Flashforward

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A flashforward (also spelled flash-forward, and more formally known as prolepsis) is a scene that temporarily takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media. [1] Flashforwards are often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future. They may also reveal significant parts of the story that have not yet occurred, but soon will in greater detail. It is similar to foreshadowing, in which future events are not shown but rather implicitly hinted at. It is also similar to an ellipsis, which takes the narrative forward and is intended to skim over boring or uninteresting details, for example the aging of a character. It is primarily a postmodern narrative device, named by analogy to the more traditional flashback, which reveals events that occurred in the past.

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Literature

An early example of prolepsis which predates the postmodern period is Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol , in which the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge is shown the future following his death. The subsequent events of the story imply that this future will be averted by this foreknowledge.

Terry Brooks' Word & Void series features a protagonist who, when he sleeps, moves forward and backward through time to before and after a great cataclysm. This is both analepsis and prolepsis.

Muriel Spark makes extensive use of prolepsis in her 1961 novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie .

In Boruto: Naruto Next Generations , the protagonist Boruto Uzumaki faces an enemy named Kawaki in a ruined Hidden Leaf Village in the opening scene of the anime and manga series. This is prolepsis.

Television

Every season of Damages makes an extensive use of flashforwards, revealing the outcome of the season to the viewer. The whole season then revolves around discovering the circumstances that led to this outcome. For instance, the first season starts with a flashforward of the protagonist, Ellen Parsons, running in the streets of New York, covered in blood. 6 months earlier, she was only a naive young woman who had just become a lawyer in the firm of a powerful attorney, Patty Hewes. What led Ellen to the situation presented in the flashforwards is revealed little by little throughout the season. The series is known for its misleading use of flashforwards, which are often examples of the red herring device.

After making extensive use of flashbacks in the first two seasons, the TV series Lost started using flashforwards as well throughout the remainder of the series. The first instance of this was a major plot twist in the third season finale: what appeared to be a flashback to before the characters were stranded on the island, was revealed at the end of the two-part episode to be a flashforward of them returned to civilization. A later episode featured what appeared to be flashforwards involving the couple Jin and Sun, showing them safely returned home and awaiting the birth of their baby, but it is then revealed that Jin's scenes were flashbacks and only Sun's were flashforwards (reflecting the fact that they are separated in time and space).

The series finale of Star Trek: Voyager , "Endgame", uses a technique similar to a flashforward. It depicts a future in which the U.S.S. Voyager has returned home after decades lost in deep space with various personal tragedies, prompting the ship's captain to use time travel to return to the timeframe of the series and return the crew home more directly.

The American sci-fi television series FlashForward revolves around everyone on Earth losing consciousness for 137 seconds, during which each person experiences a glimpse of events 6 months in the future. [2] The series was itself based loosely on the novel Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer.

Flashforwards have been used in British soap operas as well. Hollyoaks flashed forward six months in May 2010 for a special episode. [3] Hollyoaks then had a flashforward to New Year's Eve 2020 to see the characters in a year's time. The BBC soap opera EastEnders did a scene which flashforward to Christmas 2023 in an episode airing in the February of that year where characters Linda Carter, Suki Panesar, Kathy Beale, Stacey Slater, Denise Fox and Sharon Watts look over the body of a deceased man, who is not revealed to the viewer [4] , the body was later revealed to be Nish Panesar, however he remained alive and instead Keanu Taylor was murdered by Linda shortly after the flashforward took place after attempting to strangle Sharon.

The last episode of Six Feet Under ends with an extensive flashforward depicting the deaths of all the central characters for several decades in the future.

Breaking Bad uses flashforwards throughout its second season showing a mystery regarding debris and corpses in Walter White's house and neighborhood, revealed to be the result of two planes crashing overhead. The first half of the fifth season begins with a flashforward one year into the future where Walter is fifty-two years old, and the second half begins with a continuation of the story, where he returns to his abandoned home. The plot of these flashforwards is resumed in the series finale.

Better Call Saul , a spin-off of Breaking Bad, follows a trend of starting each season with a flashforward scene, set after the events of Breaking Bad (and thus several years in the future relative to the time frame of the events narrated in Better Call Saul) and, apart from the flashforward in the final season premiere, shot in black and white. These scenes depict Saul Goodman's life after Breaking Bad as a fugitive of the law, working as a manager of a Cinnabon under a new alias. The plot of these flashforwards is resumed in the final four episodes of the series, which are also shot in black and white.

