Has Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) made his final leap? It would appear so, as Deadline has reported that NBC has canceled Quantum Leap after two seasons. The series had been on the bubble, so the news isn’t a complete surprise, but it’s sure to be disappointing for fans.
The follow-up to the original series takes place nearly 30 years since Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. Now, a new team, led by physicist Ben Song (Lee), has been assembled to restart the project. Everything changes, however, when Ben makes an unauthorized leap into the past, leaving the team behind to solve the mystery of why he did it. The second season finale aired on February 20th. While it wasn’t written to be a series finale, Quantum Leap showrunners Martin Gero and Dean Georgaris hoped it could provide some closure while also setting the stage for new stories.
“When we got the early renewal for Season 2, we knew we were not going to end it on a cliffhanger,” Georgaris told Deadline in February. “We were going to end it on the first scene from Season 3, and we’re going to end it with the two characters together, but in a way that you never expected. And that sort of says to the audience, ‘look at all the great places we can go.’ So if it feels like a completion for audiences, that’s wonderful. It is a completion of part of the journey, but I think for us, it serves as the launch for the rest of the journey.“
With Quantum Leap now canceled, I guess we can kiss goodbye to the possibility of seeing Scott Bakula reprise his role as Sam Beckett. The chances of that happening were slim, but you never know. The actor did say he was approached about making an appearance in the pilot but ultimately decided to pass on the project. “As the show has always been near and dear to my heart, it was a very difficult decision to pass on the project, a decision that has upset and confused so many fans of the original series,” Bakula said. “[Hopefully] this new cast and crew are lucky enough to tap into the magic that propelled the original Quantum Leap into the hearts and minds of generations past and present.“
How do you feel about Quantum Leap getting canceled?