Did William Bell alter Walter?

Question

At the end of Fringe's third season, there was a significant change that you might not want to know about if you haven't viewed that far, so this is some introductory text to give you a chance to avoid reading any further. This question is composed of spoilers (for season 3 and earlier), so stop now if you wish.

In the original timeline,

William Bell altered Walter's brain to remove knowledge of how he'd created the dimensional bridge, resulting in Walter's mental illness.

Is this the case in rebooted timeline? With

Peter having died in the pond rather than having been saved by the Observer,

it's not entirely clear whether this will still have been the case. Walter seems as odd as ever - though this may be the message the writers are trying to convey, that it was Walter's destiny to end up dysfunctional, one way or another.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

In the new timeline Walter going Over There to get Peter still weakened the fabric of their reality. So the conflict should have progressed much as we saw in the previous seasons. This means the knowledge of how to make the bridge was still incredibly valuable, and incredibly dangerous. Combined with the fact that Walter seems to be in the same mental state in the new timeline as he was in the original timeline (at least, back in Season 1 or so) makes me think that yes, they did the same procedure to remove parts of Walter's brain.

This was explicitly confirmed in S3E19, Letters in Transit, where it's revealed in the future that the removed pieces of Walter's brain were safely locked up at Massive Dynamic.