Characters in Quantum Leap (2022). For characters from the original Quantum Leap, go here.
WARNING: Spoilers will be unmarked.
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Main Characters
Ben Song
Dr. Benjamin "Ben" Song
Played By: Raymond Lee
"Oh sh—"
Ben is a physicist and lead scientist of the revived Project Quantum Leap. Like his predecessor Sam Beckett, Ben steps into the quantum leap accelerator before it's ready, and gets stuck leaping around through time from person to person, fixing situations that had once gone wrong.
- Amnesiac Hero: A known side effect of leaping is a "Swiss-cheesed" memory, and Ben is no exception. However, even as his leaps progress, he gradually regains and keeps more and more of his memories.
- Always Save the Girl: Ben's entire motivation for leaping is to save Addison, who is a bit perturbed as she doesn't consider herself a damsel in distress. Even after Ben puts the space-time continuum into jeopardy with an Indy Ploy in 2018, only to accidentally help Martinez make things worse, his only thought is Addison's safety above all else.Magic: Well, apparently, the entire fabric of the universe is at risk, which probably means less to you than Addison does.
- Badass Pacifist: In "Salvation or Bust," Ben states that he is a pacifist, and is very much against the idea of facing the episode's villain in a gunfight. He instead comes up with an alternate solution with the townspeople's help.
- Being Good Sucks: Ben says as much after the Time Skip, when he finds that three years have passed at the Project, he was presumed lost, Addison has moved on, and he's stuck leaping like Sam Beckett was.
- Body Surf: Ben is a benevolent surfer, and only sticks around long enough to complete his mission before leaping into another host.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Ben Song overall is a different kind of character compared to Sam Beckett from the original series.
- Ben is an Asian American to contrast Sam as a Caucasian lead in the previous series.
- Whereas Sam was a Renaissance Man with many talents in many fields, from music to martial arts to science, Ben isn't an expert in a lot of things outside his main branch of science and has to learn many new things on the fly.
- While Sam wasn't able to remember his main love interest Donna and doesn't interact with her much, Ben eventually comes to remember Addison and the two of them frequently interact as both leaper and hologram.
- Sam got to frequently be an Action Hero and took part in a lot of fights and occasionally used lethal action if he had to but Ben is a Badass Pacifist who prefers clever, non-violent solutions and the few times he does fight are those moments where he has to learn to fight because he leaped into boxer or he's forced to against an antagonist like Martinez at the end of the season who's so unrelenting and extreme in both beliefs and actions that there's no choice but to fight him.
- Ben's reason for leaping explicitly has to do with stopping an antagonistic leaper. Sam's reasons for leaping involved proving his theories to prevent a loss of funding; he didn't know about any antagonistic leapers until his fifth year of leaping.
- Driving Stick: In "July 13th, 1985", the first person Ben leaps into is a robbery getaway driver, and his vehicle uses manual transmission. Ben never learned how to drive a stick shift, as Addison reminds him due to his Swiss-cheesed memory.
- Fish out of Temporal Water:
- As a time traveler from 2022, Ben often uses future slang or terminology to everyone else's confusion.
- This is doubled up in the second season. From Ben's point of view, only 12 hours and a single leap pass by since he last heard from Addison and the Project, but three years have passed at the Project by the time Ian finds him again.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Ben says that he's not a man of faith, and tells Addison that he doesn't believe in demons or possession. However, ghosts, angels, vampires, psychics, aliens, a reanimated mummy, Satan, and God Himself were all encountered at various points in the original Quantum Leap, and most of these encounters would've been recorded in the project's files. Addison also reminds Ben that he is literally possessing a person right this moment.
- Guile Hero: Ben is much more willing to use his smarts than his brawn in order to complete a leap. When Ziggy projects that he'd have to kill an outlaw in a gunfight in order to leap, he has a Heroic BSoD until he comes up with a peaceful solution.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Ben's a righty. This comes into play where one of his leapees, a boxer, is a lefty.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Ben is absolutely thrilled when he leaps into astronaut David Tamura, as he'd idolized Tamura as a kid. He's less thrilled when his Swiss-cheesed mind suddenly remembers that Tamura died on a spacewalk during this very mission.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Like in the original series, Ben suffers from a Swiss-cheesed memory. However, he slowly gains bits of it back as time goes on, and the effects don't seem to be permanent even after leaping again.
- Legally Dead: After two years of searching for Ben following his failure to return home after Martinez's defeat, the Pentagon has him declared dead.
