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May 15,

Peter’s Coin

Easter Eggs | Fringe - 120 There's More Than One Of Everything | Theories & Speculation | Posted by Scully

I had wanted to write something about Peter’s coin, but truth was, I didn’t have any good theories and I hadn’t done any research yet.  Then I got an email from Di – she was reading my mind, me thinks.  She has done the research and I am intrigued with the connections she made, so I have decided to let her take this one.  By her own words, this might be more coincidence than theory, but I like it anyways.

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The coin is an out of use ‘Walking Liberty’ 50c coin used in the US from 1916 to 1946/7. It’s considered the best designed coin so far, and was designed by a German sculptor named A.A. Weinman, born in 1870 who arrived at the US at age 10 [in 1880]. More German references perhaps? That’d been brought up before. Also, the context behind the coin, as I found it on the coin resource site, makes references to Woodrow Wilson, who won re-election on 1916 with his campaign with the slogan ‘He kept us out of war!’, but within a few months, the war broke out anyways.

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Walking Liberty

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War also being a recurring theme thanks to ZFT and the manifesto. Peter kept the other reality ‘out of war’ [the twin towers are still intact, although apparently the white house wasn't so lucky], but this reality went to war anyways.

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Something else which might be nothing. Peter can do the ‘coin walking’ trick, and it’s been showed before during previous episodes and it seems rather intentional as the camera focuses a lot on it when he does it. This reminded me of Balthazar, the demon played by Gavin Rossdale in ‘Constantine’. If any of you haven’t seen it [which I somehow doubt because it's an old movie], Balthazar was the ‘two faced demon’, with a nice pristine look of a good decent fellow but who was really rotten inside, and on the spray of holy water his true face would come out as something horrible and mischievous. But that’s a character. I did some research about any demons on mythology under that name, and among the references i got were “Balthazar is a dark flame demon, about seven feet tall, large and broad. His face could have been modeled after the portrait on a Roman coin“. But that might just be a coincidence with the coin used on the show. Knowing Fringe is closer to the comic realm, I found a comic character by that name also, and under his powers I found this: “Belathauzer [also known as Balthazar] is a demon of great, reputed power, although the majority of his abilities are unseen. He can possess and control the form of a human host [...] His two heads symbolizes the duality of…something“.

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Now this might be nothing but a coincidence, but some of this could actually match a description of Peter’s personality [if we only knew more of him to confirm it]. That, and it could imply the duality between the two Peters, this reality’s ‘good’ Peter, who died, and the ‘other’ Peter who’s been filling in for good Peter, but that wasn’t mean to be so good on his own reality and who’s actually a wolf dressed as a sheep. It would explain why he’s been in so much trouble throughout his life as part of his ‘real self’ leaking in the facade he was brought to fill in.

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Coin Walking

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Moving away from the demonic realm, I also found that coin walking, simply as a magician’s trick “is a time honored distraction for getting attention away from sleights of hand“.  Could this mean that Peter’s trying to distract everybody from his real intentions or his real reason to be? I can’t recall exactly [but I think that's well known of me by now] but I think the first time he did the trick someone stopped and awed a bit at it or something like that, I remember that’s why I focused on it.”

6 Responses to “Peter’s Coin”

  1. GC

    I was wondering about the coin. I wondered if it was a coin from another place–simply because the Observer stated it wasn’t the same coin. . .can’t remember exact words but it almost implied he’d gotten it from another place? Then Walter found the box containing the plugging device with another coin on top.

    But not to change the subject–William Bell has a bell on the desk in his office. No one has mentioned anywhere I can find so far what they think that is about. But also, curiously, 2 of the 4 floral arrangements in Nina Sharp’s hospital room have “bells of Ireland” in them. I feel like it’s a way of saying Bell was here.

    Oh, and does anyone notice how Broyles is so quick on the draw on this parallel universe thing; how familiar with Nina (She calls him Phillip); but how closemouthed otherwise. . .

  2. Ryan

    I think you’re reading too much into the coin. The Observer used the coin – an artifact from another reality, maybe one where the coin still is circulated – to jog Walter’s memory. I think the most you can conclude is that Peter likely is from the same reality.

  3. Andrew

    The coin could definitely be symbolism – There were two versions of Peter, and a coin has two faces. Also, the Observer’s coin was probably from the dimension where Peter was taken from, or just somewhere else, and he used it to jog Walter’s memory. Remember that Walter found Peter’s actual coin in the hiding place, and then placed it on his grave at the end.

    Scully, can you look into why in the last episode, everyone kept answering their phones at the same exact time? I feel that’s a really strange point that seems to have been overlooked by the other bombshells.

  4. phones and coins

    The phones stuck out like a blaring trumpet in my mind …. the only thing I could figure, was that the TIMING on everything with everyone was being masterminded by some other, unseen force — like an Ultimate Observer or something, a Zeus of Olympus if you will. It reminded me of what Jones’ said when he first met Olivia:

    “What if someone wanted information from the both of us? You see? Perhaps they’ve orchestrated all of this. What if you and I – both of us, at this very moment, were being manipulated.”

    And the coins have kind of thrown me for a loop. Peter doesn’t remember collecting coins, or being sick. So the dead Peter in the ground probably died from being sick right? And since he’s from another dimension, he doesn’t remember the coin Walter found on top of the “plug” box.

    But where did the Observer get his coin from? Did he take it from Peter during the car accident, to use in this episode? Since this Peter doesn’t remember collecting coins, and Walter has a coin from the dead Peter who is in the ground — where the heck did the Observer get his coin? A Third Peter? Because it didn’t belong to this Peter, or the dead Peter ….. right? Or am I missing something?

  5. Scully

    My apologies everyone, but I believe I deleted a comment. I don’t know whose comment it was or where it was.

    Again, very sorry

  6. Mic

    Not “the” coin but “a” coin was used to illustrate a point in “The No-Brainer.” When Peter visits Akim (sp?) to enlist his aid in restoring Greg Wiles’ computer hard drive, he returns a coin to him that Akim apparently lost to Peter gambling. Rather than sell the valuable coin, Peter told Akim that he kept it to remind him never to gamble with something he wasn’t prepared to lose. Peter has done the sleight-of-hand tricks a couple times– with Olivia in the bar in Cambridge and with Walter in the lab. I think the second scene is the instance of awe you remember, Di/Scully. Peter playing with the coin that time is what jogged Walter’s memory about Peter being sick when he was young which led to the memory of what was in the safety deposit boxes.