One of the biggest cliffhangers headed into Manifest Season 4 Part 1 — aside from Angelina (Holly Taylor) killing Grace (Athena Karkanis) and kidnapping Ben (Josh Dallas) and Grace’s daughter Eden — was Cal (first played by Jack Messina, then Ty Doran) suddenly showing up five and a half years older than he had been the day before at Eureka when he touched the tailfin during the government’s dark lighting experimentation on it and completely vanished. As Grace is bleeding out on the floor from a stab wound, Cal comforts her and Grace instantly recognizes her son. He tells his dying mother that he understands what needs to happen now, as the passengers’ fate with their upcoming death date is even more uncertain than ever, giving viewers a foreboding chill as the Stone family’s entire life had just been flipped upside down.
Where Are We When We Start the Final Season of 'Manifest'?
When the series returns for the first half of the final season, we pick up two years later where Cal has begun adult life under the assumed false identity of distant cousin Gabriel Stone (to not get any more attention from the scary government than they already have). But, as we quickly discover, Cal no longer remembers where he was after touching the tailfin or what he learned. He likens it to waking up from a dream where the knowledge slips away, leaving you desperately trying to grasp it in your mind before it is gone forever. Worse, while Cal has aged physically to the age he would have been if the flight had not mysteriously disappeared for five and a half years, he is still mentally the young teenager we knew before. He has no idea how or why he came back in the body of an adult, missing out on even more of the life he should have had. This creates quite a few issues in the episodes moving forward with how the series handles (or, rather, doesn’t handle) Cal’s new normal.
One major example of this is how the family reacts, in flashbacks, to Cal reappearing at Zeke (Matt Long) and Michaela’s (Melissa Roxburgh) home following Grace’s death. Now looking like an adult, Olive (Luna Blaise) instantly recognizes her twin brother before screaming at him. She blames him for their mother’s death because Cal showed Angelina kindness after Grace kicked her out following the incident with Eden where Angelina would have burned them alive. Cal showed Angelina where the spare key was stashed outside, secretly having her living in his room due to the connection he believed they shared because of the Callings. Once Olive is comforted, she slowly comes to move on from her misplaced blame. However, Ben blames Cal from the start, too, and that continues until well into the fourth season.
The issue is it’s impossible to believe that this would have been their reaction if Cal hadn’t aged while in “the glow.” He was still mentally a child, having experienced something otherworldly to come back and find his mother dying in his arms. Then he was further traumatized by his father and sister, who didn’t stop to consider that Cal was still a child deep down. They would have never treated Cal like this otherwise, and he didn’t have the tools or the emotional experience to begin to deal with everything he had just gone through. Still, it’s wiped away, disregarded, and Cal — forgiving and kind-hearted as ever — somehow moves on. Even the fact that Cal had to stand in the background of his own mother’s funeral isn’t given proper attention or care for the unbelievable pain that would cause him.
Cal Decides to Seize the Day
Later in the season, after discovering his leukemia is in remission, Cal decides to seize the day. He goes on a date with a girl he met earlier, Violet (Sarah Marie Rodriguez), while at Adrian’s (Jared Grimes) compound, spending the day at a karaoke bar. They have fun, he reveals his true identity to her (with which she has no problem), and they kiss goodbye at the end of the date before deciding they’d like to do it again. But, the series doesn’t address the unsettling implications of this. Violet, a grown woman, is on a date with Cal, who physically looks like an adult but is around 15 years old mentally. He missed all of his formative teenage years that would have started his exploration into dating and girls. So, she is essentially on a date with someone who should be in high school, and it’s just… wrong. It feels gross, like the writers didn’t put enough thought into the implications of the situation before moving forward.
Then, later that day, Violet is murdered (by, spoiler alert, Angelina’s parents). Jared (J.R. Ramirez) arrives at the Stone residence to inform them that Cal is going to be brought in as a person of interest, the last person to see Violet alive, and that’s precisely what happens. Though the truth comes out and Cal is cleared, he is arrested for the murder of the first girl he has ever gone on a date with, his first kiss. And, again, the impact this has on Cal is practically non-existent. Sure, his cancer worsening is distracting, so let’s not pretend he didn’t have anything else going on, but the series continues to fail to properly write Cal.
He shouldn’t have the bandwidth or emotional capacity to deal with these horrific things that keep happening to him, regardless of what he has already had to endure in his life. He’s written as a full-fledged adult despite the series repeatedly reminding us that Cal is, mentally and at heart, still a teenager. This could have been avoided if it wasn’t specifically pointed out that Cal had not aged mentally, but the writers shot themselves in the foot by including that early on. Overall, the interesting concept fails to land with how it is handled. The impact of everything on Cal, especially when adding in the fact that Cal didn’t have a Calling for the entire two years away, is negligible in the writing. Instead, it’s simply done for shock value and to push forward the story with no regard to the character himself, causing it to fall flat.
Every episode of Manifest is now streaming on Netflix. The second half of the final season is expected to premiere next year.