Ben and Vance are on a mission to track down a rumour which could – if true – blow the mystery of 828 wide open. An intense calling shared by Ben, Cal and Michaela leads to Michaela and Zeke’s honeymoon being cut short.

At the end of the previous season, it felt somewhat as if the writers had backed themselves into a corner with Manifest. With the Major dead, Zeke apparently ‘cured’ and then the tailfin being pulled out of the sea by fishermen, the setups were there to continue the story, but it felt like it would take a lot of work.

This episode skips forward a fair bit – Zeke and Michaela are on an extended honeymoon and Ben has somehow become a sort of budget secret agent, working in conjunction with Vance and his team to track down that mysterious tailfin and see if it can provide them with some answers. Which of course, when you think about it, it can’t. If it’s real, then they aren’t who they thought they were and they never came back. If it’s not, well it answers nothing at all.

The odd way in which the show chooses to handle this feels weak on several levels. Why Ben ends up in conflict with the authorities seems rooted more in a ‘foreign cops bad’ trope rather than any narrative logic. Why the fishermen who found it have kept it hidden despite being confident it will make them their fortune is similarly left unclear. And then the way the whole situation resolves feels repetitive for oner character in particular as well as being a little pointless. This isn’t a strong start.

Meanwhile, Michaela and Zeke’s honeymoon gets interrupted when Michaela, Cal and Ben all share the same powerful calling which suggests that a woman who was a passenger is in grave danger.This subplot also resolves poorly. There’s nothing new here really – the ‘twist’, such as it is, is obvious from early on and again the way in which it all resolves feels overly familiar.

Elsewhere, Saanvi is having flashbacks to when she accidentally murdered the Major as she tries to atone for her ‘sins’ by working in a clinic also simultaneously overseen by Vance’s men. Basically, having had the main woman of colour in the cast do a spectacular heel turn and lose her callings, she’s now relegated to being the Gal in the Chair. Cool…

It feels like the show is going for a more supernatural bent in this third season from the off, and that may well pay off, but it’s a pedestrian start, full of overly familiar plot threads and unsatisfying resolutions. Even the final pre-credits reveal just feels like the thing is grasping for some sort of solid ground, and that’s a bad sign in an opening episode.

Verdict: Not up to its usual standards, this one needs to level itself off quick, before it crashes and burns like 828. 6/10

Greg D. Smith