Manifest Season 4’s Timeline & Time Jump Explained
Manifest season 4 is confirmed to feature a significant time jump. Based on the entire premise of the series, it’s always been understood that the main characters had a five-and-a-half-year journey ahead of them. After all, that’s how much time the passengers have to live before their Death Date is set to arrive. And with Manifest entering its fourth and final season, the characters are approaching the finish line, but still have some time to solve the show’s biggest mysteries.
The Manifest season 4 trailer confirms that it’s been two years since the events of the season 3 finale. That means Ben, Michaela, Saanvi, Olive, and all the others have been dealing with the fallout from Angelina’s murder of Grace for a long time now. With that much time having gone by, Olive should be college-age by that point. The decision to jump that far ahead will force Manifest to fill in quite a few gaps, as all sorts of developments should have occurred during a two-year time skip. Many of them will naturally need to be discussed in some form or another.
When Does Manifest Season 4 Take Place?
In the Manifest season 4 trailer, it’s said that the Flight 828 passengers have “18 months” until the Death Date. The date in question is well-known by the characters to be June 2, 2024, which places the beginning of Manifest season 4 part 1’s story in December 2022. Since the passengers returned in November 2018, they’ll have been back for almost four years at the start of the new season. They still have more than a full year left before they’ll have to come up with a concrete solution to the Lifeboat problem, but their situation should still be instilled with a greater sense of urgency than it was in the previous seasons.
Why Manifest Is Jumping So Far Ahead
Manifest choosing to feature such a massive time skip was a surprising decision, but also one that makes sense. As a series with a set endpoint (June 2, 2024), it’s understandably important for the series to ensure that its story quickly catches up in the timeline, especially since the story was still in 2020 during Manifest season 3. The time jump wouldn’t have been necessary if Manifest had stuck to showrunner Jeff Rake’s original six-season plan at NBC, but the early ending has forced the show to take a different strategy. With so much time remaining on the clock in season 3, a time jump was inevitable. As for how it can handle that without skipping vital stories, scenes of the Stone house after Grace’s death in the trailer prove that flashbacks will be used.
Because there’s still 18 months to go, this is unlikely to be the last time that Manifest skips ahead. Unless the show finds room for smaller time jumps between episodes, another major one should occur before Manifest season 4 part 2, which is the chapter of the story that’ll bring everything to a close. At some point before the end of the series, the show will have to work its way up to the summer of 2024, which is sure to the most challenging and chaotic few weeks of the Flight 828 passengers’ lives.
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