(Manifest spoilers will obviously be found below.)
Siblings Ben and Michaela Stone (as shown above) survived the first half of Manifest Season 4, but not everyone got so lucky. Let’s recap what happened in the most recent installment while fans await the next batch of episodes that will complete the sci-fi/soap opera series.
There were some loose threads to be expected, of course, including what the hell Agent Of Chaos Angelina will do next after becoming an all-powerful being, thanks to a sapphire. Yet here’s the most devastating, and telling development of all: Zeke died. Granted, Zeke has actually died already, and then he was resurrected, so there’s been a lot of back and forth on him, but it truly seemed as though he and Michaela had found happiness, which is in short supply on this show. That’s only to be expected when one hops on a flight and loses five years of reality and then ends up being pulled into some vast government conspiracy. Ugh. However, yes, Zeke died, seemingly for real this time (show creator Jeff Rake has confirmed this as the unfortunate dude’s final death), when he sacrificed his life to save Cal.
Zeke ended up kind-of sucking the cancer out of Cal’s body and into his own. This will likely have a few effects:
(1) Josh Dallas (the actor who portrays Ben) revealed that the emotional fallout will be complicated. For one thing, Ben is thrilled to have a healed-up Cal (now played by Ty Doran after aging 5 years in an instant) because no one should lose their kid. Yes, Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) will now be thrown into an emotional tailspin, but Dallas told TV Line that while there might be a parting of ways, Michaela will come back around, but “But I think it’s going to bond them closer together.” Fingers crossed.
(2) This opens the door for romantic speculation. Yes, I’m going there because — for all of the show’s quasi-sci-fi trappings — it is a soap opera at heart. It began by stressing all of the romantic fallout associated with partners who give up and move on (understandably so) after their partners evaporate for years. Grace and Ben did successfully reconcile, obviously, before she died at the end of Season 3, but Michaela and Jared Vasquez (J.D. Ramirez) did not make it as a couple. He had gotten married (and to be super fair, Michaela wasn’t wild about his proposal before hopping onto Flight 828), and although they made eyes at each other, Michaela moved on to Zeke while Jared looked all sad. Now, they’re both single again, so I predict that they will eventually recouple before the series finale.
(3) Cal should save the world now. Yes, I suppose and admit that Cal’s survival is more important than the romance stuff if one is looking for more than drama. Ben and Grace’s son is effectively the Holy Grail, and Zeke truly sacrificed himself for the greater good by allowing Cal to evade his sickness and become an all-powerful being, too. Will he be able to, say, defeat Angelina? He’s gonna have to shake any survival’s guilt that he feels and get the job done.
From there, show creator Jeff Rake must wrap up the intended turn of events that he’d planned on plotting out for a full six-season run on NBC. June 2, 2024 has been projected as the on-show Death Date for 828 passengers, so who knows whether they’ll all start spewing water at some point or quietly croak. Wouldn’t that be a hell of way for it to end? Everyone simply drops dead. That might make more sense than anything else that has happened on this show with bizarre voices and callings, and I’m still secretly hoping that the final batch of episodes won’t arrive until the literal death date, but I do doubt that Netflix will make fans wait that long.
Manifest will return with the final 10 episodes (out of a total 62) at some point on Netflix.
