Manifest creator Jeff Rake assures fans that the series ending will not change, even though the creative team will only have a single season to wrap up everything. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Rake spoke about the series cancellation by NBC last June and the current deal with Netflix that allows the show to have a proper ending, explaining how he had to change his plans to keep the same conclusion while fitting the plot in 20 episodes.
The series about a passenger plane that gets lost in the Bermuda Triangle for five years was first developed to take place through six seasons. However, the early cancellation left a lot of cliffhangers unsolved. Now that Manifest got picked up by Netflix for a final season, fans wondered if Rake would change the planned ending in order to fit the story in the upcoming episodes.
But, according to Rake, “the endgame won't change at all.” As the creator explains, he has been wondering how to fit the story in a two-hour movie since he learned about the cancellation, as this was the most likely extension he conceived at the time. So, if Rake could fit Manifest ending in a single movie, he’ll probably have no issues putting it into an entire season.
According to Rake, he spent so long reworking the story that having 20 episodes will actually allow him to explore Manifest’s plot precisely as he intended. In Rake’s words.
“It would have been stressful and would not have been ideal, but I would have figured out my way through it. Given that I've had to go through the thought exercise this summer of how to get to the original endgame in two episodes, six episodes, or nine episodes, I feel like it's an embarrassment of riches to have 20 episodes to tell the rest of the story. So yes, I have always talked about three more seasons — and part of that was chronological because it's always been my goal to get to the series finale in real-time in accordance with the five and a half years that the passengers had back — and that might have to adjust somewhat depending on how these episodes roll out. The good news is I am absolutely confident that 20 episodes give me enough time to tell the entirety of the story as I always intended to. When I've talked in the past about having a roadmap all the way to the end of the series, that didn't mean that I had a roadmap for literally every single episode. I have a roadmap with a series of twists and turns and flags in the sand that we would ultimately hit in order to tell the core stories within our mythology and within our relationship drama. So it will not be a particularly difficult exercise to overlay that same exact roadmap onto 20 episodes. It will be quite organic.”
Manifest’s first season has 16 episodes, while subsequent seasons have 13. So, while Netflix only renewed the show for a fourth and final season, the increased number of episodes should give Rake enough breathing place to keep his intended ending in place.
The first three seasons of Manifest are streaming on Netflix right now. Unfortunately, there’s still no release date for the fourth and final season of the show.