- Magnetic Hero: This is one of Ben's talents, and he's able to leverage it in each episode. The team back at the project even agrees, saying that they wish he was present to lead them through the mysteries of what is going on.
- The Movie Buff: Ben was apparently one before leaping; one of his leaps shows him immediately remembering details about movies like Groundhog Day, Rashomon, and The Longest Day. He's such a movie buff, in fact, that his movie knowledge is one of the few things that overwhelmingly survived being Swiss-cheesed.Addison: But it is amazing that you can remember all of these plots to these movies, but not that you loved me for four leaps.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: Just like Sam with his father, Ben realizes he never got to say goodbye to his mom before she died. But what makes things worse is that their last conversation was a vicious argument over him bringing home a report card with all Ds, with the implication being him saying he hated his mom before leaving their apartment was what caused her to keel over dead.
- Office Romance: With Addison, to the point that they are engaged.
- Omniglot: According to Addison in the first episode, Ben speaks multiple languages fluently. In addition to English, he is seen speaking fluent Romanian, Spanish, Cantonese, Latin, and Russian. He is also fluent in Korean as a Korean immigrant.
- On the Rebound: About a week (from his point of view) after not only learning about the Time Skip at the Project, but finding out that Addison had moved on, Ben meets Hannah Carson again in 1955, reveals his identity to her, and plants a kiss on her before leaping out.
- Photographic Memory: He has one prior to leaping, but his initial leap to 1985 "Swiss-cheeses" it. He eventually starts remembering Addison and little details about his reasons for leaping.
- Precision F-Strike: Ben's variation of Sam's famous "Oh boy!" catchphrase shows up in the second episode as a Curse Cut Short version of "Oh shit!"
- Secular Hero: He mentions that he is not religious, but is no less a compassionate, deeply moral person who sees the best in people.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: What Ben needs to do in order to leap. When he initially asks Addison why, she admits that the team doesn't know, it's just always worked that way since Sam's leaps.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: During Ben's leap as a public defender, his client Camilo is offered a plea deal for four years, which Ziggy projects will protect Camilo's family enough to get Ben to leap. Ben refuses, however, since he knows that Camilo is innocent and that the ADA is trying to railroad Camilo, and goes against 50/50 odds to finish the jury trial. He ultimately wins it.
- Significant Monogram: His initials are B.S., which (apart from being a shortening of bullshit) is the opposite of the protagonist from the original series, S.B.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Ben is a pacifist. In "Salvation or Bust," he's appalled that Ziggy has calculated that he'll have to win a gunfight against McDonough.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: One of Ben's strengths is that he's able to give these kinds of speeches to people during leaps, to not only give them confidence in the moment, but also in the long run.
Addison Augustine
Captain Addison Augustine
Played By: Caitlin Bassett
Addison is Ben's fiancee and holographic observer, forced to become observer after Ben made an unauthorized leap. She is a former Army captain, and was originally intended to become the project's leaper.
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: She gets with Tom Westfall around the time Ben is declared Legally Dead, reminiscent of how Beth Calavicci got together with Dirk Simon in the orignal timeline after believing Al dead in Vietnam.
- Alliterative Name: Addison Augustine.
- Big Damn Heroes: Leaves the Imaging Chamber for a little bit to rescue Magic and Jenn from a stuck elevator.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: As the observer, Addison's role is the same as Al Calavicci's from the original series, but she is quite different from her predecessor.
- Al was a man in his sixties. Addison is a woman in her thirties.
- While they both have backgrounds as military officers and war veterans, Al was a Navy admiral, while Addison was an Army captain.
- Al usually wore Impossibly Tacky Clothes and smoked a cigar. Addison's garb is much more normal and low-key, and she does not smoke.
- Al was a Dirty Old Man who often bragged about his sexual exploits, while Addison doesn't talk about her sex life at all.
- Al helped with Ziggy's development and was intended to be the Project's observer from the get-go, Addison did not work on Ziggy and was originally intended to be the Project's leaper.
- In the original timeline, Al spent years pining after his first wife, Beth, who got with Dirk Simon after having Al declared dead. After the Time Skip, Addison ended up doing the same thing with Tom Westfall after Ben was declared dead.
- Death Notification: She tells Ben the story of how she once had to do this for one of the soldiers in her command. She says that as soon as the soldier's mother saw her there with a chaplain, she knew what happened. In that terrible moment, Addison's pre-planned words left her mind.
- Deconfirmed Bachelor: Or bachelorette. Addison confides in Jenn that she came from a broken home, and as a result never wanted to get married — that is, until Ben came along.
