NBC’s “Quantum Leap” reboot premiered its second season this week, and in the episode’s final moments it delivered a big twist.
Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) learns at the end of his current jump that he has been missing and presumed dead for three years – a gap that will no doubt have significant effects on the other characters – whilst the Quantum Leap project is shut down.
Now, in a new interview with TV Insider, executive producers Chris Grismer and Deborah Pratt say the writer’s room came up with the three-year gap idea and discuss what the impact will be.
Grismer says part of the reason for doing it was so that the audience didn’t have to: “sit in all the fallout from the original story and just sort of get ahead to the meat of what’s going on.” Pratt then says:
“The big question is, what happened to everybody in those three years? The fact that Ben has no recollection of three years passing is a true – I could go nerd out on you and talk Einstein’s theories of time-space continuums, but the reality is he now has to deal with everybody else’s life went on.
Where is Addison? What is she dealing with? That mourning and that loss or the belief of that loss and how she kept herself together and the fact that she now has to face somebody that she thought was gone forever is a huge journey for not just Addison, [but also] for Ian, Magic, and Jenn because suddenly they have a chance to bring him home.”
The two big new regulars for the season – Eliza Taylor (“The 100”) and Peter Gadiot (“One Piece”) – didn’t appear in the premiere episode but are expected to come into play shortly.
It’s also believed that nine episodes of the thirteen ordered for the second season were produced before the strikes began and thus should make it to air.
