The Blue Lights
The blue lights or ‘flashes’ are an on-going thematic in Fringe. They appear briefly during certain scenes and are intentional indicators offering clues or underlying meaning to the Fringe mythology. The blue lights have appeared in dreams, memories, during teleportation, inter-dimensional travel and at pattern-events.
Below we catalogue each of the blue light appearances by episode:
SEASON 1
1.01 Pilot
1.04 Arrival
1.05 Power Hungry
1.09 The Dreamscape
1.11 Safe
1.11 Bound
1.12 The No Brainer
1.13 The Transformation
1.16 Unleashed
1.20 There’s More Than One of Everything
SEASON 2
2.01 A New Day In The Old Town
2.02 Night of Desirable Objects
2.04 Momentum Deferred
2.10 Grey Matters
2.12 What Lies Below
2.17 White Tulip
2.21 Over There – Part 1
SEASON 3
3.01 “Olivia”
3.02 The Box
3.06 6955kHz
3.08 Entrada
3.14 6B
3.15 Subject 13
To be updated after each new episode.
Editors note: Out of courtesy, please do not copy/paste any parts of our Blue Light Tracker to other sites without express permission and a linkback.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
hi,
u can see the blue lights at the beginning of the episode Grey Matters
look here: http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/110/bluelight210.jpg
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Thanks Jdunham – somehow I forgot all about that one! I’ll update soon.
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LOL….yeah i imagine with all the things u do……but its good i can help…
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Were there really not any blue lights in episode 17, 18, 19, or 20? I find that rather hard to believe. In fact, I know for sure that there were blue lights in the finale — as Olivia was in the elevator prior to meeting William Bell. I would be quite surprised if you actually forgot that one. That being the case, I’m going to go on the belief that this is still a work in progress and you haven’t completely finished compiling the list. But I just thought I would throw this out there, just in case.
(also, I know that there were also blue lights in episode 2 (season 1) in the opening scene, if not in other parts of the episode as well)
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Probably the most famous blue light so far (1.20), not sure how I forgot to add it to the page. Cheers and updated!
I’m going to go back through our eastereggs to see if I’ve missed any others, and you’re right about 2.02.
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Hate to say it but I really don’t think theres much in the blue lights, think it’s reading a bit much into it.
Abrams just likes that effect a lot and thinks it adds an exciting look to scenes, if you watch the new star trek you’ll see loads of them, he shines a light at the camera to create this effect, really don’t think there’s much behind the blue lights much like they aren’t anything but a stylistic effect like in star trek, it’s just meant to be a fancy light flare.
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I agree with what you said. In many ways I doubt there’s any deeper significance to the flashes. But you never know. Yes, it is just a neat effect that J. J. Abrams likes to use. But why put it in one scene as opposed to the many other scenes in an episode where they could include it? I can’t help but think there may be a reason why they choose to include it where they do. I just don’t know if we can rule it out at this point. If nothing else, it’s just one more Bad Robot trademark to look out for. It’s the same with the number 47 — it’s unlikely that it has any significance whatsoever, but it’s still fun to look for it and have it show up on a regular basis.
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I think they’re just added just before ‘Fringey’ something happens
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Loads in 102, at the start if I remember correctly.
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Probably would have to concur that the lights are just visual enhancements but looking at the pictures above has just reminded me of the Young’s Slit Experiment I did at School all those years ago. In the experiment you would have either one slit visible or two (grouped), very much like the pics above. The experiment is essentially used to prove the wave-particle duality of light but is a great example of quantum mechanics in action. By the simple act of introducing a detector even in just one of the slits results in the disappearance of the interference pattern that is generally produced thus emphasising how the ‘Observer’ can affect the outcome.
It is also worth noting that the output produces what is commonly known as interference ‘Fringe(s)’ and that this output is created by the superposition of light upon itself. The light can therefore merge to produce a combined output (i.e – Ted Pratchet in Jacksonville) or cancel each other out (the eventual destruction of one -or both – universes as described by Nina).
Probably just a coincidence but I thought I’d throw it out there….
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Daneo – Nice thoughts. I agree that the blue lights may relate to the double slit experiment. I posted a related theory a while back, feel free to check it out here.
