Three Wise Men
As we start gearing up to the finale, Manifest returns for another episode that furthers the mystery box hanging over this season. With the hint that Zeke may meet an untimely demise in the near future and questions swarming around what the true meaning of the Callings really are, there’s plenty left unanswered in Manifest as it appears we’re frustratingly no closer to an answer over any of the big mysteries in the show. Episode 11 of Manifest begins with Ben running his theory by Michaela after telling her about Cal’s nightmares. As he reads an extract from the bible surrounding the false prophet, a desperate Michaela opens up and talks to him about Zeke’s frostbite. Zeke meanwhile heads to therapy while Michaela finds a kid robbing a store outside. Just as she’s starting to berate him for stealing a candy bar, she receives a Calling telling her to let him go. Succumbing to the words, she lets the kid slip away and hands back the stolen candy bar to the shop. Only, it turns out this kid is actually involved in something far worse. Michaela and Vasquez head to the bus depot for answers and after obtaining the CCTV footage from the bus, back at the station Michaela is teased by her co-worker surrounding Vasquez working with her again. Ignoring this, they both head off to see the kid at school and question who he’s working with. Back home, Ben experiences another Calling, this time of a train rushing toward him. While he ponders what this means, Cal and TJ head out, with the latter experiencing a Calling of his own involving a phoenix painting. Rushing back home, they feed this back to Ben and head out together to the subway, which happens to hold a phoenix mural on the wall. Zeke visits Saanvi and has an MRI. His Mother stops by to see him afterwards but he refuses to tell her the truth about what’s happening. As she leaves, Saanvi tells him the MRI results came back less than favourable. In the subway, a man looks set to commit suicide but Ben and TJ save him at the last second. In the hospital, the matchbox this man was holding actually turns out to be a music box and it holds the same melody Cal was singing to baby Eden earlier in the episode. With the lullaby in mind, Ben heads to hospital and learns that Zeke’s father used to sing his son the same song. As it turns out, this suicidal man is actually Zeke’s father. Rekindling what he’s lost, Zeke decides to try and make the most of the time he has left. Vasquez and Michaela talk about Zeke and she tells him he’s dying while out on a stake-out together. They watch the drop-off occur and burst into the block of flats, with Vasquez chasing a man out the back door while Michaela remains alone inside searching the basement, where she finds the drug-maker called James. Despite the Calling telling her to let him go, she refuses to listen and arrests him. At the police station, Michaela tells Vasquez about her Calling and how she ignored it. Heading home, she speaks to Zeke and he tells her he wants to go out on his own terms, proceeding to ask Michaela to marry him – she of course says yes. Ben decides to start listening to the Callings and puts Cal to bed. As he does, the three shadows return in his room and as we pan out, we see these three shadows are actually that of the three drug dealers who were arrested earlier in the episode. Will Zeke die? What significance do these three men have to the over-arching narrative? Will everything be resolved and answered in 2 episodes? While the latter seems unlikely, Manifest does have a sense of urgency about it this week as we fast approach the finale. For large stretches of this season though Manifest has really dragged its feet and there’s more than one loose plot thread hanging over this one that needs some form of resolution before the season ends. It seems apparent though that the Calling surrounding Michaela – “Let him go” – is almost certainly about Zeke but given this show has done a Walking-Dead fake-out with TJ very recently, I’m not holding my breath that Zeke will actually die this season. If he does though, more questions will be raised surrounding just why he’s involved in this entire mystery when he wasn’t on the plane to begin with. Of course, there’s still time to be proved wrong and with a few more episodes left, Manifest may yet offer up some surprises.
