Over the course of Netflix’s Manifest, the passengers and government are desperate to find an answer to the mystery of Flight 828. Michaela Stone (Melissa Roxburgh) leans heavily into the Callings from the very beginning, believing they hold the answer to her questions. Saanvi (Parveen Kaur), a woman of science, tries to find a logical answer — one that doesn’t rely on faith and visions. Ben (Josh Dallas) is caught in the middle of both, helping them with their respective needs, for much of the show, unsure which method will help them find the truth and survive their death date.
Meanwhile, from the moment their plane touched down in November 2018, five and a half years after their departure, the government works on unlocking the secret to utilize and weaponize it, as we see with the Major (Elizabeth Marvel) and her team using brutal and inhumane methods to trigger Callings. Given what we know now about the story and where it leads, this investigation into Flight 828 feels like a waste of precious time for our beloved characters — notably, Saanvi.
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'Manifest's Scientific Exploration Made Sense Early On in the Show
When the passengers return home to a world that had forgotten them, unaged, it makes perfect sense to dig into the science of the situation. It’s a rational response for those involved and those looking in on the situation from the outside, desperate to find an explanation for such a miraculous situation. In the first season, as the government tests on passengers to artificially create Callings, Saanvi discovers that the passengers have a marker in their blood that one would find after having an ischemic stroke. In the second season, while toying with the marker in her own blood, Saanvi removes it, which comes with the consequence of removing her Callings. Then, in the third season, a piece of the plane — well, the plane that would have ended up at the bottom of the ocean in 2013 — returns, leading Saanvi and a group of other scientists to work with the government at a location called Eureka to continue digging into what happened on the flight.
The Reveal of the Divine Changed Everything
Manifest Season 4 Part 1 reveals what we’ve known to be true since about the second season: the Callings and the mystery of the plane are connected to a Divine Consciousness, a.k.a. God. This changed the trajectory of the story, but only because the passengers also figured out that their predicted death date — June 2, 2024 — is also the date that the world will end. Their Callings became about more than just the passengers staying alive; it became about saving the world.
Nonetheless, the series continued to force the scientific element, using up so much of the little time in the final season to delve into this new aspect of the mystery, discovering volcanoes about to erupt around the globe. But, at a certain point, the series needed to give up on the science of the situation. Essentially everything the passengers learned through this exploration was or could have been figured out with the Callings as well. Once we learned it was an act of God that caused this and nothing short of a miracle could stop it, the science of the situation became moot. Though we could have used less of this aspect of the show beforehand, too. Instead, so much time was wasted, which came at a cost.
The Science Stole Time from the Callings, Relationships, and Saanvi
So much of Manifest is wasted on a scientific investigation that, ultimately, became fruitless and irrelevant. There was nothing scientific about the situation; there were only scientific markers for the acts of God that were occurring around them. The Callings pointed them toward the answers anyway, like that of the omega sapphire and the fragment of Noah’s ark. The time we spent on this investigation could have been used to develop the characters more, like Olive — whose life was greatly impacted by this despite not being a passenger herself. It could have been used on developing relationships, new and old, that helped emphasize the importance of beating the death date. Looking back, it’s frustrating and astounding how much time we missed out on due to the series’ overwhelming focus on this element, especially with Saanvi.
From the very beginning of Manifest, Dr. Saanvi Bahl is the go-to scientist for all things Flight 828. She helps save Cal from his cancer early on, then becomes invested in the research into the Callings and, later, the fragments of the plane and ark. Because of this, we rarely get to see Saanvi outside the lab, which is a massive disappointment and a waste of the character’s potential and the actor’s talent. Saanvi rarely investigates Callings, losing them for more than half of the series, which is perplexing considering how the Callings are painted to be the answer to surviving the death date. Her personal relationships are practically non-existent with anyone except Ben, though nothing truly comes of that connection, and she has no close connection with anyone else on the show. Saanvi is used and abused for her skills, repeatedly, and even forced to miss out on most of the last year with her fellow passengers because she is imprisoned by the government and forced to continue investigating the disasters that are teeing up the end of the world.
This also greatly damages the “happy ending” Saanvi is given with former love Alex (Sydney Morton) in the series finale. Saanvi’s focus is always on work. When she does rarely interact with Alex throughout Manifest, those interactions haven’t been anything truly special or showcased this relationship in any meaningful way. Therefore, Saanvi’s proclamation that she’ll never get over Alex and her subsequent reunion with Alex in 2013 after surviving the death date fall flat. We see this relationship only a handful of times, so it means nothing. In short, the focus on the science of the situation came at the cost of Saanvi’s personal life, which only could have made sense and been worthwhile if her happy ending was with Ben.
Every episode of Manifest is now available to stream on Netflix.
