After being rescued by Netflix, the first part of Manifest’s fourth and final season is set to premiere on the streaming service this month. Originally airing on NBC for three seasons before being canceled by the network in 2021, Manifest chronicles the lives of airplane passengers whose flight mysteriously vanished into thin air. Flight 828 is declared missing for over five years before it suddenly reappears in the sky. For the passengers, no time has passed and they have no idea where they’ve been for the last five years. As they mourn the lives they lost and try to get used to their new normal, some of the passengers develop special abilities related to their journey. This pushes them to investigate what happened to their flight and why they were chosen.
Even though series creator and showrunner Jeff Rake initially had a six season plan for Manifest, he told Entertainment Weekly shortly after the series’ rescue that “the endgame won’t change at all.” He later says “When I’ve talked in the past about having a roadmap all the way to the end of the series, that didn’t mean that I had a roadmap for literally every single episode. I have a roadmap with a series of twists and turns and flags in the sand that we would ultimately hit in order to tell the core stories within our mythology and within our relationship drama. So it will not be a particularly difficult exercise to overlay that same exact roadmap onto 20 episodes. It will be quite organic.”
Ultimately, Rake is grateful to have the opportunity to finish telling this story, even if he doesn’t have as many episodes as he hoped for in the beginning.
Thankfully, the wait for season 4 won’t be much longer.
When and Where Will Season 4 of Manifest Be Available to Watch?
According to Netflix, season 4 of Manifest will consist of twenty episodes divided into two parts. The first ten episodes of season 4 will hit Netflix at 3 a.m. ET/12 a.m. PT on Nov. 4. In the series, Nov. 4, 2018 is the date that Flight 828 reappears and lands in New York, so this is a fitting date for the series’ return from cancellation. A return date for the second half of season 4 has yet to be announced.
Season 4 Plot Synopsis
Netflix’s official synopsis for season 4 says “Two years after the brutal murder of Grace turned their lives upside down, the Stone family is in shambles as a devastated Ben continues to mourn his wife and search for his kidnapped daughter, Eden. Consumed by his grief, Ben has stepped down from his role as co-captain of the lifeboat, leaving Michaela to captain it alone, a near impossible feat with the passengers’ every move now being monitored by a government registry. As the Death Date draws closer and the passengers grow desperate for a path to survival, a mysterious passenger arrives with a package for Cal that changes everything they know about Flight 828 and will prove to be the key to unlocking the secret of the Callings in this compelling, mind-bending, and deeply emotional journey.”