- Determinator: When Ben begins leaping, she neglects her own well-being to help him get through the leaps. Her lack of sleep catches up with her when she faints during his third leap, and both Ben and Magic have to tell her to pace herself and allow herself to take breaks.
- Eating the Eye Candy: In "Salvation or Bust," Addison is very into Ben wearing Old Western duds, and compliments him on the look.
- Hero of Another Story: Addison was originally meant to be the leaper and she was trained accordingly. It's not hard to wonder what would have happened if she had actually done it. Had the show been renewed for season 3, we would have found out, because Addison is now a second leaper. She was supposed to replace Ben but ended up joining him.
- Living MacGuffin: Ben's reason for leaping is apparently to save Addison's life in the future.
- No Time to Explain: Since Ben's in the middle of a getaway when Addison first finds him, she says she'll explain everything later.
- Office Romance: With Ben, to the point that they're engaged.
- Percussive Maintenance: Like Al before her, Addison smacks her handlink when it fails to respond to her satisfaction.
- Remembered I Could Fly: In "What a Disaster!" she remembers that she's an intangible hologram, and walks through a closed door to quickly confirm to Ben that a man is catatonic in a collapsing apartment.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Like Al before her, Addison seems to be actively aware of Ben's changes to the timeline, and immune from the effects.
- Weakness Turns Her On: After Ben opens up to Addison about his mother's death, Addison admits to Jenn that Ben's leaping amnesia has opened up his vulnerability, and says that she's falling even more in love with him for it.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- When the project tracks down Ben in 1985 after his first leap, one of the first things Addison does is call him out for using the accelerator before they were ready. However, she softens a bit when she realizes that his memory is Swiss-cheesed.
- After Ben reveals that he leaped to save Addison, she is furious that he didn't tell her anything about this at all before leaping, and angrily calls him out for it.
- Workaholic: In "Somebody Up There Likes Ben," it's established that Addison has been spending the past three leaps working herself to exhaustion to bring Ben home. This culminates with her fainting in the Imaging Chamber, and both Magic and Ben have to tell her to try and get some rest.
Project Quantum Leap (PQL)
Magic Williams
Admiral Herbert "Magic" Williams
Played By: Ernie Hudson
Magic is the head of the revived Project Quantum Leap. He manages the team while working to figure out the broader scope of Ben's mission.
- The Alcoholic: Magic became one during the Time Skip, after Ben's disappearance and the Project's closure. Beth Calavicci helped pull him out of it, but he still has tremendous trouble staying on the wagon during Ben's leap to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.
- Ascended Extra: In the original series, he was a leapee with no lines; the closest we came to "meeting" him was when Sam temporarily believed he was Magic after receiving electroshock in a mental asylum. Here, Magic is the head of the revived Project Quantum Leap.
- Chekhov's Gunman: His role as a leapee in "The Leap Home Part 2: Vietnam."
- A Day in the Limelight: "One Night in Koreatown" gives him the most focus to date. In addition to taking on the role of the hologram, we also learn more about what happened to him during the Time Skip and a traumatic memory from his past.
- A Father to His Men: Magic cares deeply about his team and is usually there when they need him. While he can be stern, he's also willing to have a heart-to-heart when needed.
- Generation Xerox: Like Al, Magic is a former Navy admiral.
- Gut Feeling: He earned his nickname "Magic" in Vietnam when his gut instincts kept his platoon safe. The one time it didn't — in the original history, before Sam leaped in — everyone died on a mission.
- Heroic B So D: Watching Dwain get cornered by the police in "One Night in Koreatown" triggers him and forces him to leave the imaging chamber for a while.
- Like a Son to Me: Magic says that — despite wanting to throttle Ben after hearing that he leaped to save Addison without telling anyone — Ben is like a son to him.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Everyone at the project calls him "Magic."
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He listens and accepts the team's suggestions, refuses to accept Jenn's resignation when Ben makes an unauthorized leap, has a jovial chat with Ian about having been one of Sam Beckett's leapees, and protects the project from Congresswoman Adani.
- Retired Badass: Magic was a part of a squad of Navy SEALs in Vietnam and a career military man, before eventually retiring as an admiral and restarting Project Quantum Leap.
- That's an Order!: Since Magic is head of the project, he has no problem making orders if he thinks it will help Ben or benefit the team. This includes ordering a frazzled Ian to take the day off, or ordering Jenn to take over as Ben's hologram to assist him with legalese.
