Netflix Confirms Major Time Jump for Manifest Final Season

This November, Manifest finally makes its long-awaited return to TV, but it comes with a significant time jump. The hit mystery series was cancelled by NBC after its third season and quickly became a streaming juggernaut for Netflix, leading the streaming service to pick it up for a 20-episode final season. The first 10 episodes of that final season arrive on November 10th, and they will begin two years after the Season 3 finale.

Netflix recently posted a piece about Manifest‘s anticipated return, including interviews with the show’s stars and creator. In the post, it was confirmed that there would be a two year time jump to kick off the new season.

Series creator Jeff Rake originally planned for Manifest to tell its story over the course of six seasons. The series will only get four, but the final 20 episodes on Netflix will be enough to finish the story and resolve all of the cliffhangers.

“The endgame won’t change at all,” Rake told  “For those who’ve been tracking this story through June and July, they’ll remember that I was hopeful in the early weeks after cancellation that someone would step up and allow us to make something as modest as a two-hour movie.” 

“It would have been stressful and would not have been ideal, but I would have figured out my way through it,” the creator continued. “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 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 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 gives 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 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 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.”

Are you excited for Manifest‘s return in November? Let us know in the comments!