Manifest- Show Review and Ending Explained
So... what did happen to that plane?
Manifest fans have gathered around the Twitter hashtag #SaveManifest and taken advantage of Netflix’s “Top 10” algorithm by constantly streaming the show in order to push it to the front page of the streaming giant garnering tons of attention for their beloved, now canceled, series so… I watched it. If they’re that passionate, it has to be great right?
If you’re here for how I think the show was supposed to end, go ahead and skip down to the last section.
Manifest has what I consider to be a pretty interesting premise for its story. A bunch of people get on a plane at the end of a vacation, returning to New York from Jamaica. It’s a fairly standard flight but they hit some rough turbulence in the air and then are asked to deplane on the tarmac where they are all informed that five and a half years have passed by since their plane took off. Chaos ensues.
I was interested in the ads for the show when it initially came out on NBC but it was on cable and I don’t have cable so I knew I definitely wasn’t going to be watching. Now it’s on Netflix and trending at #1 at my time of writing and that premise always stuck with me so I decided to check it out and see if the question is answered, what happened to that plane? I’m going to start by talking generally and giving a spoiler-free review before getting into spoilers and ultimately explaining where I think the show was supposed to end up before its unfortunate cancelation.
The writers start off handling things really well. The mystery of what exactly happened to the passengers ends up taking a backseat to a lot of the interpersonal drama of the cast but it’s interesting enough that I didn’t mind. Michaela, who was just proposed to, comes home to find her life destroyed. Her fiancé is now married to her best friend and her mother has passed away. Re-entering society is extremely difficult in her case as she doesn’t really have any place to go. Her brother Ben comes home to a wife that’s moved on and is seeing someone else but she decides to hide this fact from him.
It’s not all bad news though, Ben’s son Cal has cancer and was on the plane, research has continued the five and a half years they’ve been gone and now he has a new shot at treatment that may save his life. For many of the other passengers, “old sins” are now forgiven, but it’s gripping to watch them struggle with this as they’re constantly told “don’t worry about it, that was years ago,” while from their perspective it was mere days ago. It’s interesting watching these interactions play out and wondering what I would do in these situations or what I would be able to do. It’s a strange and unique setup, for example, having a character come home to a family that’s moved on without them and no one has done anything wrong, no one’s been unfaithful and dad didn’t leave of his own accord, but here we are in this mess of emotions.
The main story involves the people I’ve mentioned above, Michaela, Ben, Cal and the Stone family but there are a few other passengers that become more mainstay for the show and move the story along as the viewer is introduced to these character’s own unique struggles readapting to life. Each passenger tries to find their own way to grapple with things no one else understands. Some are homeless, some think they’re going insane, some form cults and others just want to be left alone to pretend nothing has happened at all. All differences aside however, all the passengers share this unique and traumatic experience and this leads many of them to form a sort of loosely defined family with each other.
As I said, what actually happened to the plane often takes a bit of a backseat but there’s more, many passengers have also begun to experience visions and urges (called “callings”) to do things they can’t explain. Some are fairly innocuous such as “go here,” a calling that often sees a character merely observing something important but other callings are more involved. Very shortly into the story Michaela and Ben are called to commit a crime and thus are forced to grapple their morality against these newly found voices they hear, or maybe they’re all just crazy, no one is quite sure.
Shadowy government figures get involved and the result is a pretty thrilling show that sometimes gets a bit too far into the weeds. At times, puzzle pieces are added to the story for today’s mystery and then conveniently vanish when their usefulness has ended. I can forgive this to a small extent but it, too often, extends to major named characters that just fade away and it’s a big ask to just get me to go along with that. It doesn’t ruin the show for me but it definitely could for some and I’d understand.
I’ll get more into that in my more spoiler filled section below but if you don’t want to read that then my quick summary is that it’s a fun show and I’d definitely recommend it if you like mystery or drama, but as the show has unfortunately been canceled, you may not ever get answers to the shows many fascinating questions and even if it hadn’t been canceled, I’m still not sure the writers honestly have those answers for you. Like any giant mystery story, the more the mystery grows, the less satisfying any one answer becomes and the more distracted we get. Tons of religions and mythologies have come into play in a mish mash of clue solving as the sci-fi elements get cranked up and over time the story threatens to buckle under the ridiculous weight of the overarching mystery.
