‘Quantum Leap’ Boss on That Ben & Addison Shocker, Plus What It Means for a Season 3
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the final two episodes of Quantum Leap Season 2, “As the World Burns” and “Against Time.”]
Quantum Leap delivers answers, reunions, and even a death in the final episodes of Season 2.
Ben (Raymond Lee) reunites with Hannah (Eliza Taylor), who reveals she came up with a formula to help him get home—the same DARPA code Ian (Mason Alexander Park) is working on in the present. However, someone needs to swap places with Ben—and Gideon Rydge (James Frain) is planning to do just that and change the timeline. He is Hannah’s son Jeffrey and blames Ben for his father’s death. (Josh found the letter Ben sent Hannah about his heart disease, confronted her, drove off in a storm, and died in a car accident.) Gideon kicks Addison (Caitlin Bassett), Ian, and Jenn (Nanrisa Lee) out of Quantum Leap.
They reunite with Magic (Ernie Hudson), who was forced to resign and is working with Janis (Georgina Reilly) and Beth (Susan Diol) in a makeshift base. When Jenn breaks back into their old headquarters to keep Gideon from leaping, he has his men kill her. But fortunately, Ben tracks down kid Jeffrey, shows him the good he can do, and changes everything: Jenn lives, and Jeffrey becomes a donor and major supporter of Quantum Leap. As for bringing Ben home, Addison volunteers to leap… but rather than the two swapping, they reunite in the past, both now leapers.
TV Insider had executive producer Dean Georgaris break down that wild finale and teases what could be next (if the show is renewed for a third season).
At what point did you know you wanted Ben and Addison to start leaping together and that you would be ending the season that way?
Dean Georgaris: Almost immediately. When we designed Season 2, the first thing we came up with is that we wanted to split them up, hence the time jump. The second thing we decided was we wanted each of them to have a romantic interest that in hindsight also kind of functions almost as their own version of a leaper, helping set right what went wrong. And the third thing we realized right away was it made so much sense—we think of each season as a book—for the story of the second season to be about bringing them together physically. The idea of bringing them together physically back in our time was nice, but Addison was supposed to be the leaper, and we’ve been talking about that a lot, and I think that it just excited us the most, especially for where we can go, to have her join him.
Jordin Althaus/NBC
What can you say about how having two people leaping changes any established rules? Will they always leap together?
The idea of two-person leaps is really exciting because you never know who they might leap into. They could leap into a cop and a robber who are in the same car for a reason, they can leap into gender swaps, one’s a mom and the other’s a kid. Why do you need a two-person leap? We’ve sort of played with the notion of two-person leaps. We had it with Leaper X a little bit, and we sort of had it with Hannah. Obviously she was an active participant helping, but she was not in someone else’s body. Then we’ve got, in Ben, someone who was not trained but has two seasons of experience on the job, and Addison, who was highly trained and then has had her sort of emotional training. You’ve got two different perspectives and the potential for disagreements.
What can you say about their romantic relationship going forward though? Because there’s also the complication of they’re in other people’s bodies now.
Yeah, that’s a whole ‘nother complication. What’s great is having them together opens up the opportunity to have maybe a little bit more humor, a little bit more lightness. I think we did a really nice job of keeping the show as light as we could, given fairly heavy overall stories. Also, in our minds, reuniting them in leaps, they’re not necessarily just suddenly all perfectly happy back together romance. The idea is they’ve reconnected and they’ve rediscovered how much they care for each other, but they’re not a couple. That’s another thing we’re really excited to explore is, now they’re together, but what are they and how are they going to make it work?
Was that code really supposed to swap Ben and someone else, or was Hannah’s goal to bring Ben and Addison back together in this way?
Let me see how I want to answer that because I think we always want to protect the fandom and we always want to keep the doors open. I will say that as a writers’ room, we discussed just how much does Hannah know what she’s going to accomplish? I think we all feel like Hannah knows that reuniting Ben and Addison is kind of the cosmically right thing to do. In my mind, I think Hannah knew what she was doing and obviously the code worked in that it did bring someone into leap space again. I think the question will become, does her code function to pull people out? And if it does, when might that happen and who might we pull out and do we need to swap someone else in? I think it opens the door for a lot of exciting possibilities.
Did you ever consider killing off Jenn or someone else once the butterfly effect was achieved?
No. We have this incredible cast, and one of the things we tried to do in Season 2 was to give the actors back at HQ more emotions to play, more range. I think Ian had several great moments, including when they told Tom [Peter Gadiot] off; I was waiting all season for Ian to take ownership of what they did. For all Magic’s faith, we saw the costs for him. We had been looking for a moment where Jenn could prove her strength and her loyalty. We all were really excited when we realized there’s no better way to do that than to actually lay your life down for the people you love, and she’s not expecting a butterfly effect in a reset. She’s saying goodbye.
Jordin Althaus/NBC
What else can you tease about a potential third season?
It’s so early days. What I would tease about a third season is exploring a two-person leap, but I don’t think it’s always going to go the way they expect. I don’t necessarily think just because they’re together in one leap means they’re automatically together in the next leap. I think we’re all excited about, who becomes the hologram and how does the hologram work and what other discussions does having a swap code if it works or if they can get it to work again bring up for the people in Quantum Leap? If we really start to explore that you can go in and out of a leap, does Ian want to go? Does Jenn want to go? Is there an occasion where Magic would want to go? Or can they not get the code to work again? In which case you’ve got now two people you’re trying to bring back—or are you trying to bring them back?
This season, one of the things I think we wanted to explore with Ben was this notion of taking ownership over the fact that the universe has chosen you to leap. Yes, he did it himself, but from a bigger viewpoint, our leapers are chosen, I like to think, by the universe in their own ways. Ben now is comfortable with this notion that he’s going to set things right that once went wrong, and I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens if maybe he’s deprived of that ability for a few leaps. And what happens if and when it seems like Ben and Addison have opposing goals in a leap?
Will Eliza and Peter be back, or are Hannah and Tom one-season characters?
We originally intended them to be one-season characters and I think that’s the way we’re thinking of them at this moment. But we’re very early in talking about Season 3, and I think both Eliza and Peter did such great jobs with their characters and because both characters have connections to our two lead characters, I could easily foresee reasons for both of them to come back.
Now that you’ve established Jeffrey as a good guy, could we see James again?
Also absolutely. He was so terrific, and I think one of the things that we were most excited with in terms of how it turned out was it was really exciting for us to make the final leap and, in a way, everyone’s fate rest not on a great speech from Ben or a great punch from Ben, but from Ben letting someone else experience the power of saving a life. I think now that Jeffrey has experienced that, and with an actor like James, the potential to explore that character is very exciting.
Are you thinking about bringing in someone else to bolster the team in the present day with Addison leaping to have a four-person team?
We have not talked about a need to bolster because Addison was mostly gone from the HQ, so we’re often used to seeing the three and I think bringing one of them in as a hologram leaves plenty for the other two to do. Never say never. And as you’ve pointed out, Janis is out there, Hannah’s out there, Tom’s out there, and Jeffrey’s out there. We’ve got four all-stars that leap to mind that we can bring in whenever the story dictates we bring them in. You don’t force characters in, you don’t force the story, but it’s sure nice to have, in the way that we brought Janis back in the finale. It was like bringing in a home run hitter when you need it.
