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Manifesto Season 4 has officially started, which means I can finally say… We’re back, Manifesters! Wow, that felt so good.
After more than a year of turbulence (NBC canceled the show, Netflix picked it up, COVID protocols made filming difficult, etc.), we finally have new episodes to dive into. (The puns, I just can’t stop.)
Manifesto Season 4 Episode 1 begins with a two and a half year time jump and isn’t really the show we remember, which makes sense given the dramatic and traumatic events of the Season 3 finale.
For starters, Cal is now a teenager who uses a fake identity to keep people from asking questions about his rapid aging. To the world, he is Gabriel, cousin of the Stone family. I would like to point out that Gabriel is also a name inspired by the Bible. It’s actually the name of one of the guardian angels that is a running theme in the series. Cal was also identified as the “Holy Grail” and returned from wherever he knew what he needed to accomplish, but I have no idea if that means anything at this point. So far, it’s just a fantastic observation.
Everything we learned about the series is different. 828’ers are on a government registry and must register, meaning no one can actually have a quality life or even hold down a job. Mick isn’t a cop anymore, while Ben, well, he’s kind of a mess. No, scratch that, he’s in a really bad place, which is kind of expected given the hell on earth he’s been through. On the other hand, it’s kind of surprising considering how much time has passed since the incident. This is a man who doesn’t give up, and while he may not be ideal for others, you have to admire his dedication.
When we see his first shot, the first thing that comes to mind is that he’s a homeless man living out of his car, but it turns out that Ben just stopped caring about anything other than finding Eden. He spends his days putting up missing persons posters around town, looking for his little girl, who, as you probably remember, was kidnapped by Angelina in the season 3 finale.
Grace’s death also affected him. When she died, a part of him did too. Grace was everything to him, so it wasn’t easy to grieve her. And while the rest of the family thinks his fixation on finding his daughter isn’t healthy, Ben can’t give up because it’s the only thing holding him together.
It is incredibly heartbreaking to see the pain Angelina has caused. I’m glad the series bypassed the aftermath of Grace’s stabbing and Eden’s kidnapping instead of going with it since too much time has passed since the last season, but it’s also nice to see flashbacks to that night to see what happened and how we got to this point with Ben’s downward spiral.
Two years is a long time, so understandably, a lot happened in that window that needs to be used for fans to understand the current mindset of the characters. It also helps us understand any painful emotions that have been simmering.
Olive blamed Cal for his now-aged body, and for a long time Cal blamed himself for letting Angelina back into their lives. Fortunately, they seem to have reconciled and gotten through it. Although he’s not direct about it, Ben definitely resents Cal a bit for what happened, and it’s a shame he doesn’t prioritize the family he still has. He seems to have pushed away all the other people he loves as he is consumed by the deep loss that can often blind people to the goodness that is still there.
Zeke has taken on more responsibility as someone has to pay the bills and keep things running smoothly, but his capacity for empathy also takes a toll on him as he seems to absorb everyone’s pain. You could say he’s doing the master’s work, but it’s definitely not easy, which worries me given his history.
The Callings are also back – and they look more realistic and intense than ever.
The episode opens with an experiment on an Asian man before he starts glowing and the burst of light hurts everyone around him. He emerges from captivity into a field of cherry blossoms, and it is no coincidence that Mick wakes up to the sight of cherry blossoms.
It’s a Calling – one that takes her to a port where she finds the same man inside a shipping container with Stone 828 etched into his skin. She takes him to Vance’s new headquarters with a rather impressive sight, where they immediately recognize him as Henry Kim, an employee believed to have been executed by the Singaporean government who was used as a test subject. (In case you forgot, Kim returned to Singapore in Season 3 and was detained, and when Mick learns of his death from Captain Kate Bowers, it prompts her to quit her job.)
With Ben incapacitated, Mick appears to have taken over the lifeboat, but in a surprising twist, the Stone family member Henry is looking for is actually Cal. When he finally contacts the boy, he informs them that they need to get the box he brought for him. And it’s not just any old box… Kim is referring to the black box from Flight 828.
Of course, this links back to Eureka – Vance’s experimental warehouse that housed the reconstructed Flight 828 before *poof* it disappeared, to Captain Daly, the moment Grace was killed. The black box shouldn’t be here, let alone in China, but somehow it’s reappeared, and that doesn’t seem like much of a coincidence either.
Saanvi, who has ignored every single person who has told her she is wasting her time sifting through the disappearance footage for clues, is convinced the black box is trying to convey a message and when she hears Daly’s “help me” in the original recording from flight 828, she is even more convinced. Why would this sound be present on the box that records what happened during the original disappearance? It makes no sense, but it sure makes me want to keep watching to find out.
The thing about 828’ers is that they are incredibly durable and don’t give up easily. Saanvi is determined to find answers the same way Ben is determined to find his daughter.
When Jared delivers Ben Eden’s death certificate—they never found the body, but they did find Eden and Angelina’s footprints on a bridge, which lends itself to a murder-suicide situation—he refuses to believe his daughter is dead. And when the certificate is lifted by the wind, an indication that this is a vocation, he goes to the windmill, where he meets Anna, another traveler who shares the same vocation. Ben assumes that this will finally lead him to Eden, but unfortunately he is wrong. Instead, he was brought to the area to reunite a child with his father, who had been knocked unconscious and nearly died. Anna seems kind, and when she sees the pain Ben is in, she tells him she’ll pray for his little girl.
It sure seems like a random vocation at first, but the thing is, nothing is random when it comes to vocations. And The Calling brought Ben to Anna, because in the most stunning plot twist (even though we should have seen it when Anna wouldn’t let Gabe into the house because she thought she was being “eavesdropped”), Anna reveals herself to provide sheltering Angelina and Eden, who continues to paint the windmill. It turns out that the little girl also has callings, just like the 828 passengers, and Anna pretends it’s her calling to keep her spirits up.
After Ben burns Eden’s death certificate, Anna’s house fills with ashes, another calling. The summoned are desperate to take Ben to Eden, but Angelina, the snake, has found a way to mislead him.
Are the ashes a sign that Ben will burn everything to the ground to find his daughter? Are they a warning to Anna that she will be punished for hiding Ben from his daughter?
Honestly, the most painful thing about all of this is that Eden thinks Angelina is her mother. I literally froze when he called her that because the poor girl has all this confidence in a monster but doesn’t know anything else. Little does she know that her real family is looking for her and that the woman she thinks is her mother is actually the kidnapper who killed her mother. Angelina has deprived Eden of so much happiness and caused a world of pain for deceitful and selfish reasons.
And why does Anna help Eden? Did she threaten her? I’m so excited about this moment, I want to see Angelina get the punishment she deserves.
What did you think about Manifesto Season 4 premiere episode? Do you think the drama’s new home on Netflix will force it to be a little more forthcoming with answers, especially since we only have a total of 20 episodes (10 released in Part 1 and 10 more to come) to wrap up the story?
Other thoughts
- Jared is once again sucked into the madness and thus back into Mick’s orbit. He’s always wanted to stay away from it, but he just can’t help himself. He also returns to the patrol because of everything he risks helping the Stones.
- The date of death is in a year and a half in this timeline now, which means their time is running out.
- Let’s hope we find out what happened to Daly and Fiona, because while Flight 828 is the key mystery, this storyline kept me up more nights than necessary.
- I really want Saanvi to get a love story, a personal story, anything outside of work that I get is important, just need our girl to live a little if it’s all in spirit anyway!
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