At the moment I can’t think of many ways the writers could present to just explain it all and make a happy ending but, they also weren’t planning on doing that for 3 more whole seasons so I can’t blame them I suppose. I’ll continue to enjoy the character drama if we get more of the show and if not, it was fun while it lasted. Fans keep hoping while conflicting sources debate how likely the saving is, with Netflix maybe or maybe not being interested depending on who you believe. The creator has also floated the possibility of a 2-hour film to wrap it all up with a neat bow as a more likely possibility. I’m not sure a film would do it justice granted the original plan was for a story that lasted 6 seasons but whatever the case I appreciate the story so far for what it is and I’m going to get more into the details with the spoilers below. If you’ve become interested, I’d encourage you to go watch the show and then come back to read my thoughts. I hope you enjoy the flight.
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Season 1-
So, starting with Season 1, I really do enjoy the show and I didn’t have much of an issue going along with even the more out there ideas as they often find their way to wrap back around to the plane mystery at the root of the plot. The Stone family are all pretty interesting to me and I really enjoyed exploring all their unique struggles. I found myself very invested in the relationship drama and was holding my breath as confrontations came and went. It all felt consistent and cohesive until about episode 12 and the appearance of Zeke.
Zeke’s backstory as revealed in Episode 13, is that he went hiking in the mountains where a blizzard happened and he fell down into a cave. He was snowed in for two weeks before he emerged to find out a whole year had passed, very similar to the passengers from the plane, callings and all. This is where I first felt like things were threatening to go off the rails. The most interesting thing Manifest has going for it is the initial plot of flight 828, the time traveling plane. With the addition of Zeke to the show, I wasn’t sure where they were going with this anymore.
The bedrock of the story is the plane disappearance and the interpersonal drama of how people deal with that, the passengers, their loved ones and the world at large, introducing more people into the equation who have had similar experiences with the same new abilities, without being on the plane, really detracted from the mystery of the plane for me. Before this, my theories contained things like: aliens, divine intervention, government experimentation and wormholes in time. With the addition of Zeke, none of these things seemed as probable anymore, the plane went from a once in a lifetime impossibility to a weather-related event blamed on black lightning? (A real phenomenon apparently, minus the time travel.) Matt Long did great in his portrayal of Zeke, but his addition threatened to undermine the whole concept of the show.
They then continue on to introduce Griffin, a criminal who also goes missing and turns up days later with the same callings as the passengers of the plane and Zeke. He (thankfully) doesn’t even seem to have the lightning to blame it on and the main cast starts to wonder if maybe there’s not some benevolent force behind the callings and their second chances at life. By this point I was attached to the characters so I knew I’d continue but I was feeling like the writers were priming me over time to accept a less exciting answer to this plane mystery. The characters ultimately conclude Griffon’s purpose and quick demise was to show them what happens if the callings are ignored but I find myself wondering if the writers just realized this was a bad direction for the show, at least until they did it again with three more criminals in season 3.
In my above section, I mentioned writing out major characters and ditching pieces of the puzzle once they’d concluded their usefulness. A mid-season plot line involves discovering several abducted passengers who disappeared after the flight, mostly people with no family who wouldn’t be missed and the government seems to be at fault. This gives us a fascinating character in the NSA operative Vance who is a great foil to Ben. I loved the juxtaposition of Vance’s levelheaded approach against Ben’s brash and chaotic nature. Vance diligently examines a problem from all angles before deciding on the best course of action and by the time he’s done, Ben has already charged in and is mucking things up while still somehow making progress through determination and sheer force of will.
