Manifest Season 4 has officially taken flight, which means I can finally say… We’re back, Manifesters! Wow, that felt really good.
After more than a year of turbulence (NBC canceled the show, Netflix picked it up, COVID protocols made filming difficult, etc), we finally have new episodes to nose-dive into. (The puns, I just can’t stop.)
Manifest Season 4 Episode 1 kicks off with a two-and-a-half-year time jump, and it’s not really the show we remember, which makes sense considering the dramatic and traumatic events of the season 3 finale.
For starters, Cal is now a teenager who is using a fake identity so that people don’t ask questions about his rapid aging. To the world, he’s Gabriel, a cousin of the Stone family. I’d like to point out that Gabriel is also a name inspired by the Bible. In fact, it’s the name of one of the guardian angels, which has been a running theme in the series. Cal has also been identified as the “Holy Grail” and returned from wherever he was knowing what he had to accomplish, though, I have no idea if that means anything at this point. For now, it’s just a fancy observation.
Everything we’ve come to know about the series is different. The 828’ers are on a government registry and required to check in, which means that no one can actually have a quality life or even hold down a job. Mick is no longer a cop, while Ben, well, he’s kind of a mess. Nope, scratch that, he’s in a really bad place, which is kind of to be expected given the hell on earth that he went through. On the other hand, it’s kind of surprising given how much time has passed since the incident. This is a man that isn’t giving up, and while it may not be ideal for others, you have to admire the commitment.
When we see the first shot of him, the first that comes to mind is that he’s a homeless man living out of his car, but it turns out, Ben has just stopped caring about anything other than finding Eden. He spends his days hanging up missing posters around town looking for his little girl, who, as you probably recall, was kidnapped by Angelina in the season 3 finale.
Grace’s death has also taken a toll on him. When she died, a piece of him did as well. Grace was his everything, so grieving her was not easy. And while the rest of the family thinks that his fixation on finding his daughter isn’t healthy, Ben can’t give up because it’s the only thing holding him together.
It’s incredibly heartbreaking to see the pain Angelina caused. I’m glad the series bypassed the aftermath of Grace’s stabbing and Eden’s kidnapping instead of picking up with it since too much time has passed since the last season, but it’s also nice to see flashbacks to that night to see what transpired and how we got to this moment with Ben’s downward spiral.
Two years is a long time, so understandably, a lot happened in that window that needs to be tapped into so that fans can understand the present-day mindset of the characters. It also helps us understand all the painful emotions that have been festering.
Olive blamed Cal, in his now-adult body, and for a long time, Cal blamed himself for letting Angelina back into their lives. Thankfully, it seems that they’ve made up and gotten past it. While he’s not straightforward about it, Ben definitely resents Cal a bit for what happened, and it’s unfortunate that he’s not prioritizing the family he still has. He seems to have pushed away all the other people he loves as he’s consumed with the profound loss, which can often blind people to the goodness that’s still there.
Zeke has taken on a more significant responsibility since someone has to pay the bills and keep things moving along smoothly, but his powers of empathy also take a lot out of him as he seems to absorb everyone’s pain. He’s doing the lord’s work, one might say, but it definitely isn’t easy, which concerns me given his history.
The Callings are also back—and seemingly more realistic and intense than ever.
The episode kicks off with an Asian man being experimented on before he begins to glow and the burst of light hurts everyone around him. He walks out of captivity into a field of cherry blossoms, and it’s absolutely no coincidence that Mick wakes up to the sight of cherry blossoms.
It’s a Calling—one that leads her to a port where she finds the very man inside of a shipping container with Stone 828 etched into his skin. She brings him to Vance’s new headquarters with a pretty dang impressive view where they immediately recognize him as Henry Kim, an official believed to be executed by the Singaporean government, who was being used as a test subject. (In case you forgot, Kim returned to Singapore in Season 3 and was detained, and when Mick learns of his death from Captain Kate Bowers, it leads her to quit her job.)
