Neil Walters is a character who appears in the Season Five episode of Quantum Leap titled "Promised Land". The part of Neil is played in the episode by Dwier Brown.
About Neil[]
When Sam leaps into a young man from his hometown in 1971 named Willie Walters, Jr., who attended the same high school as he, and whose family were farmers like his dad, he finds himself in a harrowing situation to say the least, with a gun in his hand and a cloth tightened around his lower face, as he, along with brothers Neil, and John, are attempting to hold up the local bank, as response to the continual refusal of the bank's manager, Gus Vernon (Jonathan Hogan) to listen to their pleas for more time to pay off the loan.
Neil, who is the eldest of the brothers, is described by Al as a sort of "loose cannon", at times not being able to control his temper, and he seems to be the domineering one, as he asserts his authority over his two younger brothers, particularly John, who's still in high school, and frightened at the elder's proposal to hold up the bank if not, for any other reason, to make a defiant statement of the plight of his family's and other farming families in the area who are facing forclosure proceedings at the hands of the bank. Neil, who had served in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1969, but was forced to accept a hardship discharge when his father, Willie, Sr. died a year later, sometime in 1970, as he took charge of the family farm until the foreclosure proceedings had begun, as the family owed the town bank a total of $37,983.13.
Sam finds himself in very tense situation, as he must try to find a way to keep his brothers, Neil and John, as well as himself, from getting killed in the standoff with the local police, with whom he tries to negotiate a safe surrender for he and the brothers, as an alarm is raised as the police are surrounding the bank. The brothers are forced to hold the three tellers and a couple of elderly clients as hostages.
When Sam decides that me must find a way to leave the bank covertly by getting one of the tellers, who's pregnant, to act as if she was in labor in order sneak out of the back of the bank while the police in front of the bank unaware, Neil balks at the plan, as Sam get to his truck and drive to Gus's home to retrieve the paperwork that would uncover the plan of the bank to give bad high risk loans to these farmers who could not possibly ever be able to pay back as a means to foreclose on them easily in clearing the way for a deal that the bank manager Gus, on part of the bank, had with local area land developers who planned to build a big shopping mall in the area of the farmers' properties.
After Sam is able to return sefely to the bank with the papers he was looking for after being confronted by and then punching out Gus, who returns home to see him there going through his files, Neil, who said to Sam that he didn't believe he was coming back, has made another big mistake in accidentally shooting brother John after the husband of an employee at the bank broke in, also armed with a shotgun, trying to rescue his wife. There, to Sam, he admits to "being a failure" in not living up to their father's expactations, as Sam tries to comfort him in telling him that when their dad needed him, he was there, where as Sam's leapee, Willie, couldn't be while he was away at college, as Sam finally gets he and John to surrender to the police.
Al reports to Sam thru Ziggy that while Neil's brothers, leapee Willie and John, only got probation for their role in the bank robbery attempt, Neil wound up getting sentenced to 5 years in prison until he's released, then winds up drifting around for atime before he's shot in New Orleans in 1977 while attempting to rob another bank there. Sam wonderding why his mission was to save Neil, along with his brothers, Al says "Well, not all endings can be happy ones."