Fringe's fifth season is a bit of a marmite affair, since it initially feels like an entirely different show which is more post-apocalyptic than procedural. It's arguable that Etta, Peter and Olivia's daughter (all grown up after the time jump), was killed off a little too quickly, although her send-off in The Bullet That Saved The World almost made the cut here. The Observers lack the humanity of previous antagonists like Walternate, and some fans felt that the series had overcomplicated its mythology. Liberty is therefore a standout fifth season episode in that it revisits more familiar territory just as the current storyline reaches a crescendo. Olivia once again doses herself with Cortexiphan and jumps between universes to meet her double, who's now older than her and happily married to Lincoln Lee, whom she chastises for "checking out my young ass". The episode lacks the subtlety of the final scene of the series, but it's more cohesive than the finale and works well as both a set-up for the show's conclusion and a coda for the series as a whole.
