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After two seasons of Quantum Leap; the show has been cancelled over at NBC Universal. Now there are more leapers who will never return home.

During the final episode of Quantum Leap titled “Mirror Image” in 1993; Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) found out that something was guiding him to different leaps and he could also choose where to leap in time.

Sam ends up leaping to Al Calavicci’s (Dean Stockwell) home; to tell his friend’s wife that he will be safely coming back from the Vietnam war. This fades to a title card to tell the audience that Sam would never return home, as he continued putting peoples’ lives right what once went wrong.

As the 2022 series was set to air; Scott Bakula directly addressed whether he was going to be involved and he did not want to be a part of the show. It was from there onwards that fans who read this knew there will never be a chance for Sam to ever get the expected conclusion of being back in his own time as himself.

What happened in the Quantum Leap revival?

In the revival of Quantum Leap, Ben Song (Raymond Lee) became a new leaper. The top secret time travel program was set up again 30 years after Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) never returned.

Ben initially jumped into the accelerator instead of his wife Addison (Caitlin Bassett); in order to save her life. Dealing with a paradox, and an evil leaper from the future who was originally there to stop Addison.

At the end of season one, this was mostly sorted apart from the team losing contact with Ben and the program being shut down.

During season two; Addison assumed that Ben had died and moved on by seeing someone else. Ben then kept meeting a woman called Hannah (Eliza Taylor) in a majority of his leaps. Hannah eventually figured out the code that could bring Ben back home. Although, she had a son with someone else who grew up to resent Ben for not saving his dad.

Hannah’s son Gideon Rydge (James Frain) overheard Ben mention about time travel when he was a kid, and he then amounted wealth and power; with the intention to completely change time to how he wanted.

The Quantum Leap team: Ian (Maison Alexander Park), Magic (Ernie Hudson), Addison, Jenn (Nanrisa Lee) with the help of Al Calavicci’s family were also working to stop Rydge from leaping.

Just as Rydge was about to go into the accelerator for the first time, Ben managed to go back to his childhood, to convince him not to be evil.

At the end of the 2-hour finale, Addison chose to get into the accelerator to switch places with Ben, to bring him home, however both of them ended up leaping to the same place instead which appears to be in WW2-era. This cliffhanger would have been leading into season 3 if it wasn’t cancelled!

Why has Quantum Leap been cancelled?

Did the lack of Bakula’s involvement hinder the new shows success? It likely didn’t help! There were plenty of callbacks to the 89′ series and a mentions of Sam Beckett. Although, a lot of the original fans may not have seen Bakula’s words about not returning or they did and still held onto the hope that he would change his mind by making a cameo at some point.

Quantum Leap also only managed to go to a second shorter season; co-showrunner Dean Georgaris implied that it didn’t have a large enough audience watching across multiple platforms, “The new reality we’re all getting used to is, it’s not just about one rating anymore. It’s not just about one number. There are multiple platforms”.

The series was taking a while to reach international audiences with Quantum Leap season 1 still only being available on Paramount+ UK at the moment. The platform even went as far removing it and then putting the series back on the platform again, along with other shows such as Death’s Roullette being removed.

It was a good show for what it was with Raymond Lee; who was able to excercise his acting chops across multiple storylines just like Bakula once did as the lead.

Quantum Leap (2022) also did some things differently where they sometimes explored outside of Ben’s timeline and the addition of nuanced over-arching storylines including a different approach to the evil leaper situation. The dynamic was differently between leaper and hologram, where Ben was Addison’s partner. There was also more involvement of the team in the present, compared to Bakula’s series where the present was rarely seen.

Now, the frustrating part is that there are three protaganist leapers out there in time with no resolutions. As well as more if you count the “evil leapers” who were not able to get home. There’s been no discussion revealed about the series being shopped elsewhere.

Check out our ‘6 Best Time Travel Series to Watch’ article.