If you’d like to read my former article about Manifest series written before the final season was released, its here.
I’d waited patiently for the finale, because Manifest is one of the series I got really, really invested in. I’ve explained the why of it in the above mentioned article. All the questions that had left unanswered were madly intriguing, and I wondered which realm the writers would venture into to answer them. They were already neck deep in the metaphysical, but how could anyone logically explain what they called ‘the divine consciousness’?
Spoilers ahead.
They took the rather easy way out. I don’t say that I’m disappointed with the ending; because I’m not – it is a reasonable ending. But it was sad to see that the force behind it all never came to the fore and revealed its reasoning behind everything that took place. Every question that a viewer could possibly have, the characters themselves had in the series. I’d expected that after everything they went through to find answers and to survive, they and the viewers would be given answers, but that did not happen.
The characters were given the time that they had lost. They landed back where the plane was supposed to land and life was normal again. Only, the terrible ones did not make it through, leaving an open end, because naturally disappeared passengers would lead to a number of questions. While that open end was acceptable, one that is relatively not convincing is whether the ending was a timeline reset or a timeline rewind.
If it was a timeline rewind for the passengers, it must mean that on another timeline, the family members and friends of the surviving passengers who boarded the plane again were still awaiting their return. Olivia and her sister shall never get to see both their parents again, which is a rather unfair way to end the series for them. It would have been nice if they’d explained the rip in time better.
Though the questions of divinity are left unanswered, Manifest still is one of the best plots I have come across. They evoked a topic that’s extremely difficult to film reasonably, and left the audiences wide eyed and wondering. They did add some careless elements like Michaela and Jared’s breakup to foretell that somehow Michaela won’t return – but I assumed she’d just die. The ending was so much more better than an open end, but slightly less amazing than I assumed it would be. Well, I’m still a fan.
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