Early this year, we learned that NBC was moving ahead with a pilot for a reboot of Quantum Leap, a TV show that you’ve either been quietly obsessed with for 30 years or have possibly never seen or heard of. You either love it or you don’t know what it is, those are the two options. Anyway, if you’re in the “love it” camp, the excitement of the news was deflated somewhat by the fact that original star Scott Bakula is reportedly not involved and original co-star Dean Stockwell died late last year.
But perhaps here’s some news that can smooth over those rough bits: Deadline says Ernie Hudson has joined the cast of the new Quantum Leap as Herbert “Magic” Williams, “a Vietnam veteran and head of the time travel project at Quantum Leap.” Raymond Lee is starring in the show as Dr. Ben Seong, a “world-renowned physicist” working on a time travel project “who gets stuck in the late 1980s with amnesia after using the technology.” Hudson’s character will be the guy hanging out back in the present day, keeping overzealous government inspectors at bay while Dr. Ben travels through time.
That’s a… different take from the original, but it does sound like the events of the original series did happen in this new one, and the Quantum Leap project is being rebooted 30 years after the mysterious disappearance of Bakula’s Dr. Sam Beckett. That means, should this survive past the pilot stage, there could someday be some justice for Sam Beckett—who, spoiler alert, ended the original series still lost in time, never to return.
The new series is coming from Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, currently lighting up the network TV charts with the similarly time-twisty La Brea. Original creator Donald P. Bellisario is involved in some way, though it might just be a producer credit.