Manifest finally made its return to TV this past weekend, as the first 10 episodes of its fourth and final season were released on Netflix. The series was cancelled by NBC after three seasons and rescued by Netflix, thanks to the record-breaking streaming performance of its first three installments. Manifest coming to Netflix to wrap up its story made a lot of sense, but the numbers for its first weekend aren’t quite as high as one might have expected.
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On Tuesday, Netflix posted the global streaming numbers from the past week and, unsurprisingly, Manifest was the number one series around the globe after just three days on the service. That’s good news, but the numbers aren’t nearly as high as other shows that have debuted on Netflix this year.
Over its first three days, Manifest was streamed for a total of 57.1 million hours. That’s a lot compared to the other new shows on Netflix this week, but the series comes in behind a lot of other 2022 originals, even when you exclude record-breakers like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, and Dahmer.
The Watcher, which debuted last month, opened to more than 125 million hours viewed, while the fifth season of Cobra Kai delivered 106 million hours in September. The Sandman premiered at the start of August to 69 million hours viewed.
Given its history, Manifest felt like a safe bet to be a massive hit upon its return to Netflix, but that doesn’t seem to be the case just yet. Hopefully the series will continue to pick up steam in the coming weeks, but it only has 14 more days before it comes toe-to-toe with Tim Burton’s Wednesday.
“It’s just total devastation for Ben,” Manifest star Josh Dallas told Netflix’s Tudum when asked about his character’s arc in Season 4. “He’s left with a profound anger, a void where he’s lost himself. And the thing about anger is that it begs to stick around. It robs you of your beauty, and you end up hurting the people that love you. He really checks out from the people that are still around him – and from the ‘callings.’ He’s done with them. In his mind, they’ve not given him anything.”
The first half of Manifest Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.
