By Brandon T. McClure
“Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.”
So ends the final episode of Quantum Leap in 1993. One of the most heartbreaking endings in television history as the entire premise of the show was built around the hope that Dr. Beckett (Scott Bakula) would find a way home. It is apparently the fate of all Leapers to never find their way home as, more than thirty years later, Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) will suffer the same fate. As Quantum Leap fans found out on April 5, 2024, the sequel series of the same name has been canceled by NBC.
Originally created by Donald P. Bellisario in 1989, Quantum Leap aired for five seasons on NBC and followed the time traveling trials of Dr. Sam Beckett as he attempted to put events right that originally went wrong. Thirty years after the show's cancellation in 1993, Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt revived the show with a new cast of characters and a new leaper, Dr. Ben Song. Together with his friends in the present, including his hologram and fiancé Addison Augustine (Caitlin Bassett), he attempts to put right what once went wrong, all the while trying to discover the larger mysteries surrounding the Quantum Leap program.
There have been talks of a new Quantum Leap series for decades and at one point Bellisario had suggested a movie could come to fruition. Ever since the finale's title card, fans had been hoping that someday Sam Beckett could return home. Practically every convention or public appearance made by the cast or Bellisario had them saying “maybe”. But that changed after the death of Dean Stockwell who played Sam’s best friend and hologram Al. It was Bakula’s belief that there was no Quantum Leap without Stockwell’s Al. But shortly after Stockwell’s death, NBC ordered a revival of the cult classic series centered around a new Leaper. Fans had wondered if Bakula would return but he set the record straight just before the new series began airing. Before the series aired Scott Bakula confirmed that he would not be returning, leaving the new show with a large shadow hanging over it. But the show prevailed and was able to find a dedicated audience, admittedly not a large one. While the first season wasn’t the smash success that NBC was surely hoping for, it was successful enough to get a second season.
Unlike the original show, this new Quantum Leap leaned on serialized storytelling, in order for it to compete in age of streaming television. The first season centered around the mystery surrounding his fiancé, Addison’s future death. Ben had somehow manipulated his leaps to arrive at the point where he could save her life. The second season found Ben at the whim of Ziggy, the supercomputer that seemingly controlled the leaps through time. Through the season Ben unknowingly manipulated the life of a a young woman named Hannah Carson (Eliza Taylor ).
Quantum Leap quite brilliantly began to implement a story that was reminiscent of the Doctor and River Song’s story from Doctor Who. Ben had told her who he was and she would help him through his leaps. All the while, Hannah was working on something in the background as her knowledge in quantum physics grew. She appears in many of the episodes of the second season, and audiences began to wonder if she would discover how to bring Ben back to his own time. As it turns out, she had created a code that would help Ben in the future, but it didn’t bring him home,. Instead, it brought Addison to him in the past. The finale of the second season set up a third season where Addison and Ben would be reunited, leaping through time putting right what once went wrong. Interestingly enough this is not the first time this idea was presented.
In May of 2019 a video was uploaded to Reddit which confirmed that there was a filmed alternate ending, should the show be renewed for a sixth season. This alternate ending was going to send Al through the quantum accelerator to find Sam, who was now leaping through time as himself, rather than in the bodies of other people. This suggests that the sixth season would have Sam and Al leaping together through time, working as a team without the limitations of the hologram idea. Even though Bellisario is only an executive producer and not a creative voice on the show, his original idea (which he denies he had even, though there’s proof) still found its way into the new Quantum Leap writers room. This means that both shows were cancelled before this exciting idea could come to life.
But now the excitement has been replaced by disappointment as NBC has seen fit to cut its losses. The show struggled during its second season, like many shows, due to the studios’ greed driving the writers and actors of Hollywood to go on strike. Quantum Leap struggled in the ratings and will probably never receive the same cult-like fandom the original has, but it had fans and they deserved better. So like Dr. Sam Beckett before him, Dr. Ben Song never returned home.