How to Get Away with Murder used in every episode flashforwards of scenes from future episodes until ninth episode of the first season.

Quantico used flashforwards in order to unravel the future events that have occurred in the first and second season.

The Netflix series Elite used flashforwards to unravel the murder mystery of a future event, in the first season.

The Netflix series Quicksand used flashforwards to unravel the circumstances leading to a school shooting, in the first season.

The CW series Arrow utilizes flashforwards in its seventh season, having previously employed extensive flashbacks for its first five seasons. There are also flashforwards throughout the fourth season foreshadowing the character Laurel Lance's death.

Film

Midway through the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , there is an abrupt flashforward when Robert, the character played by Michael Sarrazin, is seen being thrust into a jail cell by a police officer, even though he has done nothing to provoke such treatment. The audience is notified, later in the story, that Sarrazin's character would have indeed made choices that warrant his arrest.

The 2016 film Arrival relies extensively on prolepsis throughout, disguised as flashbacks (like the aforementioned episode of Lost). The main character gains precognitive ability after learning the language of the aliens, and proceeds to use it to prevent the outbreak of war. She uses information revealed to her 18 months in the future to convince a military leader not to attack the aliens in the present.

Video games

In Until Dawn (2015), players may find artifacts left by the Native American tribe who lived on the mountain that show premonitions of possible future events. Whether they come true is dependent on player actions; for example, one shows another character's death in a scene that can be avoided.

See also

Related Research Articles

Prolepsis may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreshadowing</span> Literary technique

Foreshadowing is a narrative device in which a storyteller gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. Foreshadowing often appears at the beginning of a story, and it helps develop or subvert the audience's expectations about upcoming events.

<i>Hollyoaks</i> British soap opera

Hollyoaks is a British soap opera which originally began airing on Channel 4 on 23 October 1995. It was created by Phil Redmond, who had previously conceived the soap opera Brookside. From 2005 to 2023, episodes have aired on sister channel E4 a day prior to their broadcast on Channel 4. In 2023, Hollyoaks was removed from Channel 4's early evening schedule, but remains on E4 and Channel 4's on demand service with episodes now uploaded to YouTube.

A flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started.

Reverse chronology is a narrative structure and method of storytelling whereby the plot is revealed in reverse order.

Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative, or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique where events are portrayed, for example, out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line. The technique is common in electronic literature, and particularly in hypertext fiction, and is also well-established in print and other sequential media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tachyons in fiction</span> Hypothetical particle

The hypothetical particles tachyons have inspired many occurrences of in fiction. The use of the word in science fiction dates back at least to 1970 when James Blish's Star Trek novel Spock Must Die! incorporated tachyons into an ill-fated transporter experiment.

<i>Flashforward</i> (novel) 1999 novel by Robert J. Sawyer

Flashforward is a science fiction novel by Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer first published in 1999. The novel is set in 2009. At CERN, the Large Hadron Collider accelerator is performing a run to search for the Higgs boson. The experiment has a unique side effect; the entire human race loses their consciousness for about two minutes. During that time, nearly everyone sees themselves roughly twenty-one years and six months in the future. Each individual experiences the future through the senses of his or her future self. This "flashforward" results in countless deaths and accidents involving vehicles, aircraft, and any other device needing human control at the time of the experiment. The novel was adapted into the 2009 television series FlashForward.

<i>FlashForward</i> American television series

FlashForward is an American television series, adapted for television by Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer, which aired for one season on ABC between September 24, 2009, and May 27, 2010. It is based on the 1999 novel Flashforward by Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. The series revolves around the lives of several people as a mysterious event causes nearly everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds on October 6, 2009. During this blackout, people see what appear to be visions of their lives on April 29, 2010, a global "flashforward" six months into the future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epitaph One</span> 13th episode of the 1st season of Dollhouse

"Epitaph One" is the 13th episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series Dollhouse. The episode originally aired on the Season Pass on demand service from SingTel mio TV in Singapore on June 17, 2009 and later became available on DVD and Blu-ray on July 28, 2009. It is also the first episode of the series to feature Felicia Day, an actress with whom Joss Whedon had worked a number of times prior to Dollhouse.

