At some point the thought springs to mind – It’s a TV show, based in a fictional universe in which the characters have seen the future!

I’ve watched a lot of movies and tv where the main character has commited what appears to be an unnecessary sacrifice, and it’s usually to move the plot forward.

What needs to be realised here is that if April 29th 2010 is a real event (in the show) that happened/happens then by committing suicide Al has altered the past and subsequently altered the future.

Regardless of guilt (and we have at this point to assume he was responsible in some way for Celia’s death) he has proved that the future can be changed – because unless the show adds resurrection* to the laws of it’s universe, then on April 29th 2010 he will not be sitting in a meeting with the other agent when he gets a phone call.

I think the show is trying to make a point and add a twist. No character was going to needlessly commit suicide without it feeling too contrived (for us as the audience), so they needed to add a motive.

The only way a fictional story can show, with certainty that a predicted event cannot and will not happen is by death of a character. Because up until that point, any reaction or counter-action could be a positive action towards that event. Death is the only certainty barring a deus ex machina event.

No-one here in the real world is dealing with a flashforward of a future event and therefore suffering from guilt of the pre-emptively preventable said event.

…

And for what it’s worth, I did for a moment think myself what if he’d landed on Celia too ;)

*of course I think we’re not seeing everything yet and I don’t think the sci-fi element starts and ends with a flashforward. I have a theory.

I think there’s a huge difference between submitting to death at another’s hands and committing suicide. Jesus submitted to the Father’s will, which I see as completely different from acting in defiance of “fate,” whether apparent or actual. There’s no guarantee that Al’s suicide has prevented Celia’s death. One TWOP forum poster had the rather hilarious (if slightly macabre) question, “What if Al had landed on Celia?” (Answer: Then we’d be in a Greek tragedy and not a sci-fi series.) But, my point is, Al’s action was more to escape his own sense of guilt than it was to give life to someone else. (Again, Jesus’ death is very different here, since he was without guilt.)

Christ surrendered and put himself in the hands of the authorities knowingly, when at least one of his disciples was urging him to fight.

I believe Christ would have fought if he knew that would change anything but sometimes it’s only by death/sacrifice that anything changes – that people are convinced. A belief is not worth anything if you are not prepared to die for it.

Imagine if Christ had said “Look, I have the power to raise myself to life again if I die, but I’m not gonna let myself get killed now am I?” How many disciples would believe in Christ’s power and be motivated to go out into the world, if they just had his word to go on and not the experience of it?

Let’s just assume that Al’s guilt was real and that he was directly responsible for their deaths – possibly avoidable deaths – and that this event truly happens/happened on 29th April 2010.

FlashForward begins to encounter the paradoxical problems which are inherent in time travel – and I’m looking forward to how they address it (I can see the relevance of Schrodingers Cat analogy in what is happening).

When, in fiction, you are faced with a certain future, predicted or gained through experience of time travel, often it is confusing and there is no hint as to what actions led to the outcome.

There is only 1 of 2 reactions you can have. The first is to try to discover what actions lead up to it, to pre-empt every decision you make in order to avoid the impending catastrophe. The other reaction is to simply carry on as you were, either accepting fate, or second guessing that to try to alter things would actually lead to them.

In FlashForward, as in all fictional stories, we have seen both types of reaction and we are seeing that these reactions both lead to confirming or causing the future events.

Therefore, our characters are stuck. On the one hand, attempting to prevent the future event seems to add to the cause, but also trying to sit it out also adds to the cause. And since they know not the timings of these future events, every day could be ‘the day’ that it happens (e.g. they die).

So how can you ensure that an event will not occur? What other way is there than death? If you attempt to run from the problem – it may actually be the running that is the cause, if you attempt to tackle the problem head on, it may be that you should have ran from it.

Death is the only way to ensure that there is action or reaction that leads to the cause. It ensures that however the script would have played out, there is no actor to act on it.

I don’t think it can be compared to a sufferer of OCD, since the OCD sufferer hasn’t seen a future event in which they cause real harm. It is a psychotic disorder not a reaction to a real event.

However you were spot on with your observations about societies inability to deal with guilt.

I’m kind of torn. I think the situation is more complex than your evaluation allows. The OCD analogy might hold up if everyone else saw the world differently from the guy who sacrificed himself. But it sounds like everyone, universally, agrees that a) the visions in this flash forward are fated to happen and b) those without visions are dead.

If this is the case, then wrong or right, society agrees that the seen destiny is incontrovertible. In this case, Al really is acting sacrificially in trying to save Celia’s life by standing up against what he (and everyone else) views as fate. Regardless of the fact that in the final analysis his sacrifice was unnecessary (in that his flash forward clearly wasn’t fated if he could prevent it from happening), psychologically it sounds like humanity needed somebody to test the boundaries of their shared mass hallucination.

For that test to be adequate, somebody with a vision of the future would have to die, whether by sacrifice or by other means. I have a hard time believing that nobody with a vision of April 29th (L.A. Riots!!!) has since died, so my disbelief suspension is already on thin ice, but presuming that thus far only those with blank visions had died, Al’s act (whether inspired by guilt or by hope) really does pose the world with a gift (whether he sacrificed himself on their behalf or not).

Well, a gift for those whose futures were bleak. Not so much a gift for those whose destinies inculcated hope.