Olivia’s in love.

After being graced with the infusion of multiple memories, Olivia has coffee with Nina and admits to her love for Peter. Though they’ve only met Peter recently, she feels as if she’s known him her whole life. She dismisses the theory that Peter is controlling the new ingestion of memories, memories that are beginning to override her current ones; she forgets her and Nina have breakfast every Saturday; the revelation scares Nina and Olivia concedes, promising to talk to Walter.

After arriving home from a funeral Jane is attacked by a horribly scarred man who adorns himself with some type of pheromone. It calms her for a bit, and she gives in to him before it wears off. Once it does, the invader kills her by wrapping saran around her head.

Olivia visits Walter who, in his eccentric paranoia, had installed a teddy bear with camera to spy on the cleaning staff. It happens to catch the Observer’s disappearance. Astrid returns with a tool to slow down video to the point of seeing even light particles. Astrid notices something is bothering Olivia but she brushes it out. Broyles ends up calling the team in and they are at Jane Hall’s murder scene. Based on the evidence, DNA from her late husband (as it was with another victim) was found at the scene. While they discuss the case, Walter discovers some interesting facts about the Observer’s disappearance. New evidence in hand, he calls Peter, ferreting his son back to the lab. Peter, leaving for New York to get away from Olivia, returns and sees the video showing the Observer implanting something in Peter’s eye. As Walter works to dig out the item, he commends Peter for his strength to leave Olivia.

Similar to some of the crazy eye jewelry seen today, they find a jewel that would act as an organic ocular suggestion; subconsciously working its way into Peter’s subconscious, compelling him to visit the coordinates. As Jane Hall and her dehydrated husband are examined by Walter, the bad guy continues their work. The crew evaluate the possible motives of the bad guy and Walter suggests the concentration of pheromones may hint at an experiment of a love potion. Walter lets slip Peter’s plans to leave for New York and Olivia’s distraught about Peter keeping it from her. A little later, she admits to her memories being overridden by a life she’s never lived. She asks Walter to find a cure, not wanting to feel this way (being in love with Peter) and Walter promises to help.

Our bad guy scans the park looking for another unknowing victim. He almost finds one until he notices their child and re-focuses to another couple off screen. Back at the lab, Walter experiments (with Astrid’s help) on various scents to find a bit more about their suspect.

Olivia and Lincoln are paging through the accounts of the victims by friends and Olivia suggests the suspect is looking for those couples that personify his definition of true love. It strikes a cord with Lincoln who we all know is in love with Olivia (the same was his alta-Earth counterpart was in love with faux-livia). She is oblivious to her longing glances and Lincoln offers himself as someone she can talk to—it’s the farthest he will go to admitting his love for her. Astrid brings the two in to evaluate the chemical compound the suspect is concocting. The ingredient, Castorium, is used by perfume manufacturers and they discover the identity of the suspect–Anson Carr–a former worker fired from a perfume plant for theft, though they are too late to save his latest male victim.

Peter finds the device

As for Peter, he’s investigating the location that was embedded in his eye. He finds a suit case hidden in a chest that houses Observer equipment, chief among them a tracker that leads him to a field in Foxboro, Mass where metal cylinder burrows its way from out of the ground.

The Fringe team goes to Anson’s latest victim’s wife but after a bit of discussion, Olivia realizes that husband and wife were not in love. As Olivia listens, Lincoln watches her from across the room, unable to conceal his love for her. Focused on the case, Olivia realizes the hubby was having an affair.

The crew arrives just before Anson can claim another victim. When Olivia questions him, he admits his desire to create a formula so that every human being would be able to say they have someone to love. He comments on the odor of love permeating from her and his observation drives Olivia’s decision to allow her new memories, the ones with Peter, to take over her current life. Nina is surprised but cannot dissuade Olivia who asks her foster mother to remember for her and not give up on her.

Peter toys with the cylinder and opens it, revealing the Observer. He was locked out of the Universe by the others and used Peter to free himself. Peter asks him for help to get back home and the Observer tells Peter what we’ve known all along; that he is home. During the talk the Observer suggests Peter could not be fully erased from existence because his family (including Olivia) could not let him go and vice versa. When the Observer tells Peter the Olivia he knows is the one he’s been looking for, he disappears to leave Peter to his own devices. Ending as all love stories should, Peter and Olivia come together in the street. No words are spoken but the emotion in their gazes, their hug, their kiss is enough to tell us the two have finally found their soul mate who’d been there all along.

Though a standalone episode regarding the case of the Pheromone Pusher, the season long question of Peter finding home—finding Olivia—has been answered. One of the things ‘Fringe’ does better than the ‘X-Files’ is to explore the love between the primary protagonists without dragging it on throughout the life of the show. As Olivia has come to terms with her memories of Peter, we have to wonder how long before Walter and the others remember him.

If you missed the previous episode be sure to read our ‘Fringe: The End Of All Things’ recap to catch up.