Series Finale:     
Episode 96 — Mirror Image
Sam leaps into a bar in Cokeburg, Pennsylvania. After purchasing a beer, he’s shocked to see his own reflection in the mirror. He is himself and has leapt to the date (August 8, 1953) and minute of his birth. He meets people who look like people from his past leaps but they have different names. Al the bartender (guest Bruce McGill) seems to know all about Sam’s mission and his actual identity.

Meanwhile, in the future, Al and Gooshie (guest Dennis Wolfberg) are shocked that no one is in the waiting room. They try to find a way to locate Sam. Later, Gooshie tells Al that they should be able to find Sam’s location in about a month. Al gets very upset and Gooshie tells him they should be able to do it in two and a half weeks of Al using Ziggy in the Imaging Chamber. Al gets into the chamber and they begin their search.

While Sam tries to figure out what’s going on, there’s an accident in a local coal mine. There are two trapped miners and he ultimately helps save them. Another man who helped save them disappears and no one but Sam remembered that he was there. It turns out that the man Sam had seen was actually someone who had died 20 years earlier.

In the Imaging Chamber, Al is getting disoriented and for some reason knows they need to start searching Sam’s birthdays. They do but have no luck. Exhausted, Al realizes that they searched his birthdays but missed the date of Sam’s birth. He goes back to the Imaging Chamber.

Al the bartender helps Sam remember that he built Project Quantum Leap because he wanted to help right the wrongs in history, but not one life at a time. The bartender tells him he’s affected far more than a few lives and can help a lot more. He’ll only continue leaping as long as he wants to do so. Sam thinks the bartender has been sending him through time but is told that he himself has the power to control his leaps.

Sam replies that he only wants to go home but can’t because he doesn’t control his own future. The bartender tells him that he can go anywhere he wants and can go home once he accepts that he controls his own destiny.

Al finally finds Sam in the bar and they talk outside. Sam tries to explain his revelations and Al starts to think he’s lost his marbles. The dead man who seemed to leap sounds exactly like Al’s own uncle of the same name. Concerned for his friend, Al says that he’ll find a way to get Sam out of there and returns to the Imaging Chamber.

The bartender comes outside and talks to Sam some more. He asks Sam that, if he had been a priest, wouldn’t he be responsible for the life he led? Sam notes that even priests can quit their jobs. The bartender notes they can take sabbaticals too, especially before embarking on a difficult new assignment. The bartender asks Sam where he’d like to leap next and Sam tells him that he wants to return home but wants to first fix something in Al’s past. Before he leaps, the bartender puts his arm around him and says, “God bless, Sam.”

[In the “M.I.A. episode of season two, we learned that Al became a womanizer because his first marriage ended sadly. He was a prisoner of war during Vietnam and was believed to be dead. His wife, Beth (guest Susan Diol), waited for him to come home but ultimately came to believe that Al had indeed died. When Al was finally returned home, the love of his life had remarried.]

In the series finale’s final moments, Sam transports back to Beth’s home in 1969. She’s scared but Sam tells her that he’s a friend of Al’s and that Al will come home. She cries tears of joy and a picture, which had originally shown a Vietnam-era picture of Al, is flooded by the blue light of leaping.

Text on the screen tells us, “Beth never remarried. She and Al have four daughters and will celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary in June. Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.” We are then shown an image of Sam and Al in front of the diner. The credits roll over a vintage picture of a man with a young boy, standing in front of a biplane. A somber version of the theme music plays.
First aired: May 5, 1993.