- That Was Not a Dream: For years, Magic figured that he had blacked out during his mission in Vietnam, and he spent years after dreaming about a mysterious man he didn't know. It wasn't until he made admiral and was given access to his Project Quantum Leap file that he found out that he'd been a leapee, and the leaper — Sam Beckett — was the man he'd dreamed about.
- The Vietnam Vet: Magic served in Vietnam, and was one of Sam Beckett's leapees during his time there.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: Variation: When Magic explains to Ian how Sam had leapt into him back during his tour in Vietnam, he explains how he remembers it. Namely, after feeling a sort of nudge in the back of his head, he accepted that nudge, causing him to black out. When he came to a day or so later, he found out that he had apparently saved his entire squad from an ambush. He tells Ian that he initially thought this gap in his memory was due to battle fatigue.
Ian Wright
Dr. Ian Wright
Played By: Mason Alexander Park
Ian is the lead computer programmer at Project Quantum Leap. They assist Addison in the Imaging Chamber via Ziggy's main terminal, they perform regular maintenance on Ziggy, and they help decipher the data behind Ben's leaping code.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: In one episode, Addison finds Ian wearing cat ears while attempting to fix the Imaging Chamber problems. Ian tells Addison that they keep the cat ears around for "emeowgencies."
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Ian opens up to Addison about their childhood, saying that they attempted suicide before thirteen, and that their school's Coding Club ultimately saved their life.Ian: And I think on the outside, everything just...it seemed okay. You know, I was a...I was a smart kid. Came from a loving family. But I was alone, just floating in this gray space, while everybody else was in black and white. And when the entire world just keeps telling you over and over again that people like you are not worthy, you just — eventually, you start to believe it.
- They also comment on how 2018 was a particularly dark time in their life, as they'd just broken up with Rachel.
- Ian opens up to Addison about their childhood, saying that they attempted suicide before thirteen, and that their school's Coding Club ultimately saved their life.
- A Day in the Limelight: "Let Them Play" introduces Rachel and explores more of Ian's backstory.
- Determinator: Ian is seen to go to extremes to protect their friends, and they often get away with it.
- A future version of Ian surreptitiously uses the accelerator in order to warn Ben about Martinez, then spends decades working out a "cheat code" to give Ben once Ben catches up with them in the future.
- After the project loses contact with Ben in 2023, Ian is the only person who doesn't give up hope on finding him again, and figures out how to find and track Ben again by 2026 following Project Quantum Leap's closure.
- Have We Met Yet?: Magic comes to find out that Ben's reason for leaping involved a future version of Ian leaping into Dottie in March 2022.
- I Hate Past Me: Ian is not particularly happy about Ben's leap to 2018 involving Past Ian, claiming that they were in a darker place at the time.
- Mission Control: Just like Gushie before them, Ian's role is to provide logistical support for Addison. They're also able to actively monitor Ben's vitals and location during the leaps.
- Ominous Message from the Future: A future version of Ian leaped back to March 2022 to warn Ben about something, thus leading to Ben's own leaps.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Zig-zagged. They notice when the Reddit page about Contessa Gray's unsolved murder disappears, after Ben changes history and uncovers the culprit. However, they also have memories of living through a history where Gia Mendez won a basketball game on a buzzer-beater in 2012, which only happened because of Ben.
- Slasher Smile: Ian gives one in the Halloween Episode, when they tell Addison that the Imaging Chamber's problems were caused by the "demon" Ben is supposed to exorcise.
- Sole Survivor: Future Ian is the only member of PQL who survives the nuclear catastrophe in the future.
- Technobabble: Attempts to use this on Congresswoman Adani to distract her from asking them where Ben is. She sees right through it and calls them out for it.
- Techno Wizard: Ian rebuilt Ziggy using pieces of her code from the old project, can quickly troubleshoot most problems with the handlink and Imaging Chamber and come up with solutions on the fly, and provides Ben with a quick holographic Heads-Up Display (without Ziggy's help) to assist him with landing a plane.
Jenn Chou
Jennifer "Jenn" Chou
Played By: Nanrisa Lee
Jenn is the chief of security for Project Quantum Leap. She works closely with Magic on investigating any people related to Ben's unauthorized leap.
- Disappeared Dad: Jenn opens up to Magic after she spends the day dodging her father's calls. She's says that she's tired of trying to develop a relationship with her father, as it always starts with her father asking for money and then ditching her once he gets it.
