Is this that alternate Quantum Leap ending we’ve been wondering about for 30 years?

Whether you were actually watching Quantum Leap on TV in the ‘80s or barely old enough to understand what they were saying (and got into it later), there is one question that still haunts fans in its 30th anniversary year: is there really an alternate ending where Sam comes home?

Spoiler: Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) never comes home. It isn’t just why he never does but whether he even could have that has been bothering fans for the past three decades. Seems like something always emerges on Reddit when a cinematic mystery is involved. The user Leaper1953 has now posted footage that is believed to be from that lost ending, which is also thought to have been a setup for a sixth season in which quirky project observer Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell) took off through time on a mission to rescue Sam.

Supposed evidence of this ending first started circulating on the internet last year when Quantum Leap-obsessed YouTuber Allison Pregler, aka Movie Nights, made a video about the photo negatives she’d unearthed on eBay that she was almost certain were from the fifth and final season of the show.

“The ending of Quantum Leap, that last title card, was a last minute decision,” she said in the video. “They didn’t know if they were going to be cancelled or they were going to keep going, so they had to come up with an ending that was both a conclusion and not.”

That certainly sounds like a plausible explanation for such an abrupt final episode. But. That trippy blue leaping effect at the very end, which is meant to bring Vietnam POW Al home to his first wife, still leaves the door of spacetime and story possibilities halfway open. Enter the footage on Reddit. Al is talking to his wife Beth about leaping through time himself to find Sam and bring him back to where — more like when — he belongs. You might want to turn up your volume for this, because it’s definitely not the HD Blu-ray quality stuff we’re all used to in 2019.

Now check it against what is thought to be the full script for the episode that never happened on the Quantum Leap archive Al’s Place. Sure, there are a few differences in the part of the script that plays out on the clip, but you have to admit that’s creepy.

Pregler (who freaked out about the video on Twitter) and Redditors noted how producer Donald Bellisario previously denied the footage is even real, but what you just saw is probably going to make you question that. It’s floating out there in the vast cosmos of the interwebs for those who keep believing Sam can finally come home.

Can we get a revival already?

SYFY WIRE reached out to Donald Bellisario, Allison Pregler and Leaper1953 for confirmation, but as of yet has received no response.

(via Reddit)