'FlashForward' actor discusses game-changing death

The following article was originally posted on hyperMosaic.com by Sam McPherson. You can read the original article there.

In this week's episode, "The Gift," Agent Al Gough committed suicide in order to prevent his flashforward from coming true. While this event effectively ended his character, it also opened up a variety of possibilities for the other characters who hoped to escape the inevitability of their flashforwards. However, it also opens a myriad of questions — Is death the only escape? How much do these changes affect the future they saw?

Lee Thompson Young, who played Gough, spoke to Zap2It about his thoughts on the character's death, and what it meant for the future of the show.

"He basically changes the entire world because he's the first person to defy Fate," Young said in the interview, which can be read in full here. "He found a way to change the game. It's an awesome role to play."

Speaking of the role, Young revealed that he hadn't known his character's full arc until after the pilot. "I don't think the writers had really fleshed everything out at that point," he said. "But when the show got picked up, David Goyer brought me into the office…he actually asked me if I was okay with it. I was like, yeah, man, I just want to be on the show."

While there was some disappointment from Young about it, he says he is grateful to have played the role. "I think [Agent Al Gough] is a special character in the "FlashForward" world, so it's kind of an honor to play that role," Young said.

Gough's character is loosely based on the character of Dimitrios Procopides from the novel Flashforward. In the novel Dimitrios, having seen a future in which he was living an unfulfilled life, kills himself in order to be spared from it, proving that the future can be changed and providing hope to his brother Theo, who, like the show's Demetri Noh, did not have a flashforward, leading him to believe that he was dead in the future (something he was able to change).