Manifest Season 4 Part 2 Review: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

June 2nd isn’t only the date of Manifest Season 4 Part 2 premiere, but the well-known Death Date that viewers and passengers alike were waiting for since Manifest Season 1.

The truth is that what happens after the Death Date may leave some fans satisfied, but may leave some of us wondering if the show delivers the right ending. Manifest becomes a full circle in which everyone (minus 11 passengers) goes back to where they started.

What does this mean for the five and a half years they were gone and the five and a half years they were following Callings to save the Lifeboat? Was it all pointless or is there a lesson hiding behind it all?

Up until the very last episode of Manifest in which Olive discovers it’s all about forgiveness, the show focused on the balance between good and evil. The passengers were supposed to follow the Callings in order to accomplish good deeds and tip the scale in their favor.

Throughout this journey of keeping things even (or as even as possible) to save themselves, Manifest and its characters have always been extremely consistent.

Every clue the passengers were given from the moment they started receiving Callings remained relevant until Manifest Season 4 Episode 19, “Formation,” when the first clues that had revealed the Death Date come back to the table.

For a show that relies heavily on mythology and religion, Manifest always managed to stay in line and tie every loose end that had been introduced. Every character that is introduced has a purpose to the show. Every Calling has a meaning whether it is revealed immediately or later on.

When choosing to watch Sci-Fi TV, viewers make the conscious decision to accept that whatever they see goes beyond reality and any ending becomes acceptable. Anything can happen as long as we put together the clues — or the Callings.

Within its consistency, Manifest Season 4 Part 2 proves why the Stone family has always been at the center of the action. Any other passenger could have taken the lead, but it was the Stones who became captains of the Lifeboat.

Following the show’s ideal that everything is connected, Cal Stone is the biggest point of connect for everyone. It was him in Manifest Season 1 who first realized everyone was connected and there was something bringing them together.

In the end, he is the only one who can still see the Callings and help spread the message to the rest of the passengers. It is him who makes the ultimate sacrifice by becoming one with the piece of wood from Noah’s ark.

Manifest Season 4 Part 2 focuses heavily on who the passengers can or cannot trust. When it comes to their Callings, they first have to trust Michaela to go out of the Detention Center and solve them. Then it is Cal who helps continue the journey.

But after that connection and his constant sacrifices, Cal makes the ultimate sacrifice and he no longer remembers everything that happened. While the rest of them land back in 2013 remembering everything they went through, he has no recollection.

Is this part of his hero journey? He pays the price for all of them to have a life.

Science Fiction defies the rules of what is normal, acceptable, and logic. Manifest has done that throughout its four seasons.

The moment Manifest Season 1 Episode 1, “Pilot,” introduced the story of a flight that disappeared for five and a half years and came back with passengers who didn’t know they had been gone, we knew we were in for a wild ride.

Manifest Season 4, just like its previous seasons, adds religion, mythology, and legends to find a logic and an argument behind everything that is happening. The characters need to find a reason why and in doing so, we get a better understanding of where the show is going.

It becomes obvious very fast that the Death Date is the end of the world or the apocalypse as Angelina introduces. And once again it is here that the characters fight the scale between good and bad.

For Angelina, the Death Date is about killing everyone and only saving the worthy eight. For the rest of the 828  passengers (or the majority of them), the Death Date is about saving the world.

In the end, that is what saves them and brings them back to 2013.

It is during Manifest Season 4 Episode 20, “Final Boarding,” that things get tricky. Viewers can either love the ending or wonder what it was all for.

The moment the passengers get on the plane, we know they will either make it out alive or that will be the end. That end does come for those passengers who have done wrong in their life and who are not repenting or taking accountability.

Angelina had been right about one thing. God or whatever other force they choose to believe in, is choosing the Death Date to punish those who had been evil or had caused harm. The five and a half years since their return were an opportunity to make amends.

However, this scene makes us question why did the future of humanity fell on the shoulders of these passengers? Why was the whole world at risk but with those few souls taken the apocalypse stopped?

Manifest does not tell us why 828 was chosen in the first place nor why these people were the ones to sacrifice for the whole of humanity. That is a big unanswered question that we can only speculate about.

Even though Manifest Season 4 Episode 20, “Final Boarding,” shows us that those who return and land in 2013 as they were supposed to have learned their lessons and will go on leading better lives, we wonder what happens with everything they experienced in those five and a half years.

The final episode proves that it is all connected. Ben and Saanvi return to their original partners while knowing now they have a cure to save Cal — return that sacrifice he made.

Michaela tells Jared there is someone better for him and he meets her that same night while she goes to find Zeke in hopes of having the life she remembers. Every passenger will eventually find the life they had created for themselves between 2018 and 2024.

Is this enough to justify that all the plane did is take them back to the beginning? Does this notion of possible happy endings make up for the suffering they experienced as 828 passengers?

For four seasons, Manifest gave the Callings, the different scenarios, and the Lifeboat for everyone to decide which path to take. Now, viewers get to decide which path they take: this ending is enough to explain everything that happened or there could have been more given to us.

Whatever the case may be, Manifest ends in the most Sci-Fi way possible, defying every law of logic.

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Manifest is available for streaming on Netflix.

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