Our heroes save the passengers together, after finally teaming up with Vance. Another passenger named Fiona, conveniently happens to have a friend with a beach house to keep all these rescued passengers at and they all remain catatonic, in a sort of trance, that keeps them motionless. It’s really strange to me that they saved more than 10 additional people and then essentially put them in a prop closet to draw from later on if the plot calls for it and by the end of season 3, it never does. Only one of them ever wakes up and he has no memory. Michela helps him realize he was a wife beater, which horrifies him, then she stomps out and none of those people are ever seen or mentioned again, just filed away back to the magical beach house prop closet they live in now and this sadly does become a pattern.
In the same vein, Ben steals confidential data from his workplace to try to get a leg up on what sinister acts the government is planning for the passengers. The suspense grows and grows as he gets closer to being discovered until finally, he is. The company sends some intimidating looking lawyers to Ben’s house who evaporate as soon as it’s convenient for them to do so. It’s never brought up again and Ben faces no consequences from any of these actions and it’d be so easy to explain away, “the NSA made it go away.” That’s all you’d need, one throwaway line about Ben owing Vance another favor but the writers sadly don’t bother.
Now as season 1 drew to a close, I was still invested but the show had changed. As we get further removed from the plane trip, I worried the show seemed to be trending more towards any other show about people having visions and doing things because of them, you know, the dime a dozen shows you see advertised and you think to yourself “why would I ever go out of my way to watch that?” The original mystery of the plane was being diluted by all these other special “returned” people and the shadowy government plot line also began feeling less intriguing after the mysterious figure known only as “the major,” who is behind much of our character’s strife, is unceremoniously revealed to be a woman we don’t know anything about. A mystery villain can be really cool when done well but adding a face and showing her point of view while at the same time keeping the viewer in the dark on her exact motives and desires felt a bit clumsy.
Manifest Season 1 is still worth the watch if you like drama and mystery but I was growing skeptical of the answers I assumed we’d eventually get. As time went by, I felt less and less like the writers had an end point in mind. I couldn’t help but think of all my friends who watched the show Lost, another compelling mystery with (as I’m told,) no real ending answer ever given or seemingly ever considered along the way. I was hoping Manifest would be different but if not, I was still mostly enjoying the ride and happy to continue to Season 2.
Season 2-
As Season 2 began I realized the show morphed at some point from being about the plane and dealing with that, to dealing with the death date, the inevitable demise of the passengers at the end of the time period they disappeared. In other words, they disappeared with the plane for five and half years, at the end of five and a half years being back, they will inevitably pass away, so say the mystical forces at play. The greater focus on the death date feels like an odd transition into a concept more akin to the show My Name is Earl, where someone has to make amends with those they’ve wronged in life before their time is up. It felt like this is where the show was going, Ben and Michaela are going to run around helping passengers one by one, to repair their misdeeds from life and find closure so they can die without regret when the allotted time comes.
I think this would’ve been a fine direction for the show, accepting that the passengers died on the plane but were saved by some sort of divine intervention to come back and right old wrongs, knowing death will come soon. To me that sounds like the potential of a pretty beautiful story but of course we can’t stay on just one plot trajectory.
Episode 10 of Season 2 put a massive bow on so many of the plot lines, I almost feel like it could’ve ended here. The X-ers who hate the passengers, the Stone’s new baby, Adrian’s cult-like church, the drama between Jared and Michaela, it all gets capped off pretty nicely. It didn’t answer the original plane question but nearly all the character drama is resolved at this point and I did consider stopping here because of that. Even now having finished the show, this point still seems like the best resolution you’re going to get for characters and if you want to treat it like My Name is Earl, the list of wrongs that need righting, sort of end here as far as the viewer is aware. The writers of course allude to these shadowy figures to keep things going and try to put the viewer on some sort of cliffhanger again but this is a stretch for me. If you’re seeking resolution of the plot from official sources, this may be where you should end the show.
On the topic of those shadowy figures; Ben’s son Cal, at the very beginning of the show does a drawing (a method often used to show his callings to others), that contains a portrait of their family with a shadow over the shoulder of his mom, Grace. This figure was clearly always meant to be Danny, Grace’s “other man.” Trying to allude to more sinister undertones now implied by the drawing as if they were always there, felt hamfisted to me and like they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner resolving so much, there wasn’t any unresolved tension to go back and pull from so they just created some that works only if you squint real hard.
