With Griffin about to go public about the Callings, Ben, Michaela, Zeke and Saanvi all experience the same Calling which seems directly related. Cal has a disturbing new vision. Saanvi struggles with her anxiety. Jared continues to be suspicious of Zeke.

As finales go, Manifest serves up a doozy this week, even if certain elements are slightly more predictable than others, and I’m going to assume the writers were already firmly assured of a second season when they wrote this one (even if it’s not yet been officially announced) because the alternative is that they are all potentially monsters, with this many threads left dangling.

Griffin was a nice new idea, and it seemed odd to have introduced him so late in the game – the concept of someone bad getting the callings and using them for their own ends wasn’t exactly brand new (see the episode about the setting up of a church by one cynical entrepreneur) – but this took it a lot further. This wasn’t some ambiguously immoral businessman, but an honest-to-goodness murderer intent on making use of his new found power to avoid the consequences of his own actions. This time out, it turns out there’s more than the simple change up of having a baddie with powers to Griffin’s re-emergence, and it links to one particular cliffhanger that’s bound to put a whole new spin on things next time out.

That links to Cal’s latest vision which he won’t share with anyone except Zeke. Just when you think this is going to perhaps be one of those tired ‘I can’t tell my family, only my new bestie’ things, it takes a really dark turn. I’m a fan of how much Jack Messina has brought to the role of Cal and here he’s on top form, alternating between scared little boy and genuinely creepy older-than-his-years young man. It’s a demanding role and he fulfils it well, ably matched by the still ambiguous Zeke.

And there’s Jared, getting very hot under the collar about Zeke for reasons that seem mostly related to jealousy, however well-founded some of his concerns might appear to be. It’s a bold move of the writers to have Michaela thrust straight into the middle of another love triangle so soon after apparently resolving the last one (though I’m not sure we have seen the last of Lourdes just yet) but it does work, even if Jared’s insistence on following this through and basically harassing poor Zeke does get a little infuriating.

Props too to Parveen Kaur for her turn as Saanvi: watching the character struggle with the lingering effects of her trauma has been a refreshing take to see on the subject. Too often, shows gloss over this element of traumatic experiences, and I shouldn’t be surprised that Manifest is one that instead digs deep into it.

But it’s in the last ten minutes of the episode where things really kick into high gear and revelations start flying thick and fast. There’s news that should be happy, news that definitely isn’t, action, drama, tears and a twist that (if you’re like me) you’ll see coming just before it happens which doesn’t make it any less of a shock. The final scene is perhaps a little predictable and one of the more cliched cliffhanger setups for the genre, but I don’t care – I want to know what happens next.

Verdict: As explosive a finale as you might expect – so many new threads started in anticipation of the next season, quite a few surprises and never a dull moment. Cracking stuff. 9/10

Greg D. Smith