Buckle your seat belts: Manifest has landed at New York Comic Con.
On Saturday, as the show’s cast and showrunner Jeff Rake touched down at the Javits Center to share new details about the upcoming fourth and final season, new photos were also released giving tantalizing glimpses of what’s to come.
Among the images, we see Ben (Josh Dallas) sporting his grief beard and mourning Grace with daughter Olive (Luna Blaise); Angelina (Holly Taylor) seeming to have a calling; Cal (now played by Ty Doran), Saanvi (Parveen Kaur), Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) and Vance (Daryl Edwards) working on their 828 investigations; and Michaela at what looks like some sort of crime scene with her ex, Jared (J.R. Ramirez) — their love triangle with Zeke (Matt Long) is still going strong. Check out the new photos below, and watch the full NYCC panel above.
Manifest — about the mysterious disappearance of Montego Air Flight 828 and its reappearance five and a half years later — made the move to Netflix for Season 4, after initially airing on NBC for three seasons. With the drama’s final descent approaching, there are even more twists and secrets sure to be revealed — and maybe we’ll even find out how it’s all connected.
The new episodes pick up two years after the events of the Season 3 finale. Ben is still grieving the death of his wife, Grace (Athena Karkanis). She was murdered by troubled passenger Angelina — who also kidnapped their baby, Eden. When the story resumes, Eden is still missing, which leaves Ben in what Rake calls “a really dark place.”
“He’s in a really dark, complicated place at the beginning of Season 4,” said Dallas during the New York Comic Con panel, which was moderated by TV Guide Magazine’s Jim Halterman. “He’s sort of stuck in this grief pit and this profound anger. That’s the thing about anger: it begs to stick around and kind of robs you of your beauty and you end up pushing the people that you love the most away. Of course, his family is still there — his sister is still there, his son is there, his daughter is there, his friends are there — but he can’t really connect with them so he pushes them away. Not only them, but he also pushes the callings away. As far as he’s concerned, they’ve given him nothing; they’ve only taken from him.” (Those feelings also manifest themselves physically: “Grief beard all the way”)
That means Michaela winds up having to step up for her brother while he’s focused on finding Eden. “She’s got a lot on her plate now,” said Roxburgh. That “a lot” also includes that aforementioned love triangle between Michaela, Jared and Zeke, which isn’t going anywhere. “That is not gone and that plays all throughout the season, so don’t you worry.”
Elsewhere, Ben’s son, Cal, who disappeared after touching the plane’s tail fin and came back five years older, is still trying to piece together what happened to him. “He’s going through a lot at the start [of the season],” said Doran of Cal. “He can’t go outside or be himself because, what a crazy thing that would be for Cal to have aged up those five years. So his whole life is a secret. He just wants to help so badly and can’t figure out how to put the pieces together.”
“Weirdly, I think they’re kind of in the same head space,” Dallas added of Ben and Cal. “They both don’t know how to connect with one another. They’re trying, but there are things stopping them from doing that. I think a big part of it is Ben, somewhere deep down, blames him for Grace’s death and that’s a very complicated place to live and try to find your way out of — or find your way into. I think as the relationship carries on through Season 4 and certainly the end of the first part, I think you’ll start to see it evolve and change into something different.”
The time jump means it’s only 18 months before passengers’ predicted “death date” of June 2, 2024, so the clock is ticking in more ways than one. (And then there’s the black box that was uncovered in last month’s trailer…) This new season also put Dallas and Roxburgh in the pilot’s seat, as both got the chance to direct — and got stellar reviews from their co-stars. “Both of them were fantastic,” effused Long, while Edwards added, “Being directed by really good actors is wonderful because they speak your language…They told us exactly what we needed in order to get to where we needed to go.”
Viewers will get clued in on what’s happened over those last two years courtesy of flashbacks, showrunner Rake explains. “Pretty much everybody gets their own episode — I know we started that way and I think we held true to that,” Rake teased. “So when you’re watching this next block, you’ll be caught up episode-by-episode on everyone’s story. By the time you get through the 10th episode, you’ll understand what happened to everyone all the way through that two-year period.”
Part 1 of Manifest’s final journey arrives Nov. 4 on Netflix.