"Future Shock" is the 22nd episode and series finale of the ABC series FlashForward, originally aired May 27, 2010. Directed by John Polson and written by Timothy J. Lea and Scott M. Gimple, the episode received positive reviews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boruto Uzumaki</span> Naruto franchise fictional character

Boruto Uzumaki is a fictional character created by Masashi Kishimoto who first appears in the finale of the manga series Naruto as the son of the protagonist Naruto Uzumaki and Hinata Uzumaki. He later appears as the main protagonist in the 2015 anime film Boruto: Naruto the Movie where he is training as a ninja to surpass his father, the leader of the ninja village Konohagakure and also being mentored by his father's best friend and rival, Sasuke Uchiha. Boruto also serves as a protagonist in the manga and anime series Boruto: Naruto Next Generations and the sequel series Boruto: Two Blue Vortex. Both with the retelling of the Boruto film, from his early training to his growth as a ninja fighting new menaces that lead to him being called Boruto Otsutsuki by them. The character has also appeared in video games, starting with Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4.

<i>Boruto</i> Japanese manga and anime series and the sequel to Naruto

Boruto is a Japanese manga series written by Ukyō Kodachi and Masashi Kishimoto, and illustrated by Mikio Ikemoto. It initially began monthly serialization under the title Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, with Kodachi as writer and Kishimoto as editorial supervisor in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump in May 2016, and was transferred to Shueisha's monthly magazine V Jump in July 2019. In November 2020, Kodachi stepped down, with Kishimoto taking over as writer. In April 2023, the series concluded the first part of the story and, following a brief hiatus, continued in August of the same year with a second part titled Boruto: Two Blue Vortex. Boruto is a spin-off and a sequel to Kishimoto's Naruto and follows the exploits of Naruto Uzumaki's son, Boruto Uzumaki, and his ninja team.

"Quite a Ride" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the AMC television series Better Call Saul, a spin-off series of Breaking Bad. The episode aired on September 3, 2018, on AMC in the United States. Outside of the United States, the episode premiered on the streaming service Netflix in several countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kawaki</span> Fictional character from Boruto

Kawaki is a fictional character from Ukyō Kodachi and Mikio Ikemoto's manga Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. Initially appearing in the flashforward in the series' debut, Kawaki is a young man who apparently would become the nemesis of the series' lead character, Boruto Uzumaki. Kawaki is later introduced as a rebellious member from the organization Kara who wishes to escape and remove his cursed mark "Karma" from his body. In his escape he meets Boruto's ninja team, who take him to the Hidden Leaf Village. Naruto takes the teenager under his wing, seeking to protect him from enemies, and he bonds with the family as time passes, beginning to view Naruto as a father-figure and Boruto as a foster brother, like Sasuke in the past Naruto series, with similar attitude.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Momoshiki Otsutsuki</span> Fictional character from Boruto

Momoshiki Otsutsuki is a fictional character, first introduced in Pierrot's 2015 anime film, Boruto: Naruto the Movie which acts as a sequel to Masashi Kishimoto's manga Naruto. A descendant of Otsutsuki and the series' villain Kaguya, Momoshiki appears in the film as the antagonist, searching to plant a Divine Tree in the world by absorbing the energy possessed by ninjas, the chakra, most notably one of the protagonists, Naruto Uzumaki. While in the film, Momoshiki is killed by the combined forces between Naruto and his son, Boruto, he plays a bigger role in the retelling of the movie, the manga and anime series Boruto: Naruto Next Generations; in his last moments Momoshiki places a cursed seal inside Boruto so that he will gradually revive through the child's body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Axe and Grind</span> 6th episode of the 6th season of Better Call Saul

"Axe and Grind" is the sixth episode of the sixth season of Better Call Saul, the spin-off television series of Breaking Bad. Actor Giancarlo Esposito directed the episode written by Ariel Levine. The episode aired on May 16, 2022, on AMC and AMC+. In several countries outside the United States and Canada, the episode premiered on Netflix the following day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saul Gone</span> 13th episode of the 6th season of Better Call Saul

"Saul Gone" is the series finale of Better Call Saul, the spin-off television series of Breaking Bad. It is the thirteenth and final episode of the sixth season and the series' 63rd episode overall. Written and directed by Peter Gould, who co-created the series with Vince Gilligan, the episode aired on AMC and AMC+ on August 15, 2022, before debuting online in certain territories on Netflix the following day.

References

  1. ↑ "Flash-forward".
  2. ↑ "Flashforward". IMDb .
  3. ↑ Green, Kris (15 December 2009). "Hollyoaks to air flashforward episode". Digital Spy. Retrieved 2009-12-15.
  4. ↑ "EastEnders boss Chris Clenshaw spills epic Christmas flash-forward secrets". Radio Times. Retrieved 2023-02-21.
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