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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Quantum Leap Season 2 Episode 11 “The Outsider.”]
If you thought Gideon Ridge (James Frain) shook things up when he made his entrance at the end of Episode 10, that’s nothing compared to what happens in the latest Quantum Leap.
Gideon is none too pleased with Ian (Mason Alexander Park) for using the quantum chip he made for them that helped them find Ben (Raymond Lee)—he was missing for three years, though no time passed for the leaper—without his knowledge and refusing to give it back. Someone has to go, and since Ian is the best shot at finding Ben, it can’t be them. Tom (Peter Gadiot), as the Department of Defense representative, tells Magic (Ernie Hudson) he has to fire Jenn (Nanrisa Lee). Instead, Magic decides to resign.
“Once he found out the truth about what Ian had been up to, I think he realized that something had to be done,” Hudson explains to TV Insider. “He had to make a real critical decision, and everything else just seemed the worst. I think he felt like the only thing that was left was for him to take the hit as opposed to his team. The right or wrong of it really wasn’t as important as, let’s do what’s going to be best for everybody.”
Furthermore, Magic is in a different stage of his career and life where he “could afford to take the hit,” as opposed to the others. “If it wasn’t for this project, he’d probably be considering retiring,” says Hudson. “It’s not what he wanted—his whole life’s ambition is to bring Ben back—but on the other hand, the impact it would have on everybody else on the team would be more than he’s really willing to accept and deal with.”
Jordin Althaus/NBC
Plus, he knows Ian’s heart was in the right place. “It was Ian who stuck with the project even after [Magic] and the others gave up on it. It was Ian who kept looking and searching and eventually found Ben, so there’s a sense of, even though they made a bad choice, I certainly can understand why they made [it]. And I can’t honestly say I would’ve done something different,” Hudson admits.
And just because Magic may be out at Quantum Leap doesn’t mean he’s out of the fight. “Maybe there’s some other options he can put in play,” Hudson suggests.
Early on in the episode, Magic has to sit, with Ian, and listen as Gideon details just what they had been keeping from him. “That’s really hard,” Hudson says of that scene. And while it may have been tough to have someone else in control in Magic’s space—”at one point, he put his foot up on my desk” the star notes—it’s “the disappointment that one of the team would’ve gone outside, that Ian did this and kept it to themself for so long and he was just blindsided by this” that hits Magic the hardest, according to Hudson. “The fact that there’s a sense of betrayal, a sense of lack of trust for whatever reason is the hardest thing. Someone coming in and taking over and just so arrogantly stating their case, like Gideon does, is annoying as hell, but that sense of being left out, being a bit betrayed, even though I can understand the reasons for it, is really heartbreaking.”
The only member of the team in the present not involved in that is Addison (Caitlin Bassett), as the hologram to Ben’s leaper. “She is playing catch-up. She has to keep Ben alive,” says Bassett. “Also Ian hasn’t been sharing a lot of what’s been going on. But I mean, wow. Gideon is a bit of a powerhouse, and James Frain is so good, and he can be a villain any day, like, oh my goodness.”
Jordin Althaus/NBC
Elsewhere in the episode, after hitting the pause button on their engagement, Addison and Tom officially end their relationship. Time travel has made him believe in fate, he tells her. They started dating because she lost Ben, then Ian found Ben, and Tom ended up here. He thinks they were meant to be together and they were meant to break up.
“Ben was gone. She was moving on with her life. I think that’s a very healthy thing that she was doing, and then it got derailed and life happens,” Bassett tells us. “But I think he was a wonderful human that helped really put her back together, and that’s what I played at the end. I said, ‘Thank you.’ I don’t know if it made it, but I think Tom saved her life in a lot of ways, but ultimately it just wasn’t meant to be forever.”
Plus, after Ben learned that Hannah’s (Eliza Taylor) husband died of heart disease, on one of his leaps, he penned a letter to warn her (and gave it to someone he met to mail after a certain date). But while that worked, Josh died in a car accident a year later. Ben debates calling her during his latest leap but realizes he wouldn’t know what to say.
“I think Hannah is a glass half full kind of gal. I do believe personally that she would be grateful for any extra time and for the fact that Ben did really try to help,” says Taylor.
And so the stage is set for the two-part finale. How do you think the season is going to end?
Quantum Leap, 2-Part Season 2 Finale, Tuesday, February 20, 9/8c, NBC