Nate Ford Never Returned to the 'Leverage' Revival, but There's a Good Reason

Most people thought that after Leverage ended in December 2012, that would be it for the TNT heist series. The five-season dramedy thriller starred Timothy Hutton as Nate Ford, the leader of the five-person heist team we follow throughout the series. However, when Freevee brought back the cult classic in a 2021 revival, Leverage: Redemption, Timothy’s Nate was notably absent.

When Season 2 of Leverage: Redemption aired, Nate was once again no longer part of the team despite all of his teammates (and even his fiancée) returning. As Leverage fans prepare for Season 3, which will move to Prime Video alongside series like Jack Ryan and Reacher, we can’t help but wonder what happened to Nate on Leverage.

For those who remember the days before COVID-19, one movement’s ramifications are still reverberating. The #MeToo movement encouraged survivors of sexual assault and abuse to come forward as they took down many of the male predators whose presence in the cultural stratosphere has haunted them ever since. One such alleged predator was Tim Hutton, who played Nate in the OG Leverage.

Because of the allegations against Tim, the show’s writers and producers decided to definitively write him off of the show in the 2021 revival. They killed off Nate so that in the first episode of Leverage: Redemption, Sophie (Nate’s widow), revealed what happened. She hinted that he died of a heart attack the year before the events of the revival kicked off. Sophie shared that the grief Nate suffered after the loss of his son eventually took over and took his life.

In March 2020, after Leverage: Redemption had already been announced but before it went into production, Canadian actor and model Sera Johnston alleged that Tim assaulted her in 1983 when she was just 14 years old and he was 22. When she came forward, Tim’s project, Almost Family, was canceled, and he was dropped from Leverage: Redemption.

However, Tim denied the allegations and tried to settle the issue out of court so that it wouldn’t go public. But Sera decided to move forward with a case against him. Although authorities found no evidence against Tim and closed the case, his public image and career were still forever marred. In fact, Tim tried to sue his way back onto Leverage for unfair firing, but the production company, Electric Entertainment, won out in the end.

They claimed that he breached a moral clause in his contract by trying to first settle out of court to keep the claims quiet. And at that point, does anyone really want a work environment where someone had to sue their own boss to be there? That would only create more tension on set, taking away from the joy of acting and creating.

So it seems like Nate’s death was real, and Tim will likely not return to the franchise any time in the future.