Fringe Mass Redistribution

During a rewatch of episodes of Fringe, I have re-encountered "Jacksonville", the episode that demonstrated the first explicit example of mass distribution from the alternate universe. A building appeared in our universe from the alternate, causing Walter to shortly deduce "I'm afraid I've just remembered what's going to happen next".

He and William Bell had experimented with moving a car across the barrier to the other side, resulting in an automobile from the alternate universe appearing here shortly thereafter on the MIT campus. Universes seek "balance", so mass moved across the barriers had to have some equivalent mass move back to replace it.

Walter brought Peter from the other side - was there ever an accounting of the "balance" necessary for the compensating mass of the small boy? How about each of the times we/they intentionally crossed agents across the barriers?

I actually don't remember this concept ever coming up again outside the Jacksonville episode. Was there some accounting for the balances in mass due either side for these incursions?

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Best Answer

Found One!
Yes, there was a further mention of redistribution of mass, which I've just re-encountered by watching further into the following season. Season 2 ended with Olivia trapped on the other side because of collusion between alt-Olivia and Walternate. They knew Olivia, Walter, and Peter would escape the alternate universe to return home, so they captured Olivia, and sent back alt-Olivia in her place. They did NOT mention equivalent mass during this exchange, or during a slightly-revised repeat of the encounter at the following season's premiere. I believe they couldn't because a few other of our team members had crossed but were killed in the alternate universe. Without that mass redistribution mentioned, the script would have been flawed to mention it at all.

When alt-Olivia's cover was blown in the following season - episode Entrada (S3E8), Walternate engineered her rescue and specifically mentioned the compensating mass of "our" Olivia, who was no longer useful to the other side.

Alt-Brandon: "Agent Dunham hasn't completed her mission yet."
Walternate: "No. But we can't worry about that now. We need to provide her an extraction point."..."We simply need to narrow the harmonic field to focus on something smaller -- a single person. We'll use the girl [Olivia]. We've gotten all we need from her, and obviously they have equivalent mass."