The Icy Wedding
We’re two weeks away from the finale and if you thought the penultimate episode to this second season would start answering those big questions – think again. Instead, Manifest busies itself with Zeke and Michaela’s wedding while building up yet another central antagonist in the form of the three drug dealers that appeared last episode. While there is thankfully a little movement with the Major and the ending sets things up nicely for an exciting, climactic finale, it seems Manifest is not ready to divulge its biggest secrets just yet. Episode 12 of Manifest begins with Michaela and Vasquez interviewing the trio of drug dealers but unfortunately getting nowhere. As they discuss what to do next, Michaela admits that she’s getting married to Zeke – one last celebratory moment before he passes away. Zeke meanwhile heads home and strips out of his shirt, finding ice covering his chest. As he struggles to come to terms with what’s happening, wrapped in a blanket, he speaks to Michaela who struggles to come up with some vows. The duo instead head over to Ben’s house where Zeke speaks to Cal and tries to cheer him up, having an impromptu bachelor party. After eating food together, they decide to play Monopoly. Downstairs Ben has another Calling, this time of the plane blowing up. After a fruitless search with one of the passengers from the plane, leading nowhere substantial, he heads back home again. Michaela receives more bad news, as the trio of dealers are transferred from the station. En-route, one of them feigns a seizure, causing the dealers to dupe the driver and escape. On the way out, they vow to get back what they lost. The Major makes her move and fires Saanvi. Our frazzled scientist heads straight to Ben and asks for help, who mentions the Calling to her and how busy he currently is sorting that out alongside the wedding. TJ’s odd behaviour through the episode is finally explained as he tells Olive that he’s been approved a scholarship and is leaving soon. As she heads off in disappointment, Vasquez arrives at Ben’s house as the wedding looks set to begin. The dealers arrive at Michaela’s house (how do they even know where she lives?) just as she and Zeke start exchanging their vows. After the celebrations, Zeke thanks Cal for his help as he and Michaela leave together to go on their honeymoon. Not long after, outside on the lawn the trio of drug dealers phone Michaela and tell her to hand over their stash or there will be trouble, as they take Cal captive. Back home, Vance returns and tells Saanvi the Major is making her move now because she’s found something with the stolen research earlier in the season. They need to make sure this research stays in their hands only. Saanvi promises to go after her and make the Major pay for what she’s done, where the episode ends. This season alone we’ve had the Major, the X’ers, Adrian and now these drug dealers as the central antagonist and all the while the show has failed to address any of its big questions. Even worse, this week adds some questionable plot continuity into the fold. How do the dealers know where Ben lives? Was Cal carrying a mobile phone? If not, how did they get Michaela’s number in order to ring her? As a premise, Manifest has great potential. The idea of a plane travelling forwards through time while government officials scramble to hide the evidence is really interesting but the execution has been anything but. The sci-fi has regularly been pushed aside for the soap opera elements but even this has its problems – most notably the fake-out death of TJ earlier this season. There’s 45 minutes left of this story it seems almost certain now that Manifest won’t deliver all of its answers this year. With Zeke looking like he’s close to his death date, I’d imagine the season will end with a race against time to save his life; at the last second Michaela will inject him with the cure and save him. If you’ve made it this far, much like The Walking Dead that sunk cost fallacy will likely be too great to bow out now but with no word on a third season and only so much impatient audiences can take, whether people will tune in for a possible third season or not, remains to be seen.
