Entertainment Hollywood

The sci-fi drama Manifest ran for three seasons/42 episodes on NBC, from 2018-2021, before being canceled. However, due to its popularity on the streaming service, Netflix picked up the series for a final 2-part fourth season of 20 episodes, which aired from 2022-23.

On April 7, 2013, Montego Air flight 828 left Jamaica bound for New York City. While en route, it experienced some rough turbulence, but nothing that felt too out of the ordinary to the passengers on board. However, when the plane landed, the passengers discovered that it was now November 4, 2018. For them, the flight just experienced a bit of turbulence, and they haven’t aged a day, but their families and loved ones on the ground had given them up for missing and dead for over 5 years! Some of the families have moved on, some have still kept the candle burning, and on the flip side, some of the passengers are just becoming aware that they lost family members during that missing 5 year gap.

NYPD cop Michaela Stone (Melissa Roxburgh, Valor) had just been proposed to by her boyfriend/partner Jared (J.R. Ramirez, Jessica Jones) before she left for the family trip to Jamaica. She had been in a dark place, and was using this vacation to clear her head. However, she was still madly in love with Jared, and planned to accept his proposal upon her return. However, during the five year gap, Jared had moved on, marrying her best friend.

Meanwhile, Michaela’s brother Ben (Josh Dallas, Once Upon a Time) was also on board and is unaware he’s in a similar situation with his wife of 15 years. Grace (Athena Karkanis, Zoo) had already dealt with her mourning and had started to move on, but is now ready to forget that and make things work with her husband. Their terminally ill son Cal (Jack Messina) was also on flight 828. However, new advances in science over the those missing 5 years may now be able to save him, thanks to a treatment that passenger Saanvi Bahl (Parveen Kaur, Beyond, The Strain) had helped to develop just before the flight, and that has been in clinical trials for the past five years.

At the core of the first season is this mystery of what happened to these passengers and why. Michaela, Ben and the other passengers are now inexplicably linked to one another, all experiencing “callings”—they hear voices and see things that give them warnings about bad things that are going to happen, or urge them to find or do things that usually result in helping someone in trouble. There were over 100 passengers on Flight 828, each with his or her own similar story, and so the series starts off with more of a passenger-of-the-week format, exploring the background and story of that passenger. Was there a reason these particular people were on that plane? What exactly happened to them, and have the passengers been affected in some way by their experience? That’s something the FBI and NSA Director Vance (Daryl Edwards) are eager to figure out, while the passengers just want to get back to their normal lives. However, they quickly discover that there is nothing normal about their new lives, and there is some deeper connection among them and some unknown force guiding them down a particular path.

Amidst this mystery, the series also follows the Stone family drama. Cal’s twin sister Olive (Luna Blaise, Fresh Off the Boat), who was not on the flight, is now a teenager, and Ben missed out on his daughter growing up. Cal is now physically younger than his twin sister, and they are at different stages of their lives. His old friends are also all grown up, so he feels out of place. Ben feels a bit distant from his wife, and Michaela doesn’t know how to act around Jared.

By the end of the first season, the series no longer follows a passenger-of-the-week type storyline, and becomes more about exploring the general idea of what is going on with the passengers as a whole. In fact, the mystery expands beyond just these passengers and flight 828. Their incident is just the tip of the iceberg this thing is much larger than they initially believed. The first season finishes quite strong, setting up some exciting twists and cliffhangers for the rest of the series to explore. The show’s mythology expands with each season, with new mysteries to explore

The main cast remains pretty much the same for much of the series. The second season adds Matt Long (Jack & Bobby) as a regular as Zeke Landon, a hiker trapped in a remote cave during a blizzard who experienced similar time loss as the Flight 828 passengers. The third season adds Holly Taylor (The Americans) as religious zealot Angelina Meyer, a Flight 828 passenger who sees it as her mission from God to stop the Callings. There’s a big time jump at the end of season 3 and beginning of season 4 for Cal, and Ty Doran takes over the role for the final season.

The Complete series DVD release contains all 4 seasons/62 episodes of the series split across 14 discs, with 4-5 episodes per disc. 

What’s Included:

DVD:

• • • • All 4 seasons/62 episodes of the series on 14 discs.

        • Season 1 (2018-19), 16 episodes (11:24:32)
          Disc 1 (2:51:10): “Pilot”, “Reentry”, “Turbulence”, “Unclaimed Baggage”
          Disc 2 (2:50:59): “Connecting Flights”, “Off Radar”, “S.N.A.F.U.”, “Point of No Return”
          Disc 3 (2:51:06): “Dead Reckoning”, “Crosswinds”, “Contrails”, “Vanishing Point”
          Disc 4 (2:51:17): “Cleared for Approach”, “Upgrade”, “Hard Landing”, “Estimated Time of Departure”

        • Season 2 (2020), 13 episodes (9:17:55)
          Disc 1 (2:51:15): “Fasten Your Seatbelts”, “Grounded”, “False Horizon”, “Black Box”
          Disc 2 (2:51:37): “Coordinated Flight”, “Return Trip”, “Emergency Exit”, “Carry On”
          Disc 3 (3:35:03): “Airplane Bottles”, “Course Deviation”, “Unaccompanied Minors”, “Call Sign”, “Icing Conditions”

        • Season 3 (2021), 13 episodes (9:19:02)
          Disc 1 (2:52:00): “Tailfin”, “Deadhead”, “Wingman”, “Tailspin”
          Disc 2 (3:34:59): “Water Landing”, “Graveyard Spiral”, “Precious Cargo”, “Destination Unknown”, “Bogey”
          Disc 3 (2:52:03): “Compass Calibration”, “Duty Free”, “Mayday: Part 1”, “Mayday: Part 2”

        • Season 4 (2022-23), 20 episodes (14:57:10)
          Disc 1 (3:30:02): “Touch-and-Go”, “All-Call”, “High Flight”, “Go-Around”, “Squawk”
          Disc 2 (3:43:29): “Relative Bearing”, “Romeo”, “Full Upright and Locked Position”, “Rendezvous”, “Inversion Illusion”
          Disc 3 (3:44:59): “Final Descent”, “Bug Out”, “Ghost Plane”, “Fata Morgana”, “Throttle”
          Disc 4 (3:58:40): “Furball”, “Threshold”, “Lift/Drag”, “Formation”, “Final Boarding”

      • 480i / Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1

      • Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1

      • Subtitles: English SDH

Extras:

• • This release contains no bonus material.

Manifest has an exciting premise, and the show does a good job of balancing exploring the mystery of what happened to the passengers on flight 828, with the character and family drama surrounding the aftermath of loved ones disappearing for 5 years and suddenly returning. Throughout the 4 seasons there are lots of twists and turns, and new mysteries to explore, though it can get a bit ridiculous at times. Overall, I did enjoy the series, and found that it builds to a really satisfying conclusion.