "Over There: Part 1"

Season 3

  • 3x01: "Olivia"
  • 3x02: "The Box"
  • 3x03: "The Plateau" (hallucination)
  • 3x04: "Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?"
  • 3x05: "Amber 31422" (hallucination)
  • 3x06: "6955 kHz"
  • 3x07: "The Abducted" (ending only)
  • 3x08: "Entrada"
  • 3x09: "Marionette"
  • 3x10: "The Firefly"
  • 3x11: "Reciprocity"
  • 3x12: "Concentrate and Ask Again"
  • 3x14: "6B"
  • 3x15: "Subject 13" (young only)
  • 3x16: "Os"
  • 3x17: "Stowaway"
  • 3x18: "Bloodline"
  • 3x19: "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide"
  • 3x20: "6:02 AM EST"
  • 3x21: "The Last Sam Weiss"
  • 3x22: "The Day We Died"

Season 4

  • 4x01: "Neither Here Nor There" (visual cameo, no lines)
  • 4x02: "One Night in October" (voice)
  • 4x03: "Alone In the World" (cameo)
  • 4x04: "Subject 9" (ending)
  • 4x05: "Novation"
  • 4x06: "And Those We've Left Behind"
  • 4x07: "Wallflower"
  • 4x08: "Back to Where You've Never Been"
  • 4x09: "Enemy of My Enemy"
  • 4x11: "Making Angels"
  • 4x12: "Welcome to Westfield"
  • 4x13: "A Better Human Being"
  • 4x14: "Welcome to Westfield"
  • 4x15: "A Short Story About Love"
  • 4x16: "Nothing As It Seems"
  • 4x17: "Everything In Its Right Place"
  • 4x18: "The Consultant"
  • 4x19: "Letters of Transit"
  • 4x20: "Brave New World"
  • 4x21: "Brave New World: Part 1"
  • 4x22: "Brave New World: Part 2"

Season 5

  • 5x01: "Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11"
  • 5x02: "In Absentia"
  • 5x03: "The Recordist"
  • 5x04: "The Bullet That Saved the World"
  • 5x05: "An Origin Story"
  • 5x06: "Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There"
  • 5x07: "Five-Twenty-Ten"
  • 5x08: "The Human Kind"
  • 5x09: "Black Blotter"
  • 5x10: "Anomaly XB-6783746"
  • 5x11: "The Boy Must Live"
  • 5x12: "Liberty"
  • 5x13: "An Enemy of Fate"

Trivia[]

  • He has been arrested seven times.
  • Spoke Farsi - (Pilot), German - (Ability), Arabic - (Fracture), and Cantonese - (Snakehead)
  • Owes money to a guy named Big Eddie, likely a gambling debt. (Pilot), (The Arrival)
  • Introduced as Olivia's brother "Rick" to a bartender - (Safe)
  • Is forty-seven years old in May of 2026 (The Day We Died), which aligns with his 18 September 1978 birth date.
  • Is friends with the owner of the biggest chop shop in Boston - (Midnight)
  • Walter gives Peter a 'Walking Liberty Half Dollar' coin, supposedly from his childhood, which has always been good luck for Peter - (There's More Than One Of Everything)
  • His grown daughter grew-up thinking of him as the engineer of the Fringe team, and he is referred to as such by the captured Observer - (An Origin Story)

Quotes[]

"When we first met, I was a nomad, moving from place-to-place, job-to-job. She gave me a purpose: She taught me to believe in something bigger than myself. She taught me to fight to keep our world safe, and more recently, to keep it from dying. The truth is –- we’re all dying. From the moment we’re born, we are all dying, and the universe is unspeakably cruel. Our one hope is that we can find some purpose, some meaning before that last day comes. Some happiness... and love. Olivia was all of that to me. There was no one like her. While I will not cease to fight, now that she’s gone, I’m afraid I’m already lost. That we are all lost. The world is a darker place without her." - (at Olivia's funeral following her assassination by refugee and former Secretary of Defense Walter Bishop. standing in the Wave Sink Device for about a minute, Peter is catching his own statement during a glimpse of his personal fate and that of mankind future in 2026 where the Parallel Universe has failed and this one is suffering horrendous Fringe events as well. he somberly sums up his relationship with Olivia for friends, family and colleagues as she is put to sea on a raft and set afire in a night time, Viking-style, emolation. minutes after exiting the Wave Sink Devivce, he resolves to save humanity from that timeline... then vanishes. seconds later, not one soul in the room remembers his presence or intent)  (The Day We Died)
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