Warning: This article contains major spoilers for season 3 of Manifest.
Like the show itself, fans would love to see one of Manifest‘s key characters, Grace Stone be given a second life.
The drama series, which follows the passengers of a plane which disappears off the face of the earth only to reappear in New York five years later, was previously owned by NBC who planned to end it at season three.
But the final episode left fans with a shocking (and grave) cliffhanger. Luckily, Netflix heard our calls—the streaming giant picked it up and decided to revive it for another, final instalment—and thus, our curiosity over what actually went down in that final episode is set to be satisfied.
Here, we unpack the ending of Manifest season three, what really happened to Grace and what we can expect from season four.
What happened at the end of Manifest season 3?
Most notably, the ending of Manifest season three saw Angelina, a passenger from Flight 828, be rescued from the home she’d been locked in by her religious parents. But that experience, combined with falling in with a cult of doomsday preppers meant she herself became brainwashed.
Believing that the daughter of Ben and Grace Stone, Eden, was her guardian angel, she stabbed Grace to death and kidnaps her child.
It was a devastating and unparalleled moment in the series which left fans in shock at the way Grace was forced to meet her fate—but there’s a strong message behind it which we’ll get to later.
The other major moment in the final episode was the reappearance of Ben’s son, named Cal, who was on flight 828 with his dad. While Ben was frantically leading a research team that managed to recover a tail-fin from their plane, Cal disappeared upon touching it. He then reappeared completely grown up, proving that there’s some seriously supernatural forces at play here—something Ben has tried to prove wrong throughout each of the seasons.
So did Grace really die, and why?
We’ll just preface this by saying that while Grace certainly appeared to be murdered by Angelina, this show is known for its unexpected supernatural twists, so there’s a chance Grace might not really be dead.
But that said, it appears as though Manifest‘s showrunner Jeff Rake did intend for Grace’s death in season three to be final in order for her bereaved husband Ben to become more aggressive in his quest to understand what happened to their flight, and what that means for the people on it.
“A Season 4 of Manifest for Ben is absolutely centered around processing, digesting, coming to emotional terms with such an unspeakable loss, and then trying to find a way to seek vengeance, to kind of justify the act in terms of finding some meaning out of it,” Rake told TV Line.
As we all know, Ben is also massive skeptic about anything a little woo-woo, but Grace’s death finally makes him see things from a different perspective.
“You can imagine Ben in Season 4 seeking vengeance for his wife, seeking meaning for the inexplicable, and it becomes the absolute driving force for his character not only in Season 4 but in the back half of the series,” Rake added.
Why did Cal grow so much older on Manifest?
Cal’s reappearance as a fully-grown adult comes as a huge shock to Ben. It’s possible that his son’s sudden growth was down to the way that Ben was investigating the plane wreckage, which could well have intervened with the divine plan set out by these supposed supernatural powers.
Season four will no doubt answer more questions about this, so until then, we’ll just be over here piecing together the evidence by re-watching seasons one to three again.
You can watch all three seasons of Manifest on Netflix. Login or sign up to watch it here.
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