With Ben incapacitated, it seems as though Mick has taken charge of the Lifeboat, but in a surprising twist, the Stone family member that Henry is looking for is actually Cal. When he eventually connects with the boy, he informs them that they need to get the box he brought for him. And this isn’t just any old box… Kim is referring to the black box from Flight 828.
Of course, this connects back to Eureka—Vance’s experimental warehouse that housed the rebuilt Flight 828 before it *poof* disappeared, with Captain Daly, the moment that Grace was murdered. The black box shouldn’t be here, let alone in China, but it somehow resurfaced, and that doesn’t seem like much of a coincidence either.
Saanvi, who has ignored every single person telling her that she’s wasting her time rewatching the disappearance footage for clues, is convinced the black box wants to deliver a message, and when she hears Daley’s returned “help me” on the original recording from Flight 828, she’s even more convinced. Why would that sound bite be present on the box that recorded what happened during the original disappearance? It doesn’t make sense, but it sure as hell makes me want to keep watching to find out.
The thing about the 828’ers is that they are incredibly resilient and they don’t give up easily. Saanvi’s determined to find answers in the same way that Ben is determined to find his daughter.
When Jared hands Ben Eden’s death certificate—they never found the body but they did find Eden and Angelina’s prints on a bridge which lends itself to a murder-suicide situation—he refuses to believe that his daughter is dead. And when the certificate gets lifted by the wind, an indication that it’s a Calling, he goes to the windmill where he meets Anna, another passenger sharing the same Calling. Ben assumes that this will finally lead him to Eden, but unfortunately, he’s wrong. Instead, he’s brought to the area to reunite a child with his father, who was knocked unconscious and almost died. Anna seems sweet, and when she sees the pain that Ben is in, she tells him she’ll pray for his little girl.
It definitely seems like a random Calling at first, but the thing is, nothing is random when it comes to the Callings. And the Calling brought Ben to Anna because, in the most jaw-dropping plot twist (though we should’ve seen it coming when Anna wouldn’t let Gabe inside the house because she thought it was “bugged”), Anna is revealed to be providing shelter for Angelina and Eden, who keeps drawing the windmill. Turns out, the little girl also has Callings, just like the 828 passengers, and Anna pretended that it was her Calling to keep up the rouse.
After Ben burns Eden’s death certificate, Anna’s house fills up with ashes, yet another Calling. The Callings want to lead Ben to Eden desperately, but Angelina, the snake, found a way to lead him astray.
Are the ashes a sign that Ben will burn everything to the ground to find his daughter? Are they a warning to Anna that she will be punished for keeping Ben from his daughter?
Truthfully, the most painful thing about all of this is that Eden thinks Angelina is her mommy. I literally froze when she called her that because the poor girl has all this trust in a monster, yet she knows nothing else. She doesn’t know that her real family is out there looking for her and that the woman that she thinks is her mom is actually the kidnapper who killed her mother. Angelina stripped Eden of so much happiness and caused a world of pain for delusional and selfish reasons.
And why is Anna helping Eden? Did she threaten her? I’m so triggered by this moment, I want to see Angelina get the punishment she deserves.
What did you think about the Manifest Season 4 premiere episode? Do you think the drama’s new home on Netflix will force it to be slightly more forthcoming with answers, especially since we only have a total of 20 episodes (10 released in part 1 and 10 more to come) to conclude the story?
Others Thoughts
- Jared is once again getting sucked into the madness and thus, back into Mick’s orbit. He’s always wanted to stay away from it, but he just can’t help himself. He’s also back on patrol because of all that he risked helping the Stones.
- The death date is a year and a half away in this timeline now, which means they are running out of time.
- Let’s hope we find out what happened to Daley and Fiona because, while Flight 828 is the key mystery, this subplot has kept me up more nights than necessary.
- I truly want Saanvi to get a love story, a personal story, anything outside of the work, which I get is important, I just need our girl to actually live a little if this is all to be in vein in the end anyway!