May 10, Posted in Fringe - 119 The Road Not Taken > Theories & Speculation by Scully
Broyles - Hero or Zero?
Thanks to Di for emailing me this fantastic theory. I love it and wanted to share it with everyone…so…Take it away Di…
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DOOD! I was talking to my brother, and something awfully interesting came up! So pr3 [i think it was him] was saying on the site that Broyles was the bad guy. We were running down the list of so-far-rogue agents and of course we reached John Scott and Loeb. So John still gives me the creeps up to this day and I’m not convinced [to not say I'm certain otherwise] that he really was a good wholesome man doing his top-secret job.
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Let’s go back to the pilot..John tells Olivia before ‘dying’ that ‘there was a reason why she was sent down to the storage units’. We never got more info than that, so it was dropped. Now fast forward a couple of episodes to where we meet Loeb. Loeb, who Broyles himself said [although not so literally] that he’d stick his hands on fire for him because they were totally good friends and close and all that jazz and that he, also, was a totally wholesome fellow who had just been in Germany on God-knows-what assignment.
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Loeb = very, very rogue [and a manifesto-humper if i ever saw any]
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Now who sent Olivia to the storage units, on purpose? Broyles. Broyles, who I assumed did it to test Olivia’s qualities to include her, immediately and very warmly [although he was a jerk for her throughout the whole first hour of pilot], on the Fringe unit. Unit where she’d be exposed to all sorts of people and situations, and to ZFT and MD. So..what if everyone was in on the joke but our poor Olivia? What if John and Broyles, on two different corners, where aware of the Cortexiphan and of the child soldiers and all that? What if Broyles was simply starting the tests on Olivia to confirm her possible ‘tendencies’, and to also expose her to ZFT and MD and everybody looking to get a grip on the child soldiers. They have a list with names and surnames of all the kids, that’s how the lawyer was tracking them down, possibly on Bell’s bidding, as dear Belly was running the tests.
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Broyles is far too involved with Nina. Mrs-eyes-and-ears-of-MD-Nina to the extent of even handling her one of his own, and also deceased FBI agents, for tests. John had one of the disks that the DEA agent also had, and also the guy who turned into the massive porcupine. John was into something more than mere ‘follow the biological joker’ field work, task which would also fall into Fringe division’s turf anyways.
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All this would explain why we don’t know the connection [if any] with MD and ZFT. As a good ol’ left-wing organization, maybe one cell doesn’t know about the others, or even one person doesn’t get to meet more than a couple other fellow group members, precisely because they’re so spread out and in such high places that these measures would be indispensable for the safety and perpetuity of the ONE group. Harris was, after all, also rogue, also working for MD..although I’d love to know if it was Bell he was talking to on the phone when the twin’s temp started to rise..or was it perhaps Jones, who he apparently despised so much, and who, after all, was the bearer of the light game, light game found on the room next to the very much recently activated twin?
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When Broyles asks Olivia whether she had any powers he wasn’t aware of..maybe he was literally asking her. Maybe, Walter, Peter and Olivia were just being herded into their own trap. Olivia was apparently special from the get go [they did, after all, taped her and apparently she did all sorts of Xmen-like tricks when she..wasn’t even THAT young anymore and was still under Walter and Bell’s care. It was no coincidence that the catalyst to all this was the flight, which was attacked with something so strange as a flesh-dissolving chemical..which happened to be included on the very brief work-description on Walter’s file on the FBI database. Walter and Olivia were meant to be reunited, at least if Bell’s the puppeteer. They invested too much time and effort on her before to let that work go to waste..specially when ‘it is coming’.
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What do you think? Because my brother’s hyperventilating here..ok fine, and so am I!
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Thanks again to Di, my head is swimming. I now feel like I need to re-watch every scene with Broyles in it and see if there are any clues that I missed to back up this theory, because it is very possible that Broyles is a zero and not a hero. Good work Di.
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May 10th, at 5:52 pm
Good theory!
Oh and how can I contact you?
What’s you email address?
May 10th, at 7:07 pm
YES YES !!
I believe this too !!! I was convinced by the last episode.
Great!
