WTF just happened in ‘Manifest’ season 2? Here are all our thoughts
A show about a plane magically reappearing after more than five years seems like a simple concept. But Manifest has proven that it knows how to keep the show interesting as it finishes a quite explosive season 2. The NBC drama has us sitting with our jaws open, and we’re still not 100% sure what we just watched.
Massive Manifest season 2 spoilers below!
With a piece of Flight 828 getting pulled out of the water, we’re really confused as to if everyone is secretly dead or alive. Plus, the three criminals that should be at the bottom of the lake have vanished into thin air. Not to mention Saanvi (Parveen Kaur) literally killed The Major (Elizabeth Marvel).
Season 2 of Manifest ended up just as confusing of a finale as season one, so we have to dive into what just happened and what this means for season 3.
Cal (Jack Messina) get saved, Zeke (Matt Long) dies and comes back to life
The idea of an eventual death has been lingering since the beginning of season one for all the passengers of Flight 828. First, they thought they’d die if they spoke about the investigation. Then a man who should’ve drowned dies by drowning on a sidewalk free of water.
Quickly the group realizes they’re all set to die on June 2nd, 2024, as Cal confirms this with a vision of their deaths. For Zeke though, who disappeared while hiking a year ago and appeared at a remote cabin, his death was set for December 2019. But before Zeke dies of hyperthermia, he dives into a frozen lake to save Cal as he was called to do.
Minutes after dying, Zeke comes back to life like nothing happened. With this new information, Ben (Josh Dallas) determines that the group can avoid death, as long as they listen to the callings they receive to help others. Goodbye Saanvi’s research for a cure, we guess.
Hopefully, this is the truth, and we’ll get a happy ending come 2024. But Zeke also was only frozen for a year. Just because this worked out for Zeke doesn’t mean all of our beloved Flight 828 passengers will get to live another day.
Saanvi attempts to find peace but ends up murdering instead
It’s no surprise that the medical researcher is trying to medically research what is causing these “callings” the passengers are experiencing. There is definitely a mutation in their blood, but before Saanvi could actually find a cure for said mutation, the Major swooped in and cut her credentials.
This is double upsetting as the Major already broke Saanvi’s trust earlier in Manifest season 2 pretending to be her therapist, but just wanted to get information. Saanvi reaches out to Vance (Daryl Edwards), the NSA director in charge of the case, who reveals that the Major is doing her own research on the mutations.
Desperate for answers, Saanvi arms herself with poison and tracks down the Major. But when the antidote breaks, Saanvi is left with a dead body on her hands. Of course, not before she found out that the Major wants to weaponize the mutation and infect people with the same blood to replicate the mutation.
Now, there’s a hell of a lot that we’re going to have to deal with come season 3. Will Vance protect Saanvi and cover up the Major’s death? Will he end up taking the fall for it? How will this affect Saanvi’s mental health further, since she’s already dealing with the PTSD? And probably the most important question of all: what does this mean for the mutation research?
The tail of Flight 828 appears in the water
There’s no way Ben seeing Flight 828 explode and the tail wing of the plane being found in the water is a coincidence. We know that when the passengers die, they’ll die the same way they would’ve before: in a fiery plane explosion. So is the tail just like how Zeke was slowly but surely getting frostbitten?
Or is this something deeper? The plane blew up on the tarmac by the end of the pilot, so maybe this is from that explosion, and someone’s trying to send a message. This wasn’t the first episode Ben saw the plane blowing up in flames, it was just the first time he saw the complete calling. So we know this is far from the end of this mystery.
Cal is saved from the drug heads, who disappear into thin air
When Zeke dove into the water to save Cal, he left the three kidnappers in the water to freeze to death. Serves them right, kidnapping a kid just because their stash got stolen. But when police went to search the water for the three men, no bodies turned up.
This may be the most easy mystery to solve, but it’s most likely that the three drug heads are now going to be experiencing the same life or death callings as we’ve seen before. Whether they learn their lesson and actually try to help people, or if they use this to cause more harm, we’ll just have to wait for Manifest season 3 to see.
