Manifest is on the way back after the wild ride of cancellation at NBC before finally getting an order for a fourth and final season at Netflix after the first three seasons became smash hits for the streamer. Although there is no word on a release date, creator Jeff Rake has been sharing some behind-the-scenes looks with production ongoing for the new episodes. While the sneak peeks are handy for passing the time of the wait after the Season 3 finale cliffhanger back in June 2021, Rake posted his latest image with a warning that fans should “brace yourselves.” Considering it’s a funeral photo, that warning may be good for fans!
Creator Jeff Rake took to Twitter to share another look at the production of Manifest Season 4, and the implications of it are chilling for many of the major characters. Take a look:
Brace yourselves. #Manifest#Netflix pic.twitter.com/kodJBZpUQ8February 25, 2022
Apparently, Manifest is going to deliver a funeral in the upcoming fourth season! The photo from Jeff Rake shows Parveen Kaur as Saanvi, Daryl Edwards (who was promoted for Season 4) as Vance, Ellen Tamaki as Drea Mikami, and J.R. Ramirez as Jared Vasquez. Conspicuously absent are the members of the Stone family (including Ty Doran as the aged-up Cal who appeared in the wake of Grace’s death) who were still alive as of the end of Season 3, and Matt Long as Zeke. Does that mean another one of the Stones or Zeke dies in Season 4, and these four will be mourners at the funeral?
Well, maybe! There are several things we know about Manifest’s new season, but not all the answers yet. The natural assumption would be that this is Grace’s funeral, after Athena Karkanis’ character was shockingly killed at the end of the third season finale just moments after meeting her son, suddenly in his mid-teens.
The absence of the Stones and Zeke at Grace’s funeral would be pretty impossible to explain if that’s what happens in the story, but it’s also possible that the shot of these four is only half of the scene, and the finished product will have Michaela, Ben, Olive, Cal, and Zeke on the opposite side of the casket. This could well be Grace’s funeral, and Jeff Rake simply didn’t want to give away the game by showing the rest of the Stone family.
There is one sticking point that leads me to wonder if this is somebody else’s funeral entirely, and that is that Manifest is more than a quarter of the way through filming for the 20-episode fourth season, which has a lot to pack in to end a series that was originally intended to run for six seasons.
In some of the images that Jeff Rake has been posting on social media, he has also included some reveals of which episodes they came from. There was a creepy image he posted on February 22 (just two days before the funeral photo) that he tagged as “#406,” indicating that filming has already progressed to the sixth episode of Season 4. Would Manifest really wait that long for Grace’s funeral?
It’s hard to rule much out at this point. Manifest certainly plays around with time and the unquantifiable, so this could be a flashback to Grace’s funeral. Or it could be the funeral for somebody other than Saanvi, Vance, Drea, and Jared who dies in Season 4. Or it could just be Jeff Rake posting an older photo. The one thing that we can seemingly say for sure is that it’s not a memorial for any of those four characters. Plus, Matt Long may be around a lot more than originally seemed possible due to a pilot casting that has since fallen through, so fans don’t have to expect that this is Zeke’s funeral.
Whatever happens, the peeks behind the scenes are still nice reminders that the show that once seemed totally dead is moving forward. Personally, I’d love if Netflix followed the Stranger Things example and split the 20 episodes into two parts so that we could get some of the season sooner rather than later, but only time will tell. For now, you can watch the first three seasons streaming with a Netflix subscription, and find other viewing options on our 2022 TV schedule.
