If comments from actor John Noble are to be believed, the fifth and final season of Fringe will take place almost exclusively in the far future that first appeared in the fourth season episode "Letters of Transit." We're still months away from the season premiere, but nonetheless: It's time for five questions about this development.

What Does This Mean For Olivia?

Olivia not only didn't wake up in the future with Astrid, Peter and Walter, but there were some pretty heavy hints in "Letters of Transit" that there was an ugly reason - somehow connected with William Bell - for that. Noble has stated outright that Olivia will make it to the future, but what will have caused her delay…?

Will We Ever See Earth-2 Again?

Consider this not just a desire to see loose-ends tied up, but also to see whether Fauxlivia and Lincoln ever made their crazy possible romance happen. It's already been revealed that Seth Gabel won't be back as Lincoln on a regular basis in the show's final season, but can the series really not fill us in on what happened after the Bridge was shut down back in "Worlds Apart"? We want to know whether the second Earth continued to decay, dammit - especially as that was pretty much the result of Walter and September's "original sin," and is so tied to their particular storyline...

Will We Jump Straight To 2036, Or Spend Some Time In Between?

"Letters of Transit" gave us the bare bones of a future timeline last season; we know that we have three years before they take over and start "The Purge," which theoretically gives us three years for Walter, Peter and Olivia to make plans for the invasion, considering that September showed up right at the end of Season 4 to tell them to prepare. Will we get to see any of those preparations in anything other than flashback form? And also, will we get to see what happened between our team going into amber and being awoken decades later? For that matter…

How Close Are We To Finding Out That Broyles Is Working For The Observers?

Call me old-fashioned, but having seen Alternate Broyles betray his cause twice already (Once to do the right thing for Olivia in Season 3, once to save the life of his son in Season 4), I feel as if we're primed for "our" Broyles to sell out humanity and work with the Observers when the Purge begins. After all, the Fringe Division of 2036 definitely seemed to be the authorities and not the rebellion, despite what Etta and Simon got up to, didn't it?

Does This Mean The Observers Were Behind Everything All Along?

If we're going to spend the final season in the far future dealing with the Observers, I almost feel as if we need some kind of big reveal that'll tie the series as a whole together in order to make it work as a satisfying final season. So… are the Observers the big bads of the whole thing? We know that September interfered with Walter and Peter's timeline in the past, and they also (as a group) tried to wipe Peter out of existence for some reason. How much of everything we've seen in the series so far can be tracked back to Observer interference? What if they weren't watching important moments of human and societal evolution, but causing them, in order to create a race it could easily rule over later…?