Quantum Leap EP Promises Season 1 Answers and Confirms That Season 2 Has Already Begun Filming
This week’s episode of Quantum Leap, airing tonight at 10/9c on NBC, finds Ben in the friendly skies as a flight attendant aboard a packed plane.
With the reveal that Ziggy is the headquarters mole they’ve been looking for, the team won’t be able to rely on the advanced A.I. for this latest mission and will have to figure things out on their own.
“Something we always play with is we’re the past to somebody’s future,” executive producer Dean Georgaris told TVLine during press interviews for this year’s WonderCon. “We think we’re in the present, but we’re in the past. And the reality is that the Ziggy they work with is in the past to the Ziggy from the future.”
When it comes to working with the all-knowing machine, Caitlin Bassett, who plays Addison, noted that “you might get an answer, but is it the right answer? Is it the effective answer? Is it the empathetic answer? Is it the long-term prudent answer?”
“I love when we take [Ziggy] out of the mix a little bit and rely on our own prowess, capabilities, intelligence and own knowledge,” she added. “It allows the characters much more agency.”
The Ziggy reveal came after Martinez (the mystery leaper set on killing Addison in the future) betrayed both Ben and Addison at the end of their mission at the mental asylum, with Martinez stabbing Ben in the neck and leaving him to die. Addison then coached Ben through life-saving measures in time to make the jump for tonight’s episode. Of the near-death experience, Raymond Lee (who portrays Ben) said it deepens their relationship.
“With each leap, we have to overcome something,” Lee shared. “Anytime you brush up against [death] that closely, something forges even stronger.”
As for Martinez, Georgaris noted that each of his appearances is a clue for viewers to figure out his intentions. “The mythology of the original show is there was a group of Evil leapers who leapt to do bad,” Georgaris explained. “What’s interesting about what’s happened now is Martinez leaps to do good and he just stabbed our hero. That gets into the ‘everybody is the hero of their own story.’ We wanted to play with this notion of, Martinez looks evil to us, but based on what he knows and where he’s coming from, is he just a man on the mission who will do anything?’”
There are still plenty of questions surrounding Martinez — namely who he works for — and Georgaris assured that “all of the questions that were posed at the beginning of the season will all be answered at the end of the season in a way that I think will satisfy everyone.”
Since Quantum Leap secured an early Season 2 renewal in December, the team has already begun production on the show’s sophomore run and recently wrapped filming on Episode 4.” “We took advantage the early renewal and we didn’t take much of a break,” he said. “We decided that you don’t get a chance that often in television, so let’s make the most of it.”
Writers’ strike coming
Yep. I wish we could figure out which shows for sure are filming early. I know La Brea and Night Court on the NBC side, plus Found, Irrational and the Mike O’Malley sitcom with Jon Cryer & Donald Faison. Plus the back half of Magnum and they could maybe bring back Transplant too. It sounded like animation is far enough ahead for FOX and also The Cleaning Lady. It’s hard to tell if some of the other early renewals – of which ABC really only had Abbott Elementary, CW only had All American (and who knows what they’re doing), and CBS had more including multi-season renewals for the FBIs, were simply rewards for good performance or if some of these ones are also shooting early…. CBS does also have Tracker. It’s also possible potential new series like CBS’ Matlock and ABC’s Drop-Off could rework existing scripts – in the strike of the late 80s, the Mission Impossible reboot did that as Matlock maybe could, while Dear John did it with the UK show of the same name, in Drop-Off’s case the show would be Motherland. Of course there’s plenty of reality too.
Both Fox and ABC have a large percentage of reality programs to fall back on. NBC has the Voice and NFL and CBS has Survivor, Amazing Race, Lingo and can pump out prime time episodes of Price is Right and Let’s make a Deal. Like you mentioned who knows about the CW. FBOY Island and not much else announced.
Yeah. Most of CW’s stuff will be reality or acquired anyway, save a couple shows like maybe Walker. I’m not sure if Family Law is coming back, but stuff like that would be completed. And I assume they are keeping at least a few of the current reality offerings CW has with Penn & Teller, World’s Funniest Animals, maybe a revamped Whose Line with a new cast. Still a lot of holes right now. They should really try to acquire Legendary as well on the reality side.
What if Ziggy becomes Lothos sometime in the future? Martinez and the others figure this out and he destroys Ziggy to prevent that and Addison is collateral damage.
Personally, I do NOT think Martinez is “evil,” at least not in the traditional sense. We first saw him “warning” Ben to stop following him. We then saw him following Ben and helping him meet a kind of shared goal. We were told Ben had 3 chances to stop Martinez, and that this was his last shot. Was Martinez told the same thing? And are we seeing loyalty or “evil”? We know Martinez is from the future, and that means he has info our team does not. We do not know if or how Ben’s leaps have affected that mission. We also know Ben’s original plan was to sacrifice himself by staying in that timeline…leaping changed that original plan, and Ziggy probably told Martinez that. Was he attempting to kill Ben or just trap him to “correct” the timeline from his point of view? And how has Ben’s leaping and changing his original plan changed everything? And how does Ian’s future leaping fit into all of this?
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So many questions!
I wonder if in the original timeline Addison leaped trying to Sam Beckett and either died during the attempt or somehow died cause of an accident with the Quantum Leap Machine and Ian from the future leaped back to save her and complete the mission? Ziggy would be more loyal to her creator than Ben or Addison or Martinez and may not worry about risking them to save Sam?
I had a similar thought that Martinez may come from a timeline where Addison was the leader since that was the original plan. I’m still holding out hope for a Sam tie in. When they revealed Ziggy as the mole I thought that Ziggy was leading the leaps towards Sam because she wants to get him home especially since Og Ziggy had a personality and emotions (and Deborah Pratt’s voice)
I hope they give us *some* clarity in the season finale
I’m very impressed with the story line. Al’s daughter, Janice, is interesting. I just hope that maybe Scott Bakula (Sam) comes home. I’m a big fan of Ian, too!