Summary
The season premiere is full of the twists and turns we’ve become accustomed to from a show of this caliber.
We recap the Netflix series Manifest season 4, episode 1, “Touch-And-Go,” which contains spoilers.
The season opener is dramatic and full of twists and turns, as we’d come to expect from a show of this caliber. Ben is struggling to cope with his losses and seems to have given up, while Michaela follows a calling that leads her to a man previously presumed dead.
Manifest season 4, episode 1 recap
Manifest season 4, episode 1 opens with a group of scientists running experiments on a man. He suddenly starts glowing, the lab explodes, and we see the man run off.
We then catch up with the Stone family, who were left devastated by Grace’s murder at the end of season 3. Everyone, apart from Ben, seems to believe Angelina committed murder-suicide after kidnapping his and Grace’s daughter, Eden. Two years have passed since the events from last season, and Ben is unrecognizable. He chooses to ignore the callings and spends his days putting posters up of his missing daughter while ignoring his other two children. He also stopped caring about Death Day or the Lifeboat or anything to do with flight 828.
Michaela and Zeke are still happily married and have moved into the Stone household with Ben, Olive, and Cal, who’s now a fully-grown teenager. The family has been keeping Cal’s identity a secret as they want to keep him safe from government experiments. And speaking of the government, it’s revealed that The Registry started closely monitoring all the passengers from flight 828. Jared has been stripped of his detective’s badge for helping Michaela and her family in the past and is now a uniformed patrol officer.
In the present, Jared and Mick are not on speaking terms and keep avoiding each other. Yet Jared shows up at the house to deliver some devastating news to Ben: The police have legally declared his missing daughter dead as they’re convinced both she and Angelina perished shortly after the kidnapping.
Meanwhile, Saanvi is in a private research lab with Vance, where they’re investigating flight 828. She is obsessively rewatching the recording of Captain Bill Daly’s momentary appearance in the cockpit before the entire plane vanished at the end of season 3.
The Stones have to resolve two Callings in the season premiere. Michaela keeps seeing cherry blossoms, leading her to a shipping container from China. In it, she finds Henry Kim, the man from the start of the episode, and takes him to Vance and Saandi’s lab. It turns out Henry was the passenger supposedly executed in Singapore, but instead he has been experimented on in China. He escaped captivity to come to the U.S. and find Cal. Henry has the black box from flight 828. Cal retrieves the box which was left behind in the shipping container and, in the process, gets his first Calling in two years.
Zeke is now working as a counselor helping drug addicts. His powers as an empath seem to have evolved, and he’s able to calm people down by touching them and taking on their pain. He does this for Henry Kim who is severely traumatized.
Ben’s Calling leads him to fellow passenger, Anna Ross, who previously helped them save Cal’s life. As Ben isn’t interested in following his Calling, Cal goes to speak to Anna who claims she’s been drawing windmills. But when the windmill printed on Eden’s death certificate starts moving, Ben meets up with Anna and follows the calling thinking it will lead him to his daughter. It doesn’t. Instead, Ben ends up saving a man and his young son.
Flashbacks reveal that Ben and Olive blame Cal for what happened to Grace and Eden. It’s also revealed that Ben can’t remember what happened while he was gone, but knows all the answers are on the plane. However, the plane disappeared. Interestingly, at the end of season 2, the tailfin disappeared from Eureka after Saandi killed the Major, and the whole plane disappeared at the exact moment Angelina murdered Grace.
Manifest season 4, episode 1 ending
At home, Ben says he regrets following the Calling and vows never to stop looking for his daughter. He then burns her death certificate. Meanwhile, Saandi is analyzing the black box and hears Captain Daly’s call for help as the plane was vanishing.
As Manifest season 4, episode 1 ends, we go back to Anna Ross’s home and learn that Ben was right all along. Both his daughter and Angelina are very much alive and in hiding. As it turns out, the Calling Ben and Anna followed were actually Eden’s.
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