Manifest-1

Please allow us to take your mind back to 2021, when NBC cancelled Manifest after three seasons and left the Flight 828 mystery hanging in the air with a plethora of mysteries unanswered. Good grief! Of all the places to stop, they chose that one? And ironically, that’s still a mystery.

Fans were furious, and frankly, nobody blamed them. Manifest had spent years piling mystery on top of mystery and pulled viewers fathomlessly into its strange little world, only for NBC to suddenly slam the brakes on. Close your eyes and try to recall how furious you were. What happened was not closure but a clear robbery.

Except the story was not ending at all, because over on Netflix, Manifest was just getting started. Manifest hit Netflix four days before NBC pulled the plug, and the timing could not have been stranger. The network had decided the show was finished, but over on Netflix, people were finding Flight 828 for the first time and bingeing like lunatics. What a mess!

That surge gave the fan campaign fresh fuel, and the calls to save the show became impossible to ignore. Netflix then upped the game and ordered a 20-episode final season, giving Manifest the ending NBC had abandoned. Hallelujah! The show had gone from cancelled to rescued in the space of one wild summer.

You would think that would be enough drama for one show, but apparently not! Netflix is now returning to the same universe with Arrivals: A New Manifest Mystery, a brand-new series from creator Jeff Rake. The franchise is having more resurrections than Jesus at this point, but who’s complaining?

Now, before anybody starts shouting “Season Five!” and throwing socks around the living room, hold your horses. Arrivals is not a continuation of the original story, and it will instead introduce a new cast and a completely new mystery set inside the same world.

The numbers also make Netflix’s decision pretty easy to understand. The company says all four seasons have pulled in more than 130million views since early 2023, while season four reached number one in more than 90 countries. Ninety! At that point, a spin-off is looking crystal clear, isn’t it?

Jeff Rake is back too, with Margaret Easley and Laura Putney joining him as co-creators and co-showrunners. That should be enough for anyone worried about Netflix taking some random sci-fi idea and slapping the Manifest name on it. Please! We have standards.

The annoying part is that Netflix is still keeping the cast and release date under wraps, so the details remain out of reach. But just look at the journey: cancelled in 2021, rescued by Netflix, given an adequate ending, and now expanded into another series. Manifest really be manifesting, eh!