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what if its something to do with “the blight”? .. i dunno.. it would be weird if they ever put any direct significance into it
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Just so everyone knows, these are due to them shooting the show in “anamorphic” format. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format
And more specifically, these “blue lights” are what’s called lens flares: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_flare
JJ loves anamorphic format because it produces these long, thin lens flares. This was brought up in the special features of the Star Trek blu-ray/DVD. As others have said, it’s simply a visual style, not a hint into the shows meaning necessarily
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I could be wrong but these blue lights as correctly pointed out by Tim are called Lens Flares. But these specific ones look remarkably like the ones created by Motion Graphics and video editor Andrew Kramer (who also designed the title sequence) His product is called “Optical Flares and is a easy way of creating Lens Flares that you can easily adjust and adapt in terms of look and colouring. Kramer also posted on his blog that his Optical Flares were used on the Star Trek movie so very possible its the same ones. https://www.videocopilot.net/products/opticalflares/
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I think that these blue lights are just the signature of J.J Abrams. These blue lights were all around his movie Star Trek, and I saw the making of and J.J Abrams said that he thinks that these lights made the movie more real….
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Yea there’s a possibility that they might use the lens flares in certain instances for meaning, but jj abrams is not the only
person who uses them. He just uses a certain style of lens flair that Andrew Kramer of videocopilot.net (who works on the effects in Fringe and did the intro titles) has made more popular with his product Optical Flares. Kramer also worked on star trek.
Also, the lens lares are added digitally in post most of the time esp. these kinds that are really stylized. They’re camera reactions to bright lights that are in or just outside of the frame.
Now you know.
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Once again, they are blue lights in 102, for example…
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In Bound, when everyone was waiting for Mitchell Loeb to get to the pay-phone, the camera goes from Olivia’s car to the road and you can see a blue light from the side-mirror.
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The lens flares reminded me of Firefly.
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am sure all fringe fans have seen season 3 premier…blue light have a meaning…the last bit…this time it includes a buzz as well…maybe Abrams is reading this blog..and thot aye might as welll….
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vous faits des comentaires sur touts vous perdait votre temps a rien.
regarde et fermer la arreter de parler du bleu du rouge de ci de la il fo partie voir bichop il va vous soignier tous
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Well I am a Brazilian!
Who loves this series too!
I love Fringe!
Peter, Olivia, Walter, Astrid, Philihp, Nina
Love!
Waiting for the next episode!
3×05!
too anxious
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the blue lights are related to the cylinder …
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going in season three back and forth between both universes and looking at this photos it ocurred to me that maybe the blue lights have something to do with “what if”, other possibilities, other universes in which those events didnt take place and how things might have been in that case, for example looking at the photos from Grey Matters made me think what if william bell hadnt taken walter memories, we will have a walternate here too, or in There’s More Than One of Everything what if olivia hadnt go to the other side and met william bel, she wouldnt have know about newton and the shapesifters, what if jones had managed to cross over and kill william bell, he wouldnt have met olivia either, and so on, multiplipe possibilities, multiplie universes in which things happened in other way or didnt happen at all, so maybe the blue lights also mean a breaking point…. and this is one of the reasons why i love this show
the possibilities
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On another blog, someone pointed out that there are blue lights in “Ability” (1.14) when Olivia is turning the lights off on the bomb-lightbox. I went back & rewatched the episode to make sure. I would say that the blue lights, at least in this case, are significant–a sign that it really was Olivia turning out the lights to defuse the bomb.
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What if the flashes are not a sign of something happening but an indication of another type of “observer”? If not i do agree that the flashes could be a “split” in reality where universes branch off, or have a common instance, food for thought.
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I believe that the flashes signify that reality is breaking; Small holes or cracks are being made in the universe when a light appears. That’s the only logic I see to it…But I could be wrong.
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Those flashes of light are always so mysterious. Still don’t really understand them very well.
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The Blue lights represents our universe while Red lights occur in the ‘Walternate’ side…. Blue ‘us’, Red ‘them’ …. U can see that whenever the title screen is in blue the story is on our side and when in red it’s in the Walternate universe…
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What about ‘Olivia. In The Lab. With A Revolver’?
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I didn’t noticed those lights at first, but now i’m seeing them EVERYWHERE! And not only in Fringe. I see at least one blue flash on every tv series or movie.
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