May 10th, at 8:02 pm
Broyles knows something. In Ghost Network he told Olivia she wasn’t ready to know everything yet and that she just had to trust him. That and the fight he had with whats-his-name double agent that caught on fire. Broyles is the kind of man that gets the job done. Yes he has compassion for Olivia at least the one in the reality we are familiar with but he isn’t good or bad. He is simply a company man. He was willing to stake his career on Olivia. The Broyles in the other universe has clear motives and doesn’t like Olivia very much. For one thing he didn’t keep his mouth shut when she mentioned one body. The Broyles we are aware of notices things and keeps it to himself. Well at least he has example He didn’t mention her strange behaviour till she asked for an assignment in Bad Dreams. We’re so going to need a new thread for this parallel universe thing because it’s making my head hurt explaining stuff about someone only to have it undermined by the other universe. (Sigh)
May 10th, at 9:54 pm
My email address is…
you can also follow me on twitter…
https://twitter.com/fringeobserver
May 10th, at 10:02 pm
I think Vini has been saying all along that Broyles is bad. I just ran across a comment from awhile ago about it.
Vini, you need to stand up and scream ‘listen to me Scully!’
I don’t know how I missed this theory, it makes so much sense to me now. This is a topic that will require much more attention this summer.
May 10th, at 10:59 pm
yeah it was vini, not mike [sorry vini]. i’m not sure if he’s bad, he doesn’t seem ‘bad’. he has this aura of kindness around him. as Jo mentioned he shows kindness towards olivia, and respect towards walter. i don’t think we can say people are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on this series though. walter and peter are ‘good’ to our eyes given their circumstances..had walter been on plain use of all his faculties and with his whole memory, he’d be like Bell, and we would be singing a very different tune. Peter also..he’s a very shady character with his weird business transactions and with people following him around and taking his pictures claiming old compromises. this is just a bunch of people standing their ground and defending what they believe to be the right thing..but killing a bunch of people in the process. i refuse to see this on b&w. i simply thing that these people know a lot and don’t even know next to who they are, or that they all are on the same level of knowledge on their own ranges.
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May 10th, at 11:16 pm
Ah never mind, the important is the discussion on the topic, doesnt matter who brought to the table …
Lets see the final episode, I believe will bring more closure to some questions …
do you guys think there will be actually a war ? would be weird no ? how to fit this scenario in the show ?
I was imagining this … I couldnt see how a war could become interest, just if was like a cold war, but I believe is what we are watching now … im not sure … anyway, just thinking.
May 10th, at 11:46 pm
i think they could introduce a war, in the ‘other universe’ or world or whatever it is. they could play out all kinds of scenarios without actually affecting our characters in our world. its kinda like having a free canvas to work with. if something doesn’t work with a storyline, its like ‘oh well, good thing its not happening here, in our world’. thank god olivia stopped it.
does that make any sense?
May 10th, at 11:56 pm
Yeah, I’m not convinced Peter is a very good person. I’m not sure he isn’t, but I wouldn’t be 100% surprised if he turned out to be on the other side from the get go. I doubt it’s really the mafia
May 10th, at 11:58 pm
whoops… the mafia he’s involved with, Olivia assumed it was and he let her run with it.
It would be too simple for Fringe if it was truly just mafia/gambling debts.
An important throw-away line might be when Peter says, “I kinda went crazy a few years back.” Or something to that effect.
May 11th, at 12:03 am
oh shush mike! i love peter [although it might be some dawson's creek surplus lol]. but again, no good or bad..let’s be totally objective here. we don’t even know exactly how many sides there are or in which side we are up until this moment. but i definitely NEED to know more about Peter ASAP, besides him being an uneducated genius who has a huge thing for olivia [and yes i know, i'm totally sidetracking myself here, i'll try to focus]
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May 11th, at 12:11 am
That would kinda suck, it would be like having the Star Trek reset button, where everything is fixed back to normal by the end of the episode.
May 11th, at 12:17 am
I’m not saying he’s bad, I’m just saying I think he may be involved in one of the sides before the pilot begins.
I’m not sure the side Olivia thinks she’s on is necessarily the good side.
May 11th, at 3:50 am
Broyles kinda creeps me a little at times… especially his angry face.
But I’m sure Peter (our dimension peter) is good. Or at least 100% on Olivia’s side of all this hullabaloo.
May 11th, at 1:32 pm
Broyles is the master mind in the field, at least he is working for another organization/tribe/people … he wants Willian Bell, have someone check if his eyebrows are for real?
(kidding!)
May 11th, at 1:57 pm
hahahaha the attack of the capilar-growth impaired
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