This week we get a little more insight into the nature of the FlashForward event and learn about another man who is connected to Lloyd Simco, the man Olivia saw in her living room during her flash forward.

The first scene opens up with Domanic Monoghan (Charlie from Lost) playing an award-winning quantum physicist named Simon. Not quite what we would envision for him after his time on Lost, but that’s another show.  He is on a train, talking to a girl and flirting with her, trying to get her to his sleeper car. After going over how quantum physics and the concept of superposition work, they end up sleeping together.

So here’s the long and short of it.

Quantum physics says that of any multiple possibilities, they are all actually existing at the same time and only when the observer comes on the scene will the single future come into focus and all the others disappear.  If this sounds like something you might see on the Science Channel, you would be correct.  In fact, they ran a show about this very subject within the last couple of months.  Basically it boils down to the fact that until you observe something, then any number of possibilities exist – all in the same moment in space and time.

This starts to play out in this episode, as we discover that Agent Hawk’s bullet wound from last week’s shoot-out makes it virtually impossible for her to have kids.  So was her flash forward wrong, or will it be a miracle?  In another demonstration of the superposition principle, it is revealed to us at the end of the episode that in Simon’s flash forward he was strangling Simco – to death. How can this be, since both Simco and Olivia saw him in the Benton’s home? According to quantum physics, either one could be the outcome.  The real outcome will not be known, however, until it is observed.  What kind of twisted plot device does this make superposition? Clever, very clever.

I have to hand it to the writers on this one.  This episode took a totally different direction than I would have ever imagined. However, now that we know quantum physics is involved, at least one question has been answered.  The flash forwards are but one possible future among many.  Fate doesn’t control what happens … or does it? I guess we’ll have to wait and see how things develop and whether or not knowing one possible outcome can influence the ability to avoid or create it.  Perhaps it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.