- Good Is Not Nice: She initially balks at being Ben's temporary hologram, saying that she's "terrible at all that emotional support and positive reinforcement stuff." Subverted later on when she awkwardly manages to patch together a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech for an emotionally-distraught Ben.
- Hidden Depths: Jenn got a law degree in prison. Because of this, Addison and Magic recruit her to fill in as observer during Ben's leap into a public defender.
- Recruiting the Criminal: According to Congresswoman Adani, Jenn was in prison for hacking Bitcoin accounts on the dark web, but Magic lobbied for her release and made her head of PQL's security.
- Resignations Not Accepted: Jenn tries to resign for being unable to stop Ben from leaping. Magic shuts her down immediately and tells her they need her to fix things.
- Spot the Thread: Jenn is quickly able to identify the mystery woman's ring as one that had been worn by Al Calavicci, and uses this to figure out that his daughter Janis Calavicci is the person who helped Ben leap.
- The Snark Knight: She's very serious about her job and very loyal to the Project team, but she's also very snarky and world-weary.
- That's What I Would Do: Jenn says that Janis likely went to Belize, since she could blend in with tourists, use the local power plant to run an imaging chamber, and not worry about extradition. "That's where I'd go."
Ziggy
Ziggy
Ziggy is the supercomputer and AI in charge of Project Quantum Leap, rebuilt from the AI in charge of the original project. She assists the team with providing future information to Ben via Addison's handlink.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: According to Janis, Ziggy is acting as a mole inside Project Quantum Leap.
- The Alleged Computer: Played with; Addison experiences delays in retrieving data about the leap from Ziggy. Granted, Ziggy was prone to tantrums at the original project, but in this case Ian narrows the delays down to a Trojan horse program that was accidentally uploaded to Ziggy from Janis's hard drive.
- Ambiguous Gender: As before, Ziggy is referred to with different pronouns depending on the episode.
- Came Back Wrong: Ian reconstructed Ziggy from the bits and pieces of the original Project's Ziggy. According to Ian, this newer Ziggy is a "fallible AI that selflessly calculates probability outcomes based on what Ben sees." However, she is completely without a personality and is perfectly fine with murder as a means to an end (even if it involves murdering the Project staff).
- Expositron 9000: This is Ziggy's main purpose. She provides future information via Addison to Ben in the past, and is used to calculate potential outcome scenarios.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Invoked; Magic has Ziggy shut down so she can't pass records of the Project's activities in 2022 to the Project's malevolent overseers in the future via The Slow Path.
- Ludicrous Precision: Ziggy is able to calculate probable outcomes of any given leap, given enough knowledge of the situation at hand. Less so when she is used to predict where Janis is fleeing to and comes up with forty possibilities; Jenn uses deductive reasoning to figure out the correct place.
- The Mole: Ziggy is quietly acting in this capacity at the project, maintaining records of Ben's movements that trickle through to the overseers in the Project's less-than-benevolent future.
- Omniscient Database: Not quite shown to be the same level as before; Ian supplements Ziggy's knowledge by browsing Reddit in one episode, and Ziggy has no knowledge of an off-grid cabin having existed in 1996. But she's still able to recreate a realistic holographic version of a prize fight from 1977.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Ziggy maintains records of the leaps' original histories, although her databases also update whenever Ben makes changes to the timeline. This leads to a situation where Ian has a firsthand memory of something that Ben changed, and is shocked to see the original history in Ziggy's database. However, it also means that anything that happens at the Project in the present is propagated to Martinez's version of the Project in the future.
- Three Laws-Compliant: Averted; she is perfectly fine with a leaper murdering another person in order to ensure the leap's success.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: As compared to the original Ziggy, who was snarky, helpful, and generally more peaceful, this version of Ziggy is neutral, cold, and not averse to suggesting murder as a means to an end. This Ziggy calculates that Ben has to kill McDonough in order to save Salvation, which appalls Ben; it's later determined that the future version of Ziggy has calculated that Martinez will have to kill the entire Project team in order to save the future.
- The Voiceless: Unlike before, this version of Ziggy does not speak to the team.
Tom Westfall
Tom Westfall
Played By: Peter Gadiot
Tom Westfall is an official from the Pentagon's defense innovation unit, who helps the Project reopen in 2026 after Ian locates Ben. He's also Addison's new love interest after Ben is declared dead.
- The Ace: His second scene involves calling the director of the FBI to undo the Project team's arrests for breaking into the mothballed Project, and the team is thrilled to see him.
- The Missus and the Ex: Circumstances force Tom to rotate in as Ben's hologram in "Secret History", an awkward situation for both men until they learn to work together.
