All The Evidence Manifest Is A Time Travel Story
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Multiple hints in Manifest signal that the show is really a time travel story. Ever since the beginning of the series, time travel has remained one of the most obvious answers to Manifest’s central mystery. However, characters like Ben have rallied around resurrection as the explanation for everything they’ve experienced.
It’s worth noting that the entire premise of the series made time travel an option. Somehow, the plane – and everyone on it –returned five and a half years after its disappearance. Since none of the Flight 828 passengers had aged, there was a sense that they had all traveled through time. But, that was always just one theory for what happened. In the season 2 finale, the discovery of the tailfin seemingly provided proof that the plane was destroyed, meaning that it wasn’t lost in time with the passengers. Instead, it was heavily theorized that Flight 828 was brought back to its original form several years after its destruction. The same was believed to be the case for the other characters who had experienced this strange phenomenon.
As Manifest season 3 continued to dive into its religious connections, the idea that a higher power resurrected the Flight 828 passengers started to look like a truly plausible scenario. Even so, certain evidence in the show that points to Manifest being about time travel is difficult to refute. Here’s every moment in the series that makes time travel the best possible answer for Manifest’s biggest mysteries.
Captain Daly’s Season 1 Disappearance
Apparently, Captain Daly was a believer in the time travel theory. In season 1’s “Contrails”, he concocted a plan to recreate what happened to Flight 828 and show the world that the plane’s disappearance wasn’t his fault. After kidnapping Fiona and taking a plane into a dark lightning storm, Daly said, “see you in 2024”. Clearly, it was his belief that the storm would warp him and Fiona into the future. Later, it was claimed that the military shot the plane down, but authorities’ inability to find the wreckage indicated otherwise. The vanishing of Daly and Fiona was a sign that his plan was a success and that the pair were sent to the future. When Manifest returns, the show will get a chance to prove once and for all if Daly’s hypothesis was right. Since Manifest is doing a two-year time skip when it comes back, it won’t be long before it’s 2024. If that’s the case, the return of Captain Daly and Fiona Clarke may be right around the corner.
Al-Zuras Saw Flight 828
The investigation into Al-Zuras yielded one of the passengers’ most ground-breaking discoveries. In Manifest season 2, it was found out that Al-Zuras – a 15th-century explorer – and his crew disappeared and returned after a period of several years. After vanishing in a storm while at sea, they came back ten years later with no knowledge of what happened or where they had been. Plus, they experienced the Callings. And much like Cal Stone, Al-Zuras recorded his visions with drawings. Most of what he went through was written down in a journal. Interestingly, one of his entries held a huge time travel clue. During the time they were gone, Al-Zuras and his crew supposedly saw a “silver dragon” flying above the ship. Later, the passengers realized through a Calling of their own that what Al-Zuras had actually seen was Flight 828.
Based on that reveal, it seems Flight 828 and Al-Zuras’ ship coexisted in the same time and place. Obviously, such a scenario would be impossible without time travel. Al-Zuras seeing the plane likely means that either his ship was transported to the present or Flight 828 traveled back into the past. A third explanation is that they both went to the same unspecified point in the timeline. Either way, Manifest’s “silver dragon” tease doesn’t make sense without time travel being in play.
Cal’s Return In The Manifest Season 3 Finale
Hours after touching the tailfin and mysteriously disappearing in front of everyone at Eureka, Cal came back five years older in the closing minutes of the Manifest season 3 finale. Unless the tailfin magically aged him into a 17-year-old (which is hard to imagine), Cal must have traveled through time. If that happened, Cal could have wound up in the past or the future where he could have lived five years of his life away from his family. After that, Cal presumably found a way to get back to his proper place in the timeline. Only that could explain why he told Grace that he knows what they have to do now. Wherever – or whenever – Cal went must have provided him with a new understanding of how to deal with the Callings.
Cal’s return all but confirmed time travel’s importance to the show, which is why season 4 may be the point where the series finally stops dancing around the concept. Cal’s aging is sure to be met with dozens of questions from the other characters. He’ll need to explain what he’s been up to, where he’s been, and more. When those answers come, it could lead to a meaningful discussion about time travel and an end to all the talk about divine resurrection.
Captain Daly’s Pilot Uniform
Manifest followed up one hint with another when it used its final scene to offer a shocking Captain Daly cameo. Inexplicably, Frank Deal’s character popped up in the cockpit of the plane at Eureka and vanished along with the recovered wreckage. At first, this was interpreted as a continuation of his season 1 story, but two specific details reveal that Captain Daly’s return isn’t what it appears to be. First of all, Daly isn’t with Fiona, who was at his side when he disappeared in “Contrails”. Secondly, Daly was wearing black when he was last seen, yet is dressed in his pilot uniform for his cameo. What this means is that the character that appeared in the season 3 finale must be an earlier version of Daly, rather than the one that vanished previously.
Daly’s pilot uniform implies that he briefly time-traveled to 2021 during the five and a half years that the Flight 828 passengers were gone. That lines up with Al-Zuras seeing Flight 828 hundreds of years ago and takes another step toward erasing any lingering doubts pertaining to the role of time travel in Manifest’s story. Things could get even more complex in season 4, especially if the two versions of Captain Daly end up crossing paths, which would naturally cause all sorts of timeline issues.
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