Manifest 1x01 Pilot

Manifest was hands down my most anticipated new series of the fall season, partly because its premise sounded very intriguing but more importantly because it stars Josh Dallas –the first of my main OUAT crew to be back on the screen (unfortunately, Rebecca Mader’s Like Family and Ginnifer Goodwin’s Steps didn’t get picked up, although apparently the latter still has some chance next season). I’ve read many opinions about the premiere before I watched it, indeed some before it even aired. Naurally, most people immediately latched onto the similarities with Lost – disappearing plane and all that – but opinions varied as to whether it could become a great success like its predecessor, or if it’s gonna be another one and done series with an interesting idea that it will ultimately fail to build on. As for me, I don’t form opinions before I’ve actually seen the thing. I’m old-fashioned that way. That said, when one commenter desribed the premiere as „This Is Us on a plane”, I was surprised: surely this implies that the show will focus more on family relationships and the personal drama ensuing from people returning after having been presumend dead for five years, instead of the actual mystery behind said disappearance? An unexpected development, but then again, Lost was so great in the first place because somehow it managed to focus on both and never made a big deal about it.

But enough about other shows and „what could be”, let’s focus on what is. Manifest is the story of a group of people who all boarded a plane in Jamaica in 2013 and somehow landed in the US five years later, while for them no time seems to have passed. I say „group of people”, because even though so far we’ve only seen the effects of this time travelling misadventure on three of them, the episode’s ending makes me think that we’re about to explore the lives of some other passengers as well. Our main characters so far are brother and sister duo Ben and Michaela Stone, and medical researcher Saanvi Bahl, who end up connecting in more ways than one. Also on the plane was Ben’s 10 year old son Cal, who’s suffering from leukemia. After landing, he’s now five years younger than his twin sister Olive, but in other ways he’s one of the luckier passengers: during his abscense, new methods have emerged which might help him fight his illness, and those methods were based on the research of none other than Saanvi! This is our first clue that the passengers were not random at all but instead something brought them together on purpose. But why? Obviously we don’t know yet, but hopefully the explanation will be more interesting and satisfying than „the island said so”. 

Less fortunate in the „things have really changed in five years while you were presumed dead” department is Michaela, whose sort of-fiancé Jared has since married another woman. Yeah, that… that’s exactly where I expected this show would go, only I thought it would happen with Ben’s wife, but luckily she’s still single widowed… or is she?! She’s definitely hiding something as evidenced by some suspicious text messages at the end of the episode, and her daughter knows all about it. I give it four, maybe five episodes until Ben finds out and shit hits the fan, although he’s probably gonna be more upset about all the lying than about the actual problem, since he really can’t blame his wife for… well, for pretty much anything, since you know, he was presumed dead for five years. I’m really curious to see how the show will handle all this.

So that’s pretty much it for the family drama aspect of the show. I wouldn’t say it’s too much in any way, in fact it’s been relatively subdued so far given the circumstances. Sure, there are still some things we don’t know, like what happened in that car crash where someone named Evie died and for which Michaela thinks herself responsible… but that’s only like a tiny sliver of ice on top of this humongous iceberg of a mystery that is what happened to the plane and why are all the pessengers hearing voices now? In the case of Ben and Michaela these voices are more like premonitions: they both heard themselves whisper „set them free” in their heads, which led to the rescue of two captured children. That’s a pretty neat power to have, as far as hearing voices goes. But I kinda want to see the other passengers having different kind of powers, you know? Maybe some of them could have a healing touch, unbreakable skin or an aversion to heat... anything, really. I’m not saying this should turn into a superhero show, but it would be cool if whatever happened to them on that plane manifested (HA!) in a different way for each of them.

So what did YOU think of the premiere? Are you as excited to see Prince Charming in another „older than they look because funky time travel” role as I am? Please let me know in the comments!