Manifest screened its pilot at SDCC and we got to see it! Here are seven teases for the series from Manifest‘s SDCC appearance.
Manifest is a new NBC drama, premiering in fall 2018, that will follow the lives of the passengers of flight MA828. To the passengers, the flight was business as usual, but while they were in the air the world around them, including all of their loved ones, somehow aged five years!
The story will focus on Ben and Michaela Stone, a pair of siblings that ended up on the flight after their return flight from their family vacation was overbooked. The lead characters are portrayed by Josh Dallas and Melissa Roxburgh, and the two actors, along with showrunner Jeff Rake, stopped by SDCC to screen the first episode of Manifest for an enthused audience and to answer some questions about the series.
Fans of Lost should definitely keep an eye out for Manifest, as its central premise is definitely similar to the popular plane-crash-centered mystery. Manifest also seems to be taking a similar approach to introducing and developing its characters, so if you enjoyed that aspect of Lost, this could be the new show for you.
While the premise is, without a doubt, reminiscent of Lost, Manifest still feels like a fresh new show with its own voice. Even the pilot, which is filled with exciting twists and turns, sets up some intriguing elements and dynamics that will surely differentiate the series. Remember, these characters have landed right back in their regular lives, only the people in it have assumed they were dead for five years!
Still not sure if Manifest is for you? Check out the trailer here, and read on for some teases from the show’s screening and panel at SDCC.
- Both Michaela and Ben will deal with serious complications in their love lives. For Michaela, it’s the fact that her fiance is now married to her best friend. Roxburgh said that beginning in the second episode, she will start to wrestle with what to do. “Do you let that person continue to be happy, or do you try to get them back?”
- Rake confessed that he basically has the entire series planned out already, provided they get picked up for the amount of seasons required (we’re not sure how many this would be). “I have a pretty serious roadmap. When you create a show that’s an event mystery in 2018, the buyers want to know that you know where you’re going. They want to know that there’s an endgame. When I went in I kind of walked them through to the end of the series. They don’t know everything, but I know a lot.”
- The idea of faith vs. science will be a big theme in Manifest. Ben is very calculative, while Michaela “believes that this all might connect to a higher calling.”
- We will also get to follow some of the other passengers from flight MA828. “Their lives will intertwine with Michaela and Ben in surprising ways,” Rake claimed.
- The passengers aren’t just dealing with how much the world has changed in the last five years. They also start to hear voices that tell them what to do in an almost psychic way. This new trick has some serious consequences for Ben and Michaela in the pilot episode, and apparently, this is only the beginning. Rake divulged that “these callings work in other ways. They’re not just voices, they’re not just visions. By the time we get to episode 4, things start to go a little bit sideways.”
- In the pilot, Michaela hints to a bit of her past that will surely be explored further in the future of the show. She mentions that someone died sitting next to her in a car, and she’s still suffering from the aftermath of it. She also refers to herself as a bad influence to Ben’s wife, so there’s something interesting there, for sure.
- We’re excited to see the dynamic grow between Ben’s children, Cal and Olive. They are twins, but suddenly, Olive has aged over the five years that Cal has missed. Olive has also always felt neglected by her parents due to her brother’s illness, and the attention that it requires.