Quantum Leap Season 2 Could Feature Multiple Timelines

This article contains spoilers for Quantum Leap season 1.

Now that Quantum Leap season 1 has ended and fans of the show settle in for months of waiting to see who pops into the Accelerator, the writers, cast and crew are already hard at work on season 2. The official word from showrunner Martin Gero is that they’re currently filming episode 4 and that Quantum Leap is planning a comeback that will be bigger and better than anything we’ve already seen.

The season 2 teaser that aired immediately after the finale offered some insight on what to expect in Quantum Leap when the show returns in fall 2023. Here is everything else we know about what’s next for Ben and company.

Will Dr. Ben Song Leap Home?

If Ben (Raymond Lee) does leap home, he doesn’t stay long before he leaps again into some kind of port-a-potty control center. Or maybe it’s an airplane bathroom rigged with the buttons of war. Wherever Ben is, he’s not happy about it…he was expecting to leap home. So did we, Ben. So did we.

Captain Addison Augustine Will Take a Leap

Only leapers wear white, so we’ve got multiple leapers on our hands again next season. The emotional depths plumbed by the characters gets deeper as we see Ben jostled violently in a life-threatening situation and Addison (Caitlin Bassett) sitting (dejectedly?) with her inability to protect Ben from the happenstance of the universe.

Are Magic and Jenn Ok?

Neither Magic (Ernie Hudson) nor Jenn (Nanrisa Lee) appear in the teaser, but we’re only super worried about one of them being dead or lost to time. When Frankie (Yaani King Mondeschein) from “Salvation or Bust” (episode 5) shot Leaper X/Martinez (Walter Perez) in the finale, she kills Martinez and possibly Magic too since Martinez double-leaped, first as himself on a suicide mission to save the world from the ills of time travel and, the second time, in the body of Magic. 

There’s been loads of speculation that Magic will be just fine because of Ian’s cheat code, the 2018 leap reset and that amazing kiss between Ben and Addison that stitched-up the fabric of the universe. But the truth is…we just don’t know. The hope is that, since Ben is still leaping in season 2, the Quantum Bubble that protects the 2022 team when their personal timelines get fudged is still intact.   

That hope is pretty flimsy since Ian (Mason Alexander Park) can be heard in the teaser announcing: “Everything’s changed.” The possibilities are only as limited as the writer’s imaginations, but there are a few seeds that were already planted in season 1 that we may see grow into the Quantum Leap canon.

Will Leaper X Return?

One thing that we can be certain of is that the Leaper X story is complete. Martin Gero reported to Collider that “season 2 will be devoid of Leaper Xs.” When Quantum Leap returns this fall, there will be new canon to digest and stories, leapers and holograms to enthrall us, but we bid fond farewell to Marine Richard Martinez (Walter Perez) and his Terminator-like Leaper X who was an enemy, but for all the right reasons.    

The Quantum Accelerator Has More Agency Than Ziggy

When it comes to the technology of time travel, it’s 99.99% fiction, which allows Quantum Leap a lot of playroom. For example, the show teased a mole for nearly all of season 1, but it wasn’t a traditional mole. Janis hit the nail of the head when she announced in episode 16 that she finally figured out that Ziggy is the “spy.”

Fans of the original Quantum Leap remember a Ziggy with a voice (co-creator Deborah Pratt), a fluid gender and a personality (of sorts). In the revival, Ziggy is an information-weaving probability machine that is often on the fritz. Once the QL project team realizes Ziggy is a time traveling AI giving information access to future enemies, they shut Ziggy down. And the only element truly affected by Ziggy’s unplugging is Ian’s feelings and their pride in resurrecting Ziggy for the new project. Apparently, Ziggy is no more helpful than the world wide web.

At the same time, the Accelerator seems to be making choices about whose side to be on and can even grow irritated when Ben leaps outside the Accelerator’s normal purview: the past. Characters on the show deem the Accelerator akin to God, the universe and destiny itself. Whatever the nature of the Accelerator, the thing is uber-attractive to those close enough to touch it. I mean really, what is it about the Accelerator that makes leapers wanna leap so bad? Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) and Ben are obvious examples of leapers who couldn’t resist, but even our contemporary, trained leaper wannabe, Addison, leaps sooner than she should.

How do we know that Addison jumped into the Accelerator too soon as well? In the original timeline of season 1, Addison is the leaper. But we learn from future-Ian that she leaps in 2022 in contrast to her words every week in the shows’ opening montage: “Quantum Leap was an experimental time travel program, years away from being tested.” Years away from being tested. Yet Addison leaps in 2022.       

Will Multiple Timelines Play a Factor?

Addison’s multiple timelines are contained in the season 1 story, so it should come as no surprise if multiple timelines play an even bigger role in season 2. The season finale expertly shows the importance of multiple timelines working together when we get that stunning visual of 2018-Ian and 2022-Ian entering the cheat code simultaneously as future-Ian meditates amongst the snowflakes of a nuclear winter in 2051.

Within any leap, changes to the past can immediately impact the present, such as what happens with Ian’s memory of the basketball game and community fall-out in “Let Them Play.” In that sense, actions that cause changes are felt in the past at the same moment that they are known in the future. Then we have the Quantum Bubble, where there is a delayed response time in the action of the past being felt in the future, but only when the time traveler is interacting with their own timeline. The risk with the Quantum Bubble is creating a Paradox, which can impact people significantly, cause them to disappear or rip the fabric of the universe to shreds, killing everything, everywhere, all at once.    

What were your favorite moments of season 1? Are there themes, stories or characters that you’d like to see more of in season 2? What are your predictions for what comes next on Quantum Leap?

Leave your comments below and catch up on Quantum Leap by streaming season 1 as well as all five seasons of the original show on Peacock.