- New Old Flame: Tom and Addison apparently first met in 2013 while in the military.
- Nice Guy: He's very nice and charming, which made him an easy fit for the group dynamic after they thought Ben was gone. Even after learning Ben is alive and that Addison has complex feelings regarding him still, Tom is entirely understanding, and is fully aware of how Ben wouldn't exactly want him as a hologram during leaps due to understandable feelings of resentment.
- Remember the New Guy?: Justified; everyone at the Project in 2026 welcomes Tom with hugs and handshakes, as he'd gotten close with them some time after contact with Ben was lost in 2023.
- Replacement Goldfish: Tom pretty much replaced Ben during the Time Skip; he became close friends with everyone, attended game nights, and got with Addison.
- Romancing the Widow: Played with. Addison and Ben never actually got married and Ben never died, but Addison believed he did, and Tom came into the picture during the period where Addison had just finished grieving over Ben. Tom himself had a wife before he started dating Addison, having lost her to cancer some time prior.
Other Characters
Janis Calavicci
Janis Calavicci
Played By: Georgina Reilly
Janis is a temporal physicist and the daughter of the original project's observer, Al Calavicci. Though she's not a part of the current project, she secretly works with Ben to create some new parameters for quantum leaping.
- Anti-Nepotism: The government apparently kept Janis out of the restarted project because she was too close to the events of the original series. Revealed in "Somebody Up There Likes Ben" that it was actually her mother, Beth, who insisted that Janis be kept out of the project because she was too obsessed with recovering Sam.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Janis rattles Jenn with questions about how Ben didn't trust people at PQL.Janis: My dad had people he could trust at Quantum Leap. Do you? Because Ben sure didn't seem to think so.
- Back for the Finale: She returns in the finale of Season 2 to help the team take back Project Quantum Leap.
- Being Good Sucks: Janis is bitter about everything that has happened after helping Ben, saying she didn't want to be on the run or in custody, and that she had a life prior to Ben reaching out to her, but she chose to help him anyway for the greater good.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Janis refers to her mother Beth by her first name while speaking with Magic on the phone. She calls her "Mom" to her face, however.
- Clarke's Third Law: The first time Janis attempts to holographically contact Ben, the distortion causes Ben to believe that she's a demon.
- Dark Secret: The reason why Ben leaped. She initially says that she can't say it out loud, and she doesn't want Ben to say it out loud, because — as she tells Addison — in a world with a quantum accelerator, anything spoken aloud is potentially open knowledge. She eventually relents, however.
- Kid from the Future: A variation. The original series ended with Sam making sure that Beth didn't give up on Al (who was MIA in Vietnam), and this led to a future where Al and Beth had several daughters, including Janis.
- Hacker Cave: She has multiple. She keeps one in the basement of her house (which she remotely destroys when Magic and Jenn come knocking), and keeps another offsite in an old warehouse.
- Hiding in Plain Sight: She hightails it to Belize, where she can hide out in the open and just look like another tourist. Jenn tracks her down anyway.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Janis says this word-for-word to Beth after Janis slips a mickey into her tea and knocks her out.
- Insufferable Genius: Janis is a brilliant temporal physicist, but with much of Al's snarkiness and temper. Due to salt for being passed over for the revived project (at Beth's request) in addition to the reason why Ben apparently distrusts the Project staff, Janis is very cagey and snarky whenever she interacts with the project team, and sees no issue drugging her own mother to steal an old handlink. Just about the only person she isn't sour with is Ben.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She spends most of the first season at odds with the main characters but does genuinely want to help Ben.
- Living Out a Childhood Dream: Averted. She tells Ian that working at Project Quantum Leap had been her dream since she was a little girl, and she's bitter at Beth for undermining it.
- Meaningful Name: The closed captions spell her name Janis, invoking the Roman god of time Janus
. - My Greatest Second Chance: She's convinced that her purpose is to successfully bring Sam Beckett home after her late father failed to do so.
- Not So Above It All: She briefly smiles warmly when Jenn brings up Al's Impossibly Tacky Clothes.
- Put on a Bus: Janis is not present in the second season; Ian mentions that she is working for the NSA in Hawaii.
- Slipping a Mickey: Janis does this to Beth. Jenn later brings this up as a reason to refuse accepting a drink from Janis.
- Spin-Offspring: She's the daughter of Al Calavicci, the observer from the original series.
- Take Up My Sword: Janis is unhappy that she was originally denied the opportunity to officially continue her late father's work at the revived Project; however, she later uses her father's old handlink and a homebrew Imaging Chamber to attempt to holographically reach Ben.
