Warning: This article contains spoilers for Quantum Leap episode 1.Quantum Leap has finally ended the debate about what happens to Sam's body when he leaps. Quantum Leap's time travel was really little more than an essential tool to plunge Scott Bakula's Sam Beckett into another person's crisis, and the TV show never really explained its pseudo-science. It never even revealed what happened to Sam's body while he was leaping through time; viewers were largely divided over whether Sam's body actually leaped through time, merging with "hosts," or whether his body instead remained in his own time - presumably with the host's mind possessing it.
NBC's Quantum Leap relaunch has settled this drawn out debate at long last. While the original sci-fi series was set entirely in the past, the new show spends as much time with the project team in the present day of the Quantum Leap reboot, as they try to figure out why Raymond Lee's Ben Song has begun leaping through time in the first place. By now, it's become clear Ben's physical body disappeared into the timeline when he leaped; otherwise viewers would certainly have seen shots of Caitlin Bassett's Addison watching over his body. Quantum Leap episode 4 finally sees Ernie Hudson's "Magic" Williams describe what it's like to experience someone like Sam or Ben leaping into you, and he describes it as though he experienced a blackout, waking up to learn what Sam had done with his life in the meantime.
Quantum Leap's Fandom Was Always Divided Over Sam Beckett's Body
The debate over Sam Beckett's body was one of the most heated in the fandom, becoming known as the "Body War." Novelizations based on individual episodes tended to assume Sam's body remained in his own time, possessed by a succession of minds. Foreshadowing the Quantum Leap relaunch, these books often featured subplots involving Al Calavicci and the Quantum Leap project team, suggesting they tried to interview the latest inhabitant of Sam's body to try to figure out what was going on. As excellent as these novelizations may have been, and as effectively as they have clearly predicted NBC's modern approach, they are also clearly now non-canon.
Sam Beckett Really Is Lost In Time - And So Is Ben
This has massive implications for Quantum Leap's pseudo-science. It means Sam Beckett really did disappear when he stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator, and so did Ben Song. They are both now lost in time, in every sense of the word, their bodies merging with those they possess. Naturally, this raises a lot more questions about how this works; but those are frankly better ignored. A TV show is a story, not a treatise in quantum mechanics.
Meanwhile, Quantum Leap has made Sam's disappearance even more mysterious by hinting it was programmed (or mis-programmed, perhaps) into the supercomputer Ziggy, rather than ordained by some cosmic being - as implied in the original show's finale. This raises the question of just what happened to Sam after Ziggy was switched off; it's impossible to say whether he continued leaping, or whether he wound up trapped in a single body, his adventures at an end. Hopefully, Quantum Leap will also answer that particular mystery.
Episodes of Quantum Leap release on NBC on Mondays at 10 PM ET. Episodes are available for exclusive streaming on Peacock the next day.