You wanna know what was so great about season 5 of Fringe?
Windmark.
I know what you’re thinking: why? he was an awful, horrible monster! He killed Etta! He’s responsible for Nina killing herself! He was a nasty horrible villain!
Exactly.
It’s rare that a tv show gets a villain that a fandom actually hates. Most of the time, villains actually win the heart of the fandom just like the heros. The villains are human beings we can relate with, pity, see the good in and fantasize about what would happen if they came to the good side. This is not the case with Windmark. He was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad. He hates the hereos, and this is significant because he doesn’t know what hate is. To quote Philip Broyels “The feeling’s mutual.”
Now back to other villains, very often we don’t want our baddies to die because for some reason we always think they can somehow be reasoned with, or they didn’t deserve what happened to them. In the cases of villains we actually hate, a lot of the time we are disappointed with their demise. I think Windmark had a very good well deserved end that satisfied everyone who wanted him dead.
Why was this such a successful end? Because of how many risky moves had to go perfectly right in order for it to work. Michael had to get off the train and be captured so that Olivia would get dosed with Crotexiphan and regain the awesome powers that would allow her to come rescue him, and among these powers, the ability to move objects, like the car shes mashed him with. It might be a quick death, but it is a painful messy one. And you know what else? He still almost gets away!
Half a second more, and Olivia would have failed, Windmark would have gotten away and the plan may not have succeeded. Since fans hate Windmark so much I’m pretty sure there was a universal whoop of satisfaction when we saw the spurt of blood.
So what do we have? A heartless villain nobody feels sympathy for, and a death scene that death that couldn’t be better. Props to the writers of Fringe, way to make us hate a character and then give him a death worthy of his crimes.
This is my opinion only and if you disagree.