A Beginner’s Guide to ‘Manifest’: Everything You Need to Know About the Fan-Favorite Series

Netflix announced earlier this year that the popular mystery series Manifest will be returning for a super-sized fourth and final season. If you haven’t yet seen the show everyone’s talking about, now is the perfect time to catch up. To help you do that, we’ve put together a beginner’s guide to the action-packed drama about the survivors of Flight 828 that features everything you need to know before diving in, from the mystery at the heart of the series to the many characters involved.

Manifest follows the crew and passengers of Montego Air Flight 828, which lands safely in New York after a turbulent but routine flight from Jamaica. They soon find out that in the few hours they were in the air the world has aged five-and-a-half years and that their friends, families, and colleagues have mourned them and moved on. Now faced with the impossible, they have all been given a second chance. But as their new realities become clear, a deeper mystery unfolds and some of the passengers soon realize they may be meant for something greater than they ever thought possible.

THE CHARACTERS

Michaela Stone (Melissa Roxburgh): A rookie police officer grappling with the tragic actions of her past and the prospect of a future with her fiancé, Jared, Michaela returns home on the mysterious Flight 828 and finds that life has a strange new purpose.

Ben Stone (Josh Dallas): Michaela’s brother, Ben is an intelligence analyst and family man struggling against the things he can’t control, whether it’s his son’s rare pediatric cancer or the mysterious events surrounding the return of Flight 828.

Cal Stone (Jack Messina): The son of Ben and Grace, Cal struggles with a terminal illness. His world is upended even more when he returns on Flight 828 and must reconcile the twin sister and mother he knows with a new reality.

Saanvi Bahl (Parveen Kaur): A brilliant graduate student and medical researcher, Saanvi’s life changes dramatically when she disembarks Flight 828 to learn that her work has led to some startling medical breakthroughs.

Grace Stone (Athena Karkanis): After years of mourning the loss of her husband Ben and son Cal, Grace is reunited with her lost family and ready to embrace the new normal.

Olive Stone (Luna Blaise): Devastated by the loss of her father and twin brother Cal, the now-teenage Olive seeks to reestablish a bond when their plane miraculously reappears five years later.

Detective Jared Vasquez (J.R. Ramirez): Jared is a police detective who eventually moved on with his life after the disappearance of his fiancée, Michaela. Now that she’s back, he’s torn apart by the return of his first love.

Manifest Seasons 1-3 are streaming on Netflix.