- Tragic Keepsake: Janis wears her late father's Navy ring.
Richard Martinez
Sergeant Richard Martinez, a.k.a. "Leaper X"
Played By: Walter Perez
Richard Martinez is another leaper from further in the future, nicknamed "Leaper X" by Ian, whom Ben is apparently following through time. In the present day of 2022, however, he's a highly decorated Marine on leave who hasn't yet become a leaper when Magic and Jenn go to investigate him.
- Big Bad: He's the main villain of the first season and most of the main conflicts and overall story arc centers around him and his antagonism towards Ben and his allies.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Martinez is first seen as the guy in the town square who points Ben towards Josiah McDonough's wanted poster, who is later seen in the saloon giving "Diego" a weird look after overhearing him talk to Addison. It turns out he knows who Ben actually is and when he comes from.
- Consummate Professional: When Magic visits him and his mother at their home and identifies himself as a retired admiral, present-day Martinez immediately goes into professional mode, figuring that Magic has him pegged for some kind of special assignment. He also doesn't seem the type to do mercenary work for a private company, leading Magic and Jenn to conclude that he most likely has been leaping from their own Project... in the future.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He's much different from both Evil Leapers Alia and Zoey from the previous series.
- He is a Hispanic male, in contrast to the two Caucasian women.
- While both Alia and Zoey relied more on psychological manipulation to get what they want, typically using other people to act as their agents, Martinez is primarily a physical threat to Ben and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty on missions. Alia and Zoey don't even manage to directly injure Samnote , whereas Martinez lethally stabs Ben and lands several severe punches on him directly.
- Alia and Zoey worked under the guidance of Lothos to Make Wrong What Once Went Right in history, but Martinez is ostensibly following Ziggy's instructions to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, and truly believes he's doing the right thing no matter how ruthless he has to be.
- In final contrast to Alia, who initially worked with the Evil Leapers before having a Heel–Face Turn and Heroic Sacrifice, Martinez doesn't change his ways, doesn't undergo any change of heart, and dies as an unrepentant antagonist.
- Determinator: Utterly ruthless in his effort to complete his mission, as Ben himself notes in the season 1 finale.
- Have We Met Yet?:
- A variation. Magic and Jenn go to visit Martinez after identifying him as Leaper X. However, as of 2022 he's not a leaper yet, but rather a well-decorated Marine with very little free time. Martinez catches onto the fact that these two mysterious people — one of whom is an admiral — seem to know a lot about him, but won't tell him why they're visiting.
- When Ben has his second run-in with Martinez on board the Montana, Martinez is visibly older, but he doesn't seem to remember meeting Magic and Jenn. It's not clear whether it's because his memory is Swiss-cheesed or he has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory.Martinez: Your team must have found me. Well, the past me. I can't imagine I had any intel to give to you.
- Immigrant Patriotism: He and his family immigrated from Mexico when he was nine, and he joined the military to obtain citizenship and also to give back to the country that gave them a stable life by defending it from all enemies foreign and domestic.
- Jumped at the Call: When he assumes Magic is there to tap him for special ops, Martinez is all too eager to take the offer, saying, "You had me at hello." It's easy to see how this and his heavy patriotism come into play when he becomes Leaper X in the future, too.
- Just Following Orders: He says he has orders to eliminate Ben so that he can get to the end goal of his "greater mission." He also coldly works to achieve the leap's calculated end goal, without any regard for anyone who could impede his progress.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: As an ex-soldier, Martinez is perfectly willing to put aside personal feelings and morals for the sake of completing his mission. To this end, if anything or anyone looks to be getting in the way of his mission, he'll eliminate them for the sake of expediency. This serves to contrast him with Ben, for while Ben would try to find a way around the problem, Martinez would rather kill the problem.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The team deduces that since Martinez is using the same leaping technology, then his leaps must work the same way. This becomes a plot point when Janis says that Ben must sabotage a mission to stop Martinez from leaping. However, Martinez's methods are much more cold and calculated; while Sam and Ben want to protect all lives at all costs, Martinez doesn't have a problem harming innocent people if it means the leap's end goal is achieved.
- Unscrupulous Hero: Played with. By all accounts, Martinez is an antagonistic Leaper who is willing to practice Murder Is the Best Solution if it will Set Right What Once Went Wrong, even trying to kill Ben and Addison for the sake of his "mission". However, his mission is supposedly for the sake of protecting the future, no different from what other heroic leapers like Sam and Ben do, the only thing separating him from them being his willingness to go straight to lethal force.
