Despite its cancellation on NBC, Manifest is officially coming back for season 4 on Netflix on November 4.
Although fans were wondering if Manifest was getting a movie treatment, the streaming giant delighted all with an announcement at 8:28am on August 28, 2021 (a callout to Flight 828, the plot's center piece) that it had picked up the series for at least one and perhaps two seasons.
A year later, on August 28, 2022, Netflix debuted the first trailer for season 4, which will be comprised of two batches of ten episodes each. To the excitement of all, the entire original cast is expected to reprise their roles.
"There is something very meta about the show's death and rebirth, given that that's the story of the series itself," creator Jeff Rake said to Entertainment Weekly in August of last year, clearly referring to the premise of the show, which follows a group of passengers on Flight 828, who disappear for five years after taking off from Jamaica and before landing in New York City.
Who killed Grace in Manifest?
In the season 3 finale of Manifest, fans were shocked to witness the death of Grace Stone (played by Athena Karkanis) following her stabbing by Angelina Meyer (Holly Taylor), who then runs away with Grace's daughter Eden (alternatively portrayed by Brooks and Parker Johnson).
The murder, which actually happens off screen but is presumed to be committed by Angelina, set off a chain of events that will slowly unfold throughout the new upcoming episodes.
First and foremost, Ben Stone (played by Josh Dallas) will have to deal with Eden's kidnapping. By committing the murder, Angelina has also officially turned into an enemy of her fellow Flight 828 passengers and it will be interesting to see how they deal with her moving forward, especially considering that the next few episodes will take place five years after the events that occurred in the season 3 finale.
If the season 4 trailer of Manifest is of any indication, Cal Stone (Eden's twin brother) might be considered his sister's murderer by the authorities - at least initially. In fact, the clip shows him in handcuffs, being taken away from the house.
As a reminder, Cal originally boarded Flight 828 with his father while his sister and mother didn’t. Interestingly enough, though, as can be glimpsed at in the season 4 preview, Cal has aged quite a bit in the last scene of the final episode - a fact that will likely throw authorities in disarray.
What happened on season 3 of Manifest?
The off-screen murder of Grace was certainly the most memorable plot point of season 3 of Manifest. However, as audience members may remember, a lot more happened throughout the 13 episodes that aired a few months ago.
Although we see Cal in the preview for season 4, we spent much of season 3 wondering where he disappeared to after touching the tailfin of Flight 828. His father Ben's quest to find him proves fruitless until a calling reunites him with Cal on the actual plane, where his son warns him that something bad is going to happen. Cal does seem to have returned home in the final scene of the final episode of season 3 - albeit looking much older than when we last saw him pre-disappearance.
At the same time, Ben's sister Michaela Stone (played by Melissa Roxburgh) learns that some of her fellow passengers believe that the Stones have been working with the NSA all along - a fact that will undoubtedly lead to bloodshed.
It seems clear that the key to understanding Manifest in its entirety, and a clue to what even happened on Flight 828, is highly dependent on Cal, which we believe will be a central character in episodes to come.
