Manifest: Is it the Heir of Lost?

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Autumn means new TV shows and new seasons coming out. Among the others, one I was so curious to know more about was Manifest. The pilot of this new season was released on September 24^th, and after having watched not even the first episode, but since just the trailer was released, the whole world of TV shows lovers almost shouted the same sentence: Is it the Heir of Lost?

Why? Well, because the main ingredients of this new series are basically the same as Lost, one of the best TV shows ever produced (in my humble opinion): there is a plane, there is a group of people (who not necessarily know each other) travelling on it, there is a mystery linked to that plane, and there are strange, paranormal activities surrounding that group of people after the plane lands. Does it ring a bell?

Here is the plot of the first episode: in Jamaica, a group of people is waiting for their flight to depart, bringing them back to NY. The Stone family is among that group: Mr and Mrs Stone, with their sons Michaela, a police officer, and Ben. Together with them, Ben's family: his wife Grace and their 9 years old twins, Cal (who has a pretty strong form of leukaemia) and Olive.

As they are waiting, the lady on the flight desk announces that the flight is overbooked, thus they are asking for volunteers to take a later flight. Ben decides to do it, followed by Michaela and little Cal, who wants to stay with his dad. So the family splits, with some of them staying and others leaving.

Ben, Michaela and Cal then take Montego flight 828. During the flight, the plane is subject to some severe turbulence, shaking it pretty badly for a few minutes. After that, everything comes back to normal, the captain apologises for not having advised the passengers, saying the area of turbulence was not shown on the radar, and the aircraft proceeds towards NY.

On approaching land, the captain contacts control tower advising they are landing, but the people on the radio first ask them more than once details of their flight number, number of passengers and captain's name, then oddly ask them to divert to a nearby, smaller airport. There, the plane is met by police, and the crew is asked to let their passengers disembark on the runway. Pretty pissed, they start questioning what's going on, and the chief of police declares that that plane and all its passengers have been missing, believed dead, for 5 years. So, although for the people on the plane they just spent a couple of hours on a plane, in reality five years have passed.

Obviously family and friends relations at this point are very difficult: Michaela's fiance' married another woman, because he thought she was dead; Olive is a teenager, but Cal is still a child, despite them being twins; Mrs Stone died from sadness. On the top of the shock for just being told five years have passed, the people on the plane also have to face some dramatic changes.

One of them is doctor Saanvi, a researcher who was looking for a new cure against cancer. Although she was still working on it, during the five years of her absence her team developed her studies, and are applying them, with some success. Saanvi then decides to enrol Cal in the group of people experimenting the new cure, as she believes there is a connection among the people on the plane.

But the oddness is not over. Michaela, and later Ben, start to hear a voice (their own) in their head insistingly asking them to do some things, in order to save people or to fix a situation. For example, while in a bus Michaela hears her own voice ordering to slow down, and she asks the driver to do it. He is a bit pissed, but slows down in time to prevent running over a child who crossed the street without watching. Michaela and Ben discuss the matter, and come to the conclusion that the two of them might not be the only one to whom strange things are happening.

As a proof to it, that night all the passengers of Montego flight 828 feel the urge to go see the plane that brought them back. As they all find themselves there and stair at the aircraft, the plane suddenly takes fire and explodes, leaving them astonished and confused.

That's a summary of the first episode. I watched the second one as well, and for now the intention of the show is presenting the main characters, and let us know a bit more of the travellers of flight 828, together with an unveil of the mysterious qualities they developed since landing.

Another similarity with Lost is the recurrence of the same numbers. Who watched Lost will definitely remember that the string of numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 basically appear everywhere during the seasons. Well, something similar happens in Manifest, when, for example, we can see the numbers 828 (the same as the Montego flight number) on a panel attached on a gate behind which two dogs barks, and which Michaela is pushed to free from the voice in her head.

I think that there is so much good material to work with in this TV show, and if they use them well, we can have a very nice product, and not just something reminding us another TV show we used to love. I will definitely keep on following it, and we might discuss about it when the show finishes, to wrap up how it went, what we liked, what we didn't. So let me know if you watched this show as well, if you felt a connection with Lost as well and if you liked it.

Talk to you very soon, until then take care!

M.