Sam says: “I’d like to go home. But I can’t. I’ve got a wrong to put right, first.” That implies that after he helps Beth and Al, he will then leap home, even if is only a “sabbatical” as suggested by the bartender.
But there were two sort-of endings, there.
In one of the last episodes he discovers that he was an FBI agent trying to unveil the conspiracy. Because the conspirators didn’t knew where he hid the evidence, they erased his memory and made the whole set-upso he would piece the puzzle together and find it for them.
Then, in another episode, he goes undercover in a training camp for conspiracy hopefuls. There he’s restrained by some sargeant guy that respectfully thanks him for the sacrifice he decided to make before attempting to kill him, with the implication that he himself was a conspiracy leader, and had his own memory jumbled just to make sure that the whole thing was safe even from a resourceful lone individual trying to expose everything.
I don’t believe they did. And didn’t that one end on a cliffhanger of its own, with Mykelti Williamson’s character in a possible plane crash or something?
That was my understanding as well. He was still immortal, hence she wasn’t his ONE TRUE LOVEtm
Until proven wrong, I’m going with gang bang. :eek: 
I got the impression that by changing that particular history, Sam was never able to get back home. Kind of a variation on the Grandfather Paradox
Agreed. This one made me sick.
When I get really, really deep into my cups about the QL finale, this is the conclusion I come to, as well. Al was who he was when Sam met him because, in large part, of what happened to his marriage with Beth.
Fix that and Al isn’t the Al Sam meets the first time around, drunkenly assaulting a vending machine at Project Starbright. They might not even meet at all. No Sam + Al = no Project Quantum Leap, that much is clear.
No Project Quantum Leap, no first trial, no “went a little ka-ka,” and Sam is no longer a time traveller, but essentially now a angel, free to go wherever he is needed to set right whatever is needed.
Whether or not Angela finally hooks up with Brian on My So-Called Life.
Oh, me too. Grrrr.
And I don’t like season 5 because of Byron. Just shoot him already.
That was the one that I came in to mention. While I’m grateful that Wikipedia was invented to supply the answer, it’s too late to matter.