I also got annoyed, because I liked Danny and I’m wondering when or if he’ll ever be back. I’m betting on never at this point. He’ll just be filed away into the same prop closet as those passengers saved from the Major, never again to see the light of day. He was extremely important to Cal’s sister Olive as essentially her step-father who she cared about and relied on and I liked that dynamic. Real families are complicated and having Danny as part of the family made the Stone’s seem more real but I guess Olive just forgot about him like I’m supposed to, to make these new shadow figures work.
“Everything is connected,” the characters in the show often say. It feels like there’s now an implied, “except the things we weren’t able to connect, try not to think about those please.”
The season continues and we deal with the three shadow criminals but I just couldn’t bring myself to care about them much. That whole plot line felt like filler to me and I was glad for that bit to be over and for the season to end on the best cliffhanger yet- fisherman out in the ocean, accidentally hauling up the tailfin of the magical 828 plane. That blew me away and served to refocus attention on the initial mystery I started this whole thing for.
Season 3-
This brings us to Season 3, the final season for the time being and things continue to go off the rails for the first half of this season. We get the three shadow men who, like Griffin, also come back from the dead to teach the passengers a lesson and that lesson is that they all sink or float together. Not just death, but a judgement is coming at the end of the five-and-a-half-year period and all passengers must pass or fail together. This revelation, despite coming from a place I didn’t like, set the show back on course. The death date and righting wrongs is still important but now there’s also a renewed focus on the plane mystery and the fate of all the other passengers (except the people still at that beach house apparently.)
Vance, having made his triumphant return after faking his own death, gets into some insane antics with Ben that I really enjoyed and this is when the show feels it’s at its strongest. Solving mysteries with Ben and Vance while Michaela does cop things and worries about her conflicting loves, Zeke and Jared. The evil character prop closet also makes its return though as TJ, one of our mainstay mystery solvers and love interest to Olive Stone, simply ceases to exist. Olive finds new love and starts dating someone else while never breaking up with TJ, he just left for a trip to study in Egypt and no one remembers his existence anymore. They talked about breaking up before he left, but when Tj’s last words to Olive are assuring her that he’s only leaving to help solve this mystery and be able to spend a lifetime with her, it doesn’t really feel like a break up. He lived with the Stone family for weeks and saved Olive’s life for crying out loud, yet neither of the Stone parents question Olive seemingly cheating on him. There’s no tension there at all, no regret or conflicted feelings, it really is like he just doesn’t exist anymore.
That brings us to the last story arc, Noah’s Ark and the tail fin of flight 828. There are microscopic similarities between the plane and the samples from Noah’s Ark and the government is actually leaning towards divine intervention being the most plausible answer to all of this, which I thought was a pretty interesting way to take things. At first, they want to use this data to artificially create miracles but an onslaught of unexplainable earth quakes and several miracle signs later, many in the government come to agree that this research shouldn’t be happening so they send the tailfin back where it belongs, to the bottom of the ocean.
The tail fin plot line is super cool as is the NSA facility and that’s pretty much where we get left. If nothing is ever resolved though, we still have enough to put some pieces together so I’m going to do my best to sum the ending up for you here. I’m basing all this on where things seemed to be headed while also taking into account story telling patterns from the show both good and bad.
The Ending?-
In our hypothetical Season 4, Vance and Gupta lose their jobs for having faith in God and the passengers and choosing them “over their country.” Gupta is never seen again and disappears into the magical prop closet without a real sendoff. The government is also super upset about the rest of the plane disappearing with Daly but we don’t talk about that as much as you’d think, that was just to make you interested in Season 4 and to let Daly somehow rejoin the show to be redeemed. Jared breaks up with Sarah off screen and Olive’s new boyfriend makes his exit into the character closet to disappear and not be talked about again. Speaking of the character closet, the people in tubes in the governments lab also probably don’t come back after this point. We can assume they’re still there but with Vance, Gupta and Saanvi all being ousted, the audience doesn’t have a way to see them again.
