The mystery series “Manifest” was originally supposed to have six seasons, as series creator Jeff Rake had planned. But then the series was canceled by NBC after only three seasons – with lots of cliffhangers and unanswered questions. Netflix rushed to the rescue: “Manifest” is now getting a final fourth season. For Jeff Rake, however, this means that he now has to squeeze his planned content for three more seasons into just one final season…
Season 4 of “Manifest” will be extra long with 20 episodes that will be released in two packages, however, Rake now needs to hurry a little to get all of the stories on track for the series finale. And that should be exactly how he imagined it at the beginning of the series, Rake explained – the shortening of six to four seasons hasn’t changed that. But that should explain why there will be a big change at the beginning of season 4: namely a huge time jump of two years.
In the plot of “Manifest” you have to get closer to a certain date much faster than planned: June 2, 2024, the impending death date of the passengers of Flight 828. If the series had followed Rake’s six-season plan, the final sixth season would have been released on that date in 2024…
Of course, in the 20 episodes of Season 4, you could have simply worked your way through time faster and dealt with two years. In an interview with Ben Stone actor Josh Dallas, however, this will not be the case and the time jump is set right at the beginning Netflix Life reveal. In it, he confirmed the jump of two years to the start of the season, which was previously rumored after set pictures of the four-year-old twins starring in Baby Eden – who will now no longer be a baby – surfaced. Dallas’ testimony confirmed that twins Jianna and Jeena Platon will take on the role of Eden right at the beginning of Season 4, rather than in the second half of the season.
Of course, such a leap in time also means that some storylines from the end of the third season are not told further, or at most we learn what happened in flashbacks or narratives – Warning, spoilers for the season 3 finale!
For example, the impact on the Stone family of the surprising aging of son Cal – who will then be played entirely by Ty Doran instead of Jack Messina in the new season (except perhaps in flashbacks, as I said) – is not shown directly for the time being. The death of Ben’s wife Grace may have had an even greater impact on the family of Ben and his sister Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) – making her actress Athena Karkanis one of the few main cast members not to return for Season 4. And then there’s the question of how Eden was freed from the clutches of Angelica (Holly Taylor)…
We will find out later this year how the series deals with the fact that there is no direct connection to Season 3. The first half of the fourth season of “Manifest” is scheduled to be released on Netflix in 2022 – at least that’s what series creator Jeff Rake teased Twitter on. And Netflix itself has already published a first clip from the new episodes and announced the fourth season as “coming soon”, which usually means a timely start in the coming months.
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