Ben leaps into a host facing a man describing with great intensity a heist that will involve killing everyone in the target site.

Suddenly he laughs and comments he’s not too bad for a former TV star whose best days are behind him. Ben realizes they’re on a backlot of a studio and the man was rehearsing lines for an audition.

He recognizes the actor as Neal Russell. He’s a huge fan and tells him so. Russell tells Ben, addressing him as Summer, that even though the agency likes PAs to be buttoned up and all-business, he wants her to feel free to speak to him without filters.

Ben sees his reflection and checks his ID. He is a female personal assistant with Talented Artists Agency named Summer Walsh.

Ben catches up with Neal and tells him which of his movies is his favorite and also mentions that his ex’s favorite is the one where Neal plays his own twin brother.

At QL HQ, Magic is welcoming the staff back and introducing them to Tom Westfall as the the man responsible for getting Project Quantum Leap going again. He describes Tom as a senior official at the Pentagon’s Defence Innovation Unit.

Tom addresses the team. He explains he needs to conduct an audit of the program. His next task is to make sure no one ever shuts the program down again.

As everyone gets to work, Tom pulls Ian aside and asks about the energy spikes the program produces. Ian explains searching for Ben after each leap requires a lot of energy. Tom asks Ian to look into the most recent spikes because they’re much bigger than they were three years ago.

Addison arrives and is very excited that Ben gets to hang out with Neal. Ben asks if he’s here to prevent the accident where Neal disappears. He’s arrived on April 4, 2000, the day Neal is meant to appear on the Tonight Show. In the original timeline, he cancels and sails to Catalina, but his boat is found adrift the next day.

Ben recalls Neal’s body washes up on shore a week later.

Neal calls Ben over to take a picture with some fans. Ben has some of Neal’s mail with him. After he gives it to him, Neal goes to get another espresso. Addison runs through Summer’s expenses the day she lost track of Neal and realizes that Neal ditches Summer by going to get the espresso. Ben runs inside and finds the mail on a table.

They discover one of the pieces of mail is a wedding invitation to Neal’s ex-wife’s wedding which is happening that day. Ben needs to stop him from going to the wedding.

Addison steps out of the imaging chamber and finds Tom conferring with a team member.

She realizes he was watching her in the leap which makes things awkward. He defuses the tension by commenting how great the hologram is.

Addison passes Ian as she’s leaving. Ian’s very distracted by their work. They find something and makes a call to Rachel, once their ex, now they call her “honey”. They ask her to lunch.

Addison catches up with Ben as he’s walking into the wedding venue. They reminisce for a moment about watching Neal Russell movies when they were both sick with the flu. The moment turns awkward.

Refocusing on the mission, Addison tells Ben the key is to get Neal to The Tonight Show because the appearance will relight his career.

As they approach the wedding site, they hear yelling. Neal’s ex-wife, Laura, and new husband-to-be, Michael, are upset. Michael goes to call the cops. When he’s gone, Neal begs Laura to give him another chance.

Ben stops Michael from attacking Neal with a samurai sword. Laura kicks them both out.

As they’re leaving, Neal expresses despair. He tells Ben/Summer to give Leno and The Tonight Show his regrets. He’s going to go sailing. Ben says he can’t do that because he needs to win Laura back.

Addison’s alarmed by the direction the conversation takes but it inspires Neal to make a grand gesture to win back Laura.

Rachel meets Ian for lunch. She senses that something’s wrong. Ian tells her that the chip her boss built for the Quantum Leap project has code that’s transmitting Ziggy’s code out of HQ and back to her boss.

She tries to comfort them in that Ziggy’s code is just AI code unless they finds Ben. Until then, her boss won’t know that Quantum Leap is about time travel. When Ian is quiet, she realizes that they found Ben and didn’t tell her. She considers that a betrayal. She leaves, saying that they might be sorry but they never changes.

In the car, Neal makes plans from the passenger side to win back Laura. Addison keeps telling Ben that this is making things worse. Ben asks Neal how he knows he’s doing the right thing, trying to get Laura back. Neal expresses that he lost his other half when he lost Laura and now he feels adrift and lost. Addison disappears. Ben finds out the last step in Neal’s plan is to steal his tuxedo from the World of Wax Museum.

Addison returns to HQ to confer with Tom. He advises that she let Ben lead the mission.

Magic brings a set of Neal’s memoirs to the team and decides they’re all going to read it to figure out Neal.

Ben and Neal are stealing the tuxedo from storage when the police bang on the door.

Addison returns to find Neal in handcuffs. Ziggy says the arrest makes it impossible for him to make the Tonight Show and he still dies.

She reminds Ben that he’s a Hollywood assistant. Ben reminds himself that he’s assisting Neal Russell. He talks the officer into letting Neal off with a warning in exchange for a future personal appearance.

At HQ, Jenn questions Ian about what’s going on with him while Tom and Magic find something in the memoir.

Jenn offers to build a firewall but it’s only a temporary fix.

Magic calls Ian and Jenn in to reveal that Neal had an early relationship thirty years previously with a woman, Patricia, who ended up marrying a man named Lambert. Some of the mail Ben gave Neal was returned from a publicist named Caroline Lambert, Patricia’s daughter who is now thirty years old. She’s Neal’s daughter.

Addison tells Ben about Caroline being Neal’s daughter. She thinks the leap is about connecting Neal with Caroline. Ben insists it’s about Laura. Addison lets slip that Tom helped piece together the Caroline factor. Finding out Tom is part of the project triggers Ben and he voices his rage that Addison moved on and didn’t wait for him.

With the team watching from HQ, Addison responds that when they decided to shut down Quantum Leap, she tried to jump into the accelerator in hopes it would take her to Ben. She tells him she delivered the eulogy at his funeral. She reminds him that he left her in the life they were supposed to have together.

Neal comes out and walks Ben to the car, refocusing him on the plan to win Laura back.

Ian finds Addison in Magic’s office. They tell her about what happened with Rachel and suggest that Ben’s not ready to deal with things yet.

Ben helps Neal sneak in to see Laura before she walks down the aisle. He makes a last grand gesture to convince her to take him back. Laura asks him if he’s okay because he seems lost and confusing his movies with reality.

Ben’s shocked the gesture doesn’t win Laura back. Addison returns. Laura tells Neal that they are not the people they once were and they can’t go back to being in love. She tells Neal he needs to move on and find a new dream to pursue.

She leaves to get married.

Ben turns to see Addison. He apologizes and she says there’s no need to apologies between them. Neal resigns himself to failing to win Laura back. He also refuses to go to The Tonight Show. He’s going to go sailing.

Magic checks in with Tom. Tom tells him how powerless he felt when his wife died and how he never thought he’d feel that way working with time travel. Magic empathizes.

Tom theorizes that the Quantum Leap is a one-way trip, fueled by the sacrifice of the leaper which pays the cost of righting history’s wrongs. He thinks this is the way to keep the lights on with the people in Washington.

Ben brings Neal to Caroline’s house instead of the marina. Neal has an emotional breakdown thinking about meeting his daughter for the first time after all these years.

Ben gives him a pep talk and Neal walks up to Caroline’s door and they embrace.

Addison informs him that Caroline gets Neal to The Tonight Show and the appearance revives his career. He goes on to make seven more movies and becomes a grandfather. When she slips up and comments that “they” get to watch more Neal Russell movies, Ben catches it and he tells her that Laura was right and he needs to give up the dream of the happy ending.

He doesn’t want to go on treating Addison badly because he’s upset about what’s happened to them. And he can’t get over her while she’s always with him. He tells her she can’t be his hologram guide anymore. He says goodbye and leaps.