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Jordin Althaus/NBC
SPOILER ALERT! This story contains plot points from Tuesday’s season finale. quantum leap on NBC.
The two-part finale of NBC’s reboot of the popular 1990s sci-fi drama is presented in a neat and uplifting manner, meaning could will serve as the series finale if the drama doesn’t get a third season.
Here, co-showrunners Martin Gero and Dean Georgaris talk about how long they’ve been planning what will happen in the Season 2 finale, plus why it was so important to introduce a massive butterfly effect and what fans could expect if the series prosper. to season 3.
DEADLINE It sounds like you’ve set this up to potentially work as the series finale. Was that the plan?
DEAN GEORGARIS Interestingly, we didn’t actually design it to be the end of the series. The fact that Ben (Raymond Lee) and Addison (Caitlin Bassett) are in the same physical space may seem like a kind of completion of the first part of their journey. But what we wanted to do for season two was tell a really emotional story with this incredible cast that we had. And the way we did it was to separate Ben and Addison emotionally, to separate them. When we got the early renewal for season two, we knew we weren’t going to end it on a cliffhanger. We were going to end it in the first scene of the third season, and we were going to end it with the two characters together, but in a way that you never expected. And that says to the audience, “Look at all the great places we can go.” So if the audience feels it as a conclusion, that’s wonderful. It is the culmination of a part of the journey, but I think for us it serves as a beginning for the rest of the journey.
DEADLINE quantum leap It is considered a bubble show. What’s it like sitting in the bubble?
GERO I mean, look, I’ve never been on a show that wasn’t in the bubble unless it picked up a week after it aired. The business is constantly changing, and no matter how many episodes we’ve done in our careers with each other, it’s like we just ride it out. Those things are out of our control. What we can control is the spectacle. What we can control is how the audience feels. We are ready and eager to do more.
GEORGARIS The new reality we are all getting used to is that it is no longer just about a grade. It’s not just a number. There are multiple platforms. So the truth is, I think every showrunner and every show creator lives a bubble existence, for the most part. That just comes with it. And that’s fine. As Martin said, that’s not really our job. Our job is to entertain while we can.
DEADLINE When did you put together these final scripts? Was it before or after the strike?
MARTIN GERO It was after the strike, but we had already built everything. We started hosting the show in December (2022) and one of the first things we always do is talk about what the ending is. So we had already written the first eight episodes and had outlines for episodes nine and ten (before they went on strike). So when the strike ended, it wasn’t so much as, ‘okay, what are we going to do?’ It was just being able to complete this plan that we had implemented by the end of 2022.
DEADLINE So you didn’t feel like you wanted to change anything once the strike was over?
GERO No, we were very lucky. I mean, we really had a vision. It’s satisfying for you to say that this might feel like an ending in some ways because to us, each season should feel like a book in a series of novels that you really like. We never want the show to feel like something in between. We want these seasons to have a beginning, a middle and an end. But to do it in a truly satisfying way, you have to lay the groundwork in those first few episodes. So once we lay that foundation, obviously things have some wiggle room and you move around and lean into strengths and weaknesses. But we always knew this would be the end.
DEADLINE So there weren’t any alternate episodes that you explored or anything else that you filmed and didn’t use?
GEORGARIS Nothing like that. We built a story that we knew we could tell in 13 episodes. We didn’t know how the strike would affect our order, but we knew we had a complete story and we were surprisingly loyal to it.
DEADLINE You depend on a lot of exposure in your stories so that people can follow them. Has that always been job number one for you?
GERO Yes, we always want a low bar for entry for anyone. Wherever you want to start watching the program, we will help you. And the best thing about Quantum Leap, even the old version and the new version, is that it is a closed-ended narrative. It’s almost like an anthology television show that has a serialized aspect. Obviously, this new incarnation has a slightly more serialized version, but the jumps are the jumps. The jumps are just great episodes of television and are wildly different week after week. And so we know that a good portion of our audience watches each episode in order, but we also have a good portion of the audience that says, ‘oh yeah, right.’ Quantum Leap is on, I’ll be there this week.
DEADLINE Where do Addison and Ben end up?
GERO It’s pretty vague, but I think for us it’s kind of like Europe, World War II style.
DEADLINE Question about the butterfly effect we saw in the finale. Has there been one this big in previous episodes?
GERO This one is huge, yes.
GEORGARIS The two things we’ve been saving up for was doing the Butterfly Effect in a meaningful way, seeing our characters we care about come back to life or change. The other was that we wanted Jeffrey, who had been our big bad of our season, Gideon (James Frain), to experience how powerful it is to be the jumper. In other words, young Jeffrey helps Ben save a life and it changes Jeffrey. And that’s ultimately the DNA of the show from the beginning. It’s a show that’s fundamentally about hope and the profound ripple effect of small acts of kindness. We want to see a character moved by the fact that doing good for the world is very satisfying.
DEADLINE Have you pitched season three to NBC yet?
GERO We haven’t done a long launch. They definitely know the way and approved of our little epilogue moment with Ben and Addison, so they know where we’re going. But no, we haven’t done our big song and dance.
DEADLINE Do you have your song and dance ready to go?
GERO Oh, absolutely. We’ve been thinking about this since the strike ended and once we finalized what the episode count was going to be, we started thinking and working on the third season.
DEADLINE So if there was another season, would we see Ben and Addison traveling together?
GERO Yes. We don’t want to go into it too much, but absolutely. That is the planned start.