Spoiler TV reports that actor Kirk Acevedo has alerted the Facebook community that his services will no longer be required on Fringe. Viewers know Acevedo as Agent Charlie Francis, an FBI agent whose role seemed primarily limited to offering Olivia freaked-out updates about airplane-passenger liquifications, and to provide some armed muscle should the team need to apprehend a syphilitic, spinal-fluid drinking club-hopper.
Spoiler TV postulates "contract issues" led to Acevedo's departure, and points to a casting call for his female replacement, a woman in her mid-to-late 20s with a "STRONG PERSONAL CENTER THAT COMES FROM A DEEP CORE BELIEF IN THE WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE." And, presumably, a deeper usefulness to the plot.
We may now never learn the significance of the facial scar Charlie's alternate-reality doppelganger sports, or, for that matter, what happened to the character at all -- beyond a fleeting reference made in next season's opener by Special Agent-in-Charge Phillip Broyles about what "a shame it was about Agent Francis getting devoured by that wereporcupine. Let's send his wife some flowers."
ยท Kirk Acevedo Confirms Fringe Firing via Facebook!? [Spoiler TV via ONTD]