5 Theories About ‘Manifest’, Netflix’s Most Baffling TV Series
Every so often a random series drops on Netflix that skyrockets in popularity beyond anyone’s expectations — and this time it’s a mysterious show called Manifest.
Manifest have been sitting at the top of Netflix Australia for most of 2022, which begs the question: why are so many people watching? It could be because the show already has three seasons, so it’s perfect bingeing material, and there’s no doubting that the show’s subject material is straight-up fascinating.
The series revolves around a group of passengers who manage to survive a plane crash, only to land back on ground five years later. The passengers haven’t aged, and when they return to their lives they must adapt to an evolved world — their loved ones are older, some have moved on with their lives, others have died.
But that’s not all the passengers have to grapple with, they now have newfound powers — or as the series loves to say every two minutes, ‘callings’ — which means they are sent messages to prevent disasters/deaths from happening. As the series continues, it only gets more twisted as the price the passengers have to pay for beating death becomes more apparent. Most of the story revolves around the Stone family: NYPD detective Michaela, her brother Ben, his wife Grace, and their twins Olive and the death-defying Cal.
If I had to describe the show, it’s something resembling Lost meets Ghost Whisperer, but written in the style of a daytime soap. It’s the kind of series that most fans admit is not very good — but they can’t look away.
Once you start watching #Manifest #Netflix, there is no going back!!
Its been 4 days and m lost in it until I finish all 3 seasons
— Zee (@nazia002) January 11, 2022
Manifest originally aired on NBC in the US back in 2018, but was cancelled last year following its third season. However, after being added to Netflix and finding a whole new wave of fans, the streaming platform has revived the show for a fourth and final season.
So what’s next for Manifest and what the hell does it all mean? As always, Reddit has many many theories. Over on the r/ManifestNBC subreddit, fans have obsessed over what drives the callings, what Cal’s role is, and why the Flight 828 passengers were saved.
Warning: the theories contained in this post include major spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the end of Season 3, it’s best to avoid reading further.
Fascinating Reddit theories about Manifest on Netflix:
(Some posts have been edited for clarity.)
1. The callings are to prove themselves worthy to beat death
“I think Cal coming back as an older person has something to do with the death day,” wrote @mission_ambitious. “This is going to sound dumb, but each passenger has a major calling, like a final boss, if you will. If they solve it, they beat the death day and return to society as if they were never on the flight. When Cal touched the tailfin [in Season 3], this was him beginning this ‘final boss’. That’s why he disappeared. Notice how we didn’t see what his calling was that led him to go to the tailfin…I think this is how all the passengers beat the death day.”
Another commenter added to this theory, “You read my mind. The death day is deadline for them to solve this big and final calling.”
2. Angelina is Satan
“Okay so hear me out, she’s super connected to Eden, as in the garden of Eden,” @AlternativePoem wrote. “The whole story of the garden of Eden is that Satan takes the form of a snake and manipulates Eve into eating fruit from the forbidden tree and therefore straying from God’s path. So Angelina has taken the form of an unsuspecting passenger and is using that status to manipulate Cal into incorrectly following the callings and therefore straying from the path that the callings want him to follow.”
They continued, “Further evidence includes the fact that Angelina came from a super religious family and then ‘fell from grace’ in their eyes when she started getting callings, similar to how Lucifer fell from grace when he was kicked out of heaven. Also, when she set the curtains on fire in Eden’s room they made the shape of burning angel wings behind her, again referencing the fact that Lucifer was an angel before being sent to hell. Also, all the callings that everyone is having — with the burning, the silent screaming, and the dark clouds — are all fairly obvious allusions to hell.”
This is a popular theory on the subreddit, with others adding to the explanation. “Lucifer vibes from her since the beginning. Fallen angel. False prophet. Uses faith to manipulate people. Masquerades as righteous and good,” posted @night__hawk_. “There’s also the obvious pun of her name,” another added referring to her name being a subversion of ‘Angel’.
3. Cal is a reincarnation of Al-Zuras
“If you forgot who Al-Zuras is, in Season 2 TJ finds a book called Al-Zuras journal,” the theory began. “Al-Zuras was on a boat which went missing for 10 years and mysteriously came back and from an episode mid-late Season 2, it was shown that the boat and the plane were in the same storm together even though they gapped 100s of years. I feel like one of the meanings of this is that Cal is Al-Zuras’s reincarnation, or that they are the same person. Their names are also alike: Cal and Al.