- Walking Spoiler: Zig-zagged. Most discussions about him centers around the fact that he's the first unknown leaper that the project has encountered since Alia and Zoey, but it's gradually shown how he gets to that point.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: His objective with each leap is to Set Right What Once Went Wrong just like Sam and Ben, but he's perfectly willing to kill innocent bystanders in order to complete the objective and continue leaping, and he's perfectly fine with attempting to murder Ben to carry out his larger objective. The season 1 finale reveals that his ultimate goal — by his own design — is the destruction of Project Quantum Leap in the past as the United States government has blamed it for the Bad Future that Ben witnessed.
Rachel
Rachel
Played By: Alice Kremelberg
Rachel is Ian's ex-partner, who works for a corporation. As of the Time Skip, she and Ian have gotten back together. She helps Ian get a quantum chip from her boss in order to help find Ben.
- Life's Work Ruined: She lampshades this when Ian asks her to flash the quantum chip with new firmware, saying that her boss will completely destroy her career if he finds out.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Played for Drama, as she doesn't like Ian keeping secrets from her, which doesn't help when they work for top-secret government projects. When Ian confesses that they found Ben, and that they neglected to immediately tell her, Rachel doesn't take the news well.
- You Are Worth Hell: Ian asks Rachel to flash the quantum chip with new firmware, in order to get rid of the access code backdoor that her boss is using to extort Ian. After saying that her boss will destroy her career if he finds out, Rachel unflinchingly says yes because she loves Ian.
Hannah Carson
Hannah Carson
Played By: Eliza Taylor
Hannah Carson is a woman in the past who Ben repeatedly encounters during his leaps. He first meets her during a leap to 1949. He meets her again in 1955, where he reveals his identity to her, and again during a few more leaps after that.
- Commonality Connection: When Ben first meets Hannah, he's charmed by her enthusiasm for physics, and helps her get into Princeton. Upon their second meeting, he finds that he's able to freely talk with her about science and physics, and gushes over the fact that she got to work with his hero Albert Einstein.
- Girl Friday: She typically assists Ben with the task in his leap. Much more so in Cairo, where she assists his leapee (a CIA agent) in an undercover assignment.
- Invisible to Normals: With Hannah as the "normal" in this case. Since she's a regular person in the past, not a psychic like Sam Beckett's love interest Tamlyn, not another leaper, and not someone connected with the Imaging Chamber, Hannah has no way of seeing Ben as himself and no way to see or hear his hologram. When Hannah and Ben meet for the third time, she tells him that she's spent the six years in between their second and third encounters going up to random strangers and asking if they're him.
- Never Say Goodbye: During their first meeting, Hannah tells Ben that she prefers not to say goodbye, since it has a finality to it, and prefers, "See you later." Sure enough, when they end up meeting again, they part ways similarly.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: She pretends to be an obnoxious American tourist in Cairo in order to distract a Stasi agent so Ben can plant an electronic listening device. It works.
- Photographic Memory: Hannah has one, and she uses it to memorize part of Einstein's fusion formula before burning the document.
- Secret-Keeper: She's the only person who Ben freely tells about his being a time traveler, and she keeps his secret for him.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: She's essentially this show's equivalent to Abigail Fuller from the original series, being a recurring love interest in a Time-Travel Romance with the leaper Ben whom she encounters in more than one leap across different years. The only difference this time is that she finds out Ben is a time traveler whereas Abigail never found out Sam was the one who was watching over her and gave her her daughter Samantha Jo Fuller. To really drive home their similarities, Abigail's daughter would go on to become a project technician at Quantum Leap to try to bring back Sam. Meanwhile, Hannah's child Jeffrey ends up being the Big Bad of the second season because he wants to take over the project and exact revenge against Ben since he blamed Ben for his father's death but once Ben changes the past and teaches young Jeff the value of helping others, Jeff changes his ways (along with the future) and becomes an important financial backer of Quantum Leap with Ben as the Leaper in the present.
- Time-Travel Romance: After Ben drops The Masquerade during their second meeting, Hannah says that having a time-traveling guardian angel is "romantic." She later tells him that she loves him for helping people in his nomadic lifestyle. Addison also postulates that the accelerator keeps putting Ben in Hannah's path because the two are in love. However, it's not helped by the fact that Ben doesn't spend very much time on his leaps, and Hannah bemoans that she probably won't ever get to spend more than a full week with him.
