As a WMG page, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy!
Janis convinced Ben to leap prematurely in order to find Sam
Janis may have discovered that the only way to find Sam is if someone else leaps back in time. She knew she could not convince Addison, who was meant to be the leaper, to do it so she somehow managed to convince Ben to leap instead.- Janis says Ben came to her but the search for Sam could still be the motive.
- Ben says he leaped to save Addison.
Thames' handlink was (or will be) based on Addison's
The original notes for the original series' Evil Leaper episodes had references to the evil project being based in the 2020's. While Zoey's handlink has the same general shape as Al's, Thames' pyramid-shaped handlink is very different, and he holds it much like Addison's "hockey puck" handlink. Therefore, maybe the evil project will develop some kind of connection to the revived Project Quantum Leap.Ben was saved by the original Protect Quantum Leap
If not by Sam himself, then possibly indirectly, to emphasize the Bartender's words that the lives Sam Beckett touched went on to help others and they affected others. Someone Sam helped then helped Ben in some fashion.Either way, Ben grew up and eventually learned of the original Quantum Leap project, connected the dots on how it affected him, realized he very likely owed his life to Sam Beckett, and, as a result, began working with Janis to try and bring Sam home.
Ben is a protégé of Sammy-Jo Fuller
Season 1 will end with Ben looking into a mirror and seeing Sam Beckett's face
It does not.
Season 1 will show Sam Beckett leaped into his own dad
This would allow an older Bakula to reprise his role as Sam’s father. He could explain to Ben that he has made a good life for himself and is happy as a leaper. He learned how to control his leaps. Now every few years he goes back to Elkridge, Indiana to check in on family, friends, and neighbors. He has also visited with Donna and Al.- It does not.
Janis is not building an imaging chamber or accelerator, but rather...
... a Waiting Room. The current project somehow doesn't have one. If she sets up a Waiting Room with the leapee in Ben's aura, she could use that as leverage (let them have info from the leapee in exchange for letting her into the program).- Jossed. It was another imaging chamber.
The map of times and destinations tracks leaps.
Not just Sam's and Ben's leaps, either. Some of the lines were blue, but some were red; Janis and Ben were tracking evil leapers too.- Partially confirmed; Ben and Janis weren't tracking leapers from Lothos' project, but they were tracking Martinez with a plan to stop him from leaping ahead to kill Addison.
Addison, who was supposed to be the leaper, is the daughter of Samantha Fuller and therefore, Sam's granddaughter.
Janis Calavicci is using her pirated technology to create the "evil leaper" project.
According to the original series' scripts, the evil leapers come from 2025, only three years off from the revived PQL.- Ian said that Ben was using the gravitational boosting slingshotting to leap to the future. Maybe she's trying to stop the Evil Leaper project before it exists?
Martinez (Leaper X) is related to Tina.
Tina, Al's girlfriend from the original series, also had the last name Martinez. He leaped to try to stop Sam from saving Al's and Beth's marriage in "Mirror Image", so Al and Tina would be together. Janis had Ben leap to stop him.- They're not related.
Ben's leaps are aren't incompatible with Sam Beckett's own theories, but rather an extension and expansion of them.
It's stated in dialogue that Ben is using specific points in time to build momenteum and slingshot not only out of his lifetime but into the future. It's stated that he disabled "safety protocols" to do this, and that the accelerator is guiding his leaps, which is seemingly at odds with how the original leaps functioned. However, consider the following:- The lifetime limitation itself isn't tied to the "safety protocols" that Ian mentions; rather, it's inherent to regular time travel. Instead, Ben and Janis intrinsically changed how the accelerator uses power, and had to disable the accelerator's safety protocols in order to do so.
- Ben and Janis would have also figured out that going beyond one's lifetime was possible, since Sam himself managed to do it twice under unusual circumstances. Janis could have even already been calculating how to do so on her own as a contingency in case she ever needed to go beyond her lifetime to catch up with Sam.
- It's explicitly stated that the accelerator is guiding Ben's path through time, and disabling the accelerator could cause him to be lost like Sam. Sam, on the other hand, wasn't tied to his own accelerator, and leaped around randomly due to being Unstuck in Time. However, there is still an element of randomness in Ben's leaps: while Ben didn't target specific leapees or scenarios, he targeted dates, and God/Time/Fate/Whatever (or Ben's subconscious, if "Mirror Image" is to be believed) is pinpointing specific leapees and scenarios within those dates so Ben can still Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- The accelerator's link to Ben is also how the new project is able to track Ben without a leapee in a Waiting Room. Previously, this had caused problems for the old project when Sam leaped as himself in "Mirror Image" as they had nothing to go off of (aside from Al's gut instinct), whereas it's suddenly a non-issue with the new project.
The name that Janis will give to Addison will be...Sam Beckett
- As far as anyone is aware, Sam is still leaping around in time. He somehow becomes aware of the resurrection of the QL project and Ben's role in it, and leaps into somebody—possibly Janis herself—to tell Ben he needs to leap. Leaping into Janis would explain why she dropped everything to help—she now knows for a fact that Sam is still out there.
- It was actually a future version of Ian.
Tom Westfall will turn out to be a villain
- It seems inevitable that Ben and Addison will get back together and the only way for that to happen is if Tom Westfall is actually a mole working to undermine the project in some way.
- Jossed.
Rachel's boss is building (or going to build) Lothos
- Ian learns that the new quantum chip they got from Rachel's boss is sending bits of Ziggy's AI code to Rachel's boss whenever Ziggy tracks Ben's leaps. Rachel's boss is going to use this AI code, along with the new project's updated leaping technology and bits of the old project's technology gathered over the yearsnote , to build Lothos. They'll then test the technology out on Alia, leading to Sam Beckett's encounters with her.
- Jossed.
Sam's leap in Mirror Image completely undid the established timeline
- Sam telling Beth that Al was alive and coming back from Viet Nam changed history significantly. This would explain why:
- In prior leaps, the Project looked ultra futuristic, but in this series looks somewhat mundane and utilitarian.
- In the original series, most characters, especially Al, wore futuristic, gaudy clothes. In this series, people dress in contemporary outfits.
- The Accelerator and Imaging Chamber have different designs.
- Most important, it was DR. SAM BECKET who never returned home, NOT DR. SAM BECKETT.
Ben is really Sam Beckett.
- Sam leaped in to Ben before the events of the series and used the time leading up to the pilot episode to rework his theories. When Ben/Sam stepped in to the Accelerator in the first episode, it was Sam's attempt to leap back to the project. This could explain the different design of the Accelerator and the Imaging Chamber, as they are upgraded versions based on the original designs.
