It Still Stings: Quantum Leap‘s Title Card Typo and the Series Finale that Never Made It Home
Photo Courtesy of NBC
Editor’s Note: TV moves on, but we haven’t. In our feature series It Still Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction? We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing finales in particular, there will be spoilers:
Though its long-tail cultural legacy might lead you to believe NBC’s 1990s sci-fi drama Quantum Leap was a breakout hit, the truth is a bit more complicated. The show, which starred Scott Bakula as a time traveling scientist and Dean Stockwell as his trusty holographic best friend, was modestly successful during its five season run—but never an outright smash.
It’s that precarious position that led to one of the most controversial, debated, beloved, and hated series finales in TV history, as the creators scrambled to wrap up the story following an abrupt cancellation decision, which then led to an infamous typo that has become the stuff of classic TV lore in the decades since.
With NBC reviving the concept with a legacy sequel series set 30 years after the end of the original, it felt like a good time to look back on Quantum Leap (1989) and how it came to an end.
Quantum Leap ran for 93 episodes, telling largely self-contained stories across history with Dr. Sam Beckett (Bakula) jumping into the body of another person to make a change, and leaving history in better shape than he found it. The relatively simple concept proved to be the show’s greatest appeal, and the lens of science fiction allowed it to tell some truly progressive stories for the early 90s, with a “fish out of water” hero built right into the fabric of the concept. Science fiction was the jumping off point, but Quantum Leap told human stories that (despite being a sci-fi show) were almost always rooted in the past. A sci-fi period piece, if you will.
Though the show’s bread and butter was its stories of the week, it did have some longer narrative lore it built up over the years, most notably the lingering question of exactly who (or what) is leading Sam to do all this leaping across the time stream in the first place. Those questions came to a head in the final episode of the show’s fifth season, “Mirror Image,” which would also serve as the show’s series finale. The story found Sam leaping into a mysterious mining town at the exact moment of his own birth on August 8, 1953.
It’s an episode loaded with Easter eggs from prior leaps and experiences, as well as personal anecdotes from series creator Donald P. Bellisario, drawing references to memories and places from Bellisario’s own childhood. Sam walks into a bar and meets a mysterious bartender named Al (played by Bruce McGill), who may or may not be God himself. He even crosses paths with other strangers who might also be leaping through history themselves, though like most lore-heavy Quantum Leap episodes, it’s much heavier on questions than answers.
After Sam explored this mysterious coal town and chatted with the bartender, Sam comes to realize that he is controlling the leaps himself, supposedly subconsciously. So the reason he’s never been able to leap home is presumably because he’s been subconsciously choosing to stay lost in the time stream, setting right the wrongs of history. He may want to come home, but the good intentions inside of him know there’s still work to be done and will not let him end the adventure yet.