Angelina has absconded with Eden and the first half of Season 4 just focuses on getting her back and mourning the loss of Grace. People are shocked by older Cal but move on surprisingly quickly as he becomes a regular part of the show. Eagan and Adrian continue their war on the government but it doesn’t ramp up until we get Eden back in the midseason finale of Season 4. The government verses the passengers plot line begins in earnest after Ben stops himself from killing Angelina, probably because a calling tells him not to. Ben gets help from an unlikely source, probably Adrian having a change of heart and coming to save the day. Angelina is ultimately arrested by Jared who got involved, despite angrily saying for the umpteenth time that he wouldn’t. The government uses the excuse of Angelina’s insanity and Eagan’s now borderline terroristic actions to begin fully cracking down on the passengers. The Season ends on a cliffhanger of Daly reemerging again in the wreckage of the plane with Ben and Michaela’s mom or something because he’s “been to the other side.”
I’m mostly joking about that last part, but you never know.
Eventually the passengers flee the cities and live mostly together as fugitives in the countryside being hunted by the government, aided by some mysterious resources from the now retired Vance who still has connections and old loyalties from his men. Zeke sacrifices his life to save Michaela in some sort of confrontation and somehow the image of them holding hands that was drawn up in the mountains now means that “this is how it was always supposed to be,” as Zeke puts it as he dies.
Michaela is heartbroken but now she is free to be with Jared, guilt free… but there’s a catch. Someone is hinted at returning from Jared’s past and she does for a mid-season finale, Sarah. You’d think it’d be Lourdes since she’s technically still his wife or something but no, Lourdes is gone to the character closet and doesn’t exist anymore. Sarah demands to know why he left so fast and Jared doesn’t have the heart to lie to her anymore so he arranges for a sit-down with Saanvi. Saanvi spills her guts to Sarah and tells her everything her mom did as the Major, Sarah is irate but eventually calms down and understands. She forgives Saanvi as they finally find closure together.
Some more dramatic things happen I’m sure but eventually we get to the end of the final season. The passengers have been struggling between hiding from the government and aiding regular people with callings as the death date rapidly approaches. All the passengers make their peace and say their goodbyes as a somber song plays, just in case they don’t pass the final judgment.
As the death date arrives, no callings happen until the time the flight actually disappeared. All passengers, both living and dead, appear together in a final calling as, a figure that seems to be God talks to them. Zeke is there at his side because he was actually an angel the whole time… or something. TJ probably still isn’t there but maybe the studio would’ve gone all out on the budget to make sure literally every passenger is present and seen. Cal stands at the front, leading the passengers and God asks if they ever were able to understand why they were returned to Earth after their death on the plane. Cal explains that it was to show miracles still exist and to be a beacon of hope for humanity at a small level, helping individuals to live better lives, thus creating a ripple effect and adjusting humanity back on the right course. Satisfied with that answer, God returns them all back to Earth, having beaten the death date. People like Angelina and Eagan don’t drag the “lifeboat” down, despite Ben’s worries, because they’re in jail and justice has been done.
We cut to a wedding, Michaela and Jared show up wearing nice clothes and you’re led to believe it’s theirs but it’s actually the wedding of Ben and Saanvi, surprise! (Saanvi implied she had a thing for him in one of her therapy sessions.) We then are allowed to see the rings Michela and Jared are wearing, implying they got together too. After the death date passed, the genetic marker disappeared in the passengers and all the callings ceased so the government just lost interest in the ones who weren’t already in jail so we all live happily ever after. The end.
Maybe none of that is right, I don’t have a leak or anything. I’m just blindly fumbling my way to an ending, piecing together things when I can, but that’s kind of how the show feels at times so maybe I’m not too far off.
I know it’s not as good as an official ending but maybe my interpretation was the peace you needed, if not, let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear more theories about how the show might have ended because, despite its flaws I really enjoyed the ride and I’ll be keeping an eye out for what the actors and creators do next.