“What I find more intriguing is that on paper if you rearrange Al-Zuras’ name, it spells Lazarus — which I see is important due to the biblical turn of Season 3. Lazarus is a saint who died from sickness and was resurrected and was cured of his sickness. This shares many similarities with Cal’s terminal cancer diagnosis, even though he didn’t die. From the plane, they died and got resurrected. But when they came back, they had found a cure for cancer.
“Al-Zuras’s journal is filled with drawings of things from his time and 100s of years in the future (present-day for Cal). Cal also has a sketchbook with drawings from the future, both the journal, sketchbook, and callings are vague but can tell the future.
“If TJ comes back, they might try to read the rest of the journal and then find a cure to the death date (which Cal probably has). I predict in Season 4 that they find out Al-Zuras survived the death date and all that lifeboat stuff, and that Cal knows how to beat it too since he came back older.”
4. There are multiple time dimensions
“I just finished the series and I know it’s not complete but based off of what I watched I feel like Flight 828 went through a different time dimension,” @pwa09 began. “There are multiple realities going on at the same time (in our dimension) so the callings are basically forewarnings of what’s gonna happen in the future because that reality has already happened (in a different dimension). The callings are telling the people what they need to do to correct the timeline, since technically whatever is in their callings hasn’t happened yet (in our dimension).
“If you don’t follow the callings then you’re basically disrupting your own (and whoever else is in the calling) timeline, causing negative results (because not following a calling is basically altering what the future had already planned for you).
“I forget which episode but when the passengers all got together and watched the plane explode, I think that’s what really happened to the plane in a different dimension, and them watching it explode in front of them is like watching it from a different timeline. Idk if I’m making sense but I think I believe the whole multiple realities angle.”
This idea has some supporters. “They are living in the past, present, and future all at once,” one Redditor added. “I’m not sure why they are getting callings, but I believe they are supposed to manipulate a timeline that brings them back to before they got on that plane.”
5. Cal is the one sending the callings
“Everyone was supposed to have died, and they were supposed to have found the remnants of the plane, but they never did. Because they warped to a different timeline,”@uncleducker began. “How did this happen? Because during the dark lightning, Cal opened the window and saw something glowing. It was never revealed what he saw, but I believe the glow is a rift in time. He didn’t understand it, but the rift in time gave him a glimpse of the future. And when the plane crashed and everyone died, Cal used the rift to switch realities with the alternate timeline.”
“So, in the show’s timeline, the crash and the dead passengers got sucked into the alternate timeline, where the plane is now at the bottom of the ocean over there. Cal brought the plane and all the passengers from the alternate timeline (where they are supposed to be safe) to the show timeline,” they wrote.
“So what are the callings? They are Cal’s callings. Because he has been exposed to the rift, he knows what’s going to happen because he’s bouncing between two timelines. And he knows how things are NOT supposed to be in this timeline, so all the callings are for him to preserve the show timeline from being corrupted. So Cal is so central and powerful because of the rift, he doesn’t realise he is influencing all the passengers and having them correct the timeline for him. The images they see? They are all conjured from Cal’s mind, the best way for him to paint an image, the same way he draws the pictures. It’s not always clear, because he doesn’t understand how to control it. This also explains why Ben and Michaela have such powerful callings, because they are close to Cal and Cal’s leveraging the people he trusts the most.
“So when the tailfin was discovered, this was due to an event in the rift. The alternate timeline tailfin cannot exist in the show timeline. This is why Cal was adamant that this doesn’t belong here. When you tamper with the alternate timeline, the earthquakes happen, volcanic rifts began to appear, and the world became less stable.
“When Ben first touched the tailfin, he got knocked back because he could not coexist with two timelines. It’s like two negative ends of a magnet put together. However, for Cal, he was exposed to the rift, and therefore he could touch it (like the positive and negative forces together). Where did he go? He purposely went to the alternate timeline where the plane was supposed to have survived, but instead that plane swapped out with the show timeline and he’s now in a world where the plane is at the bottom of the ocean and the passengers are confirmed dead.”
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