YMMV / Quantum Leap (2022)

• And You Thought It Would Fail: A lot of people were skeptical that the revival would work given that the original was so beloved thanks to the chemistry between Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell whereas this series would be led by a cast of relatively unknown actors (apart from Ernie Hudson). While the overall reception has been mixed, the show proved that the Quantum Leap fandom is alive and well, resulting in an early renewal for a second season. Ultimately, though, it only ran for two seasons as opposed to the original's five.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Virtually everything that happened in between the original project's closure at the end of the original series and the project's revival in the new series, that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet on the new show. This includes Al's decades of searching for Sam, and the fates of Gushie, Donna, Dr. Beeks, Tina, and Sammie Jo.
  • What would have happened if Addison actually had been the leaper, as was planned?
• Fan Nickname: During Janis' detainment, The Quantum Leap Podcast poked fun at the idea of the Project having a jail, and called it "Quantanamo Bay."^note On the show proper, Janis is later said to be under house arrest, and Magic even says that PQL is a time travel project and not a prison. "Judgment Day" would eventually show that the Project does have a small holding cell.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the original series, their only foray into the Space Program was by having Sam leap into a test monkey, who gets scrubbed from the program (meaning he never goes to space). In the revival, not only does Ben do a leap that actually puts him on a Space Shuttle, but it's in the second episode.
• Older Than They Think: While this series catches flack with how its newer time travel or holographic mechanics don't fully mesh with those of the original series, much of what the team experiences has precedence in the original series:
  • Ben is able to leap outside of his own lifetime thanks to his new leaping parameters focusing his momentum and slingshotting him out of his lifetime a la a gravity assist. Sam was able to leap outside his lifetime twice due to improbable scenarios: once to 1945 to save Al after they traded a few neurons and mesons during the simo-leap, and again to 1862 due to a genetic link to his ancestor. It's also implied that Alia had the ability to leap outside of her own lifetime somehow.
  • In the first season, the accelerator is mostly guiding Ben's trajectory, so he's not completely unstuck like Sam was. This ties into how Lothos was able to somehow guide Alia's leaps.
  • Going to the future is stated to be impossible; even when Ben gets there, the accelerator can't maintain the leap for very long. Sam himself never went to the future.^note "Mirror Image" did have a non-canon alternate ending written where Al ends up in a "space bar" in the future while looking for Sam.
  • The "time loop" that Ben experiences in "Leap. Die. Repeat." has some precedence with Stawpah in "Mirror Image," who may have looped his own leap multiple times to try and find a way to save Tonchi and Pete. It also recalls the ending of "Deliver Us from Evil" in that Alia being extracted from the timeline resets everything.
  • The endings of "Return of the Evil Leaper" and "Deliver Us from Evil" are also respectively recalled when Ben and Martinez dual leap together back through their previous encounters, and when a Reset Button is pushed that sends Ben back to the beginning of his leap while resetting Martinez's interference.
  • In "Leap. Die. Repeat.", Ben's time loop is triggered by a nuclear explosion that resets him to his original entry point. This likely refers back to comments made in both "Genesis" and "The Leap Back," where it's stated that a nuclear blast could affect a leap.
  • The holographic Addison is able to make it look like she's sitting down on chairs near Ben. Al could also do this.
• Second Season Downfall: While Season 2 wasn't hated and some even considered it better than the first, declining ratings ultimately led to the show being cancelled after its second season.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In the first episode, Jenn mentions that Al Calavicci died in 2021. Since Sam Beckett never returned home, this means that Al never saw his friend again after the events depicted in "Mirror Image." Worse, Beth even confirms that Al spent the rest of his life doing everything within his power to find Sam again, and that he never got over losing his friend.
  • The entire team's reactions in "Leap. Die. Repeat." when it briefly looks like Ben has died in the explosion. Everyone watches in horror as Ben's vitals flatline and blip out, and Addison stumbles out of the Imaging Chamber and into a crying Ian's arms, where she lets out a primal, haunting Death Wail.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Fans of the original initially took exception to the lack of a Waiting Room (which isn't explained or mentioned) where the leapees are held during the leap, the explanation about the lifetime limitation being bypassed, dialogue indicating that the accelerator is guiding Ben (and not God/Time/Fate/Whatever), the focus on the Project's Story Arc as opposed to the leap stories, or there being no explanation for why Ziggy is now just a mindless computer program instead of an AI with a personality, voice and will of her own like in the original series.
  • Specifically, Quantum Leap Podcast co-host Allison Pregler explained that a big issue for her wasn't just that most of the lore from the original show was changed or handwaved away, but also that the showrunners did so while deliberately avoiding rewatching the original, something Dean Georgaris had previously admitted in an interview with the podcast. Meaning that they actually forgot Ziggy had a mind of her own in the original, and that Sam would switch places with his leapees, who went to the Waiting Room, and not just take over their bodies (in fact, it was indicated his own body took the place of theirs and only looked like theirs because of a quantum illusion)^note Allison eventually bowed out of new episode reviews for the podcast partially because of this. She later returned after the death of co-host Matt Dale and was more complimentary to the new episodes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Fans were surprised that the mystery woman who texted Ben about the leaping breakthrough wasn't Sammie Jo Fuller — Sam's biological daughter conceived during a leap, later mentioned by Al to be working on a retrieval program back at the Project — but was instead identified as Janis Calavicci, Al's daughter.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The evil leapers from the previous series are briefly mentioned when Ben encounters an antagonistic leaper, but "Leaper X" turns out to be apparently unrelated to Lothos and we don't get the opportunity to finally see how the evil leaper program came about and where in the future they were from.
• Unexpected Character: "Atlantis" sees Magic, in investigating Janis, pay a visit to Beth.
• The Woobie:
  • Ben as of Season 2. After spending 18 leaps to save Addison, and kissing her past self, his leap home fails due to his accidental use of the 2018 accelerator. Then, from his point of view, less than 24 hours goes by before he finds out that not only have three years have passed before the Project could find him, and Addison has moved on. You can visually see his heart break when he quietly realizes.
  • Addison as well. She spends the entire first season running herself ragged keeping Ben alive as the observer, especially after finding out that he leaped in order to save her life. Then, from her point of view, Ben completely fails to return to 2023 after his final leap. She later describes the two years before the project's closure as her "darkest," and completely gives up hope when Ben is declared Legally Dead. Shortly after she quietly moves on and gets together with with Tom, Ben is not only found alive, but less than 24 hours have passed from his point of view, forcing her to break the news to him that she's moved on.

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