Manifest season 4’s massive time jump means the show can skip the season 3 finale’s terrible love triangle tease. A recent interview with Ben actor Josh Dallas confirmed that Manifest will pick up two years after the end of the previous season. Though such a huge time skip has been met with some degree of surprise, it does make sense, considering that it will help the show come to an end just in time for the Death Date.
Since Manifest is jumping two years ahead, the Flight 828 passengers will find themselves uncomfortably close to the dreaded day where they’re all expected to meet their demises. The decision to speed up the progression of events can be explained by the fact that Manifest is ending two seasons earlier than showrunner Jeff Rake originally intended. Upon the show’s return, Manifest will need to address quite a few loose ends from the season 3 finale, which promised a lot of changes to the main character’s life. Obviously, the biggest twists were Cal being aged into an 18-year-old and Angelina seemingly murdering Grace. These moments are sure to lay the groundwork for where the main characters are when Manifest comes back.
One issue with Manifest’s two-year time skip is that it may inadvertently force the show to hide some of the biggest stories that happened after the season 3 finale. In the case of at least one of these twists, that may not be such a bad thing. Toward the end of the episode, Manifest teased the return of its Michaela-Zeke-Jared love triangle. The episode implied that Zeke’s empathic powers allowed him to pick up on Michaela having hidden feelings for Jared. When Zeke told her, “we need to talk”, there was a sense that a breakup was coming for the couple. Having this happen because of Jared felt like the wrong move for the show, especially since the series properly resolved this story in season 2. However, Manifest leaping ahead by two years will enable the show to skip over Zeke and Michaela’s marriage woes.
Manifest already ended Michaela’s love triangle problem by having her finally get over Jared and commit to her romantic relationship with Zeke. She had apparently moved on, but season 3 dropped hints that perhaps the show wasn’t done with this storyline after all. It seemed that Manifest was preparing to dive deep into this problem in season 4, but if there’s a two-year time jump, the series can easily avoid altogether. It can do that if it explains that Michaela and Zeke went through a rough patch – or possibly even a temporary separation – but their relationship endured.
Abandoning season 3’s Michaela tease is much better than revisiting and repeating Michaela’s inner conflict from season 1 about her lingering feelings for Jared. Since the story ran its course, Manifest should find other ways to challenge Michaela and Zeke when the show enters its fourth and final chapter. Manifest’s love triangle should remain a thing of the past.
