The theme of perception makes a solid comeback with the episode’s opening scene; our strong Olivia Dunham, whose mental status seemed so strong in the fact of everything she had been through, is now a being seen as a fragile mental patient, a delusional character whose story of alternate universes make sense to (almost) no one. The contrast between what Olivia was saying (i.e. the truth) and the psychologist’s perception of what Olivia was saying (i.e. delusions) is incredibly powerful: is this the fate that awaits Olivia, be it in the alternate universe or in this universe?

It’s all the more interesting when one wonders how many psychiatry patients could actually just be patients with a heightened awareness. When one considers the relationship of this world to the next (where we go to after we pass on) to be a reflection of the relationship between this world and the one we were in before (our mothers’ womb) it could make sense. What if these so-called psychiatry patients are only seeing things that we can’t, things that make them sound totally crazy when they tell us about them?

Walternate’s opening monologue to Brandonate (Ryan McDonald) reminded me a lot of The X-Files. Fox Mulder used to berate the government for hiding things from the public. Although the government was doing it partly for the security of said public, Mulder insisted that the public had a right to know, and that the government wasn’t allowed to be that manipulative about the information it controlled.

It’s an interesting concept: the government protecting the public. If we consider the past, not many decades ago, the state of the world was such that only a limited few could be educated. And thus, they were the few leaders of the masses of humanity, who were at best spectators to the establishment of great civilizations, and, at worse, its soldiers and slaves. But people like Walternate have to up the ante now, as nowhere before in history have so many individuals at the grassroots, people who are not part of the ‘elite’, have had this much power in becoming active protagonists of their own destiny.

But while Walternate will inevitably fail – and not just because it’s television – ­it won’t be before he causes a lot of destruction. He will manage to do so because Walternate have a superpower: he is able to distort perception, making people do wrong while believing it is right. This ability has also severely distorted his own, which makes me wonder at what lengths he is ready to go to achieve his objectives, whatever they may be.

One thought that crossed my mind concerns the level of anger within the Alter-Fringe team, whose reality has been sorely distorted by Walternate to believe amongst others, that Walter is to blame for Altivia’s breakdown. Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel) and Scarlie (Kirk Acevedo) are extremely capable soldiers whose anger you do not want directed at yourself. The implications for future episodes and introspections are huge.

It needs to be pointed out that Walternate is only dangerous in the context that there are people who listen to him blindly. If individuals practiced the concept of independent investigation of the truth, there would be many loopholes in his story that would one pause and reflect on its veracity. Unfortunately, there are people that believe him blindly. And so, I’d say that, after Walternate, the most dangerous person right now is Lincoln Lee, who is armed, capable, and who seems to believe almost blindly in what he has been told: “The treatment can be worse than the disease, but we just want you to get better”.

Even in a military state like the alter-universe, it is possible for people to know that there are things wrong. The demonstrations being held in front of The Orpheum are  a sign that despite the potential dangers, there are always some people willing to stand up for what they believe in. This also happens in real life, as demonstrations and resistance movements in many military dictatorships show. In this particular case, people were protesting for the release of those who have been ambered. It gives a gruesome twist to a practice we had seen up to now as only being a protective one, as asking for a ‘release’ implies that those caught are still alive.

Olivia’s escape was the episode’s first action sequence – and what an interesting one it was. Did anyone else notice that she used her preferred method of pretending vulnerability as in the Season 1 episode “Bound” (episode 11)? And did anyone notice the similarity of her running through the woods outside the facility with her running through the woods in her vision in Season 2’s “Jacksonville” (episode 15)? It also had a bit of a Count of Monte-Cristo feel: anything for freedom.

One person whose opinion on that matter has already starting changing and is bound to change even more throughout the season – if the writers are, of course, planning to keep him around – is Henry (Andre Royo). When he first meets Olivia, it is obvious he deems her insane; but after listening to her and, more importantly, watching her trying to work her way through what was happening to her, he comes to realize that she isn’t as insane as she might have initially seemed. Henry has, in my opinion, the potential of becoming one of the seasons’ most interesting characters, one that will bring forth a slew of interesting and thought-provoking questions.