Manifest – Season 4 Episode 16 “Furball” Recap & Review

Furball

Episode 16 of Manifest season 4 starts two days after the events of the previous chapter. Michaela and Jared are getting it on and decide to spend the night together. They’re finally rekindling what they had before Zeke, while also spending their days looking after Michaela’s father. Their subplot is rather boring to be honest and there’s not a lot going on. That is, until a neighbor called Tom show up, who has no love lost for the passengers of 828.

Elsewhere, Ben speaks to Vance and tries to come up with a solution over what’s going on with Angelina. Olive shows up to see Ben, pointing out that they don’t know where Mick is. He’s convinced that she’s okay, as the pair speak in code the whole time. Just before Ben is taken back inside, thanks in part to an earthquake suddenly shaking the ground and causing havoc, he calls out for Olive to find Michaela.

The real drama here though stems from the ground just inexplicably cracking open like a sinkhole with lava inside. When two guards are pulled down and killed in the hallway, the others all decide to rebel, believing that no amount of money is worth them risking their lives. You know, for the time they’re actually paying attention to the passengers anyway!

Zimmer is there though and tells them they’ve made arrangements. Washington has given the greenlight to issue the Isolation Protocol, which immediately sees the group disperse. They grab weapons, they shut down the cameras, and begin moving toward locking up the passengers and leaving them inside. This has come from the very top, and once they’re all locked up, the guards are just going to leave and watch the building from the outside.

Vance apologizes to Ben, exasperatingly telling him he won’t be able to do anything, and explains that there’s a whole bunch of armed guards outside watching the perimeter. Before he goes, he does hand over the ID cards for both the life-support patients and also food storage too. Vance believes they need to stretch their supplies to 9 months and believes in Ben’s ability to organize and lead the troops.

In the wake of all this, Eden rushes into the complex and begins wandering around. Vance passes Olive as she hurries down one of the corridors, who decides to stick around too and find both Eden and Ben. And with all the guards gone, the internal doors open and Ben is reunited with TJ and Olive. It also doesn’t take long for them to find Eden either. As for Vance, he brings the bad news to Cal that his family are trapped inside. But Vance is going to stay with him.

As for Angelina though, she’s with Eagan and is actually brought to the safehouse with a bunch of rogue passengers. However, they’re not happy with her, especially after she killed Grace. They’re forced out and back on the run again but Eagan convinces her to stay and try a different tactic. Eagan believe that she should use him to connect with the passengers on a more intimate level. After speaking to them all again, Angelina points out they’ll be ushering in a new world if they’ll follow her word.

Cal has a Calling right in the middle of all this, in a darkened room with playing cards tumbling down. The cards that fall spell out 6, 2, 3 and 8 in a row. Given nobody has Callings anymore, this is more than a little peculiar. Vance points out that he’s the only one with these Callings, so it’s more important than ever for him to solve it.

While Cal tries to figure this out, one of the guards snaps and heads in to confront all the passengers. He’s had to watch all his brethren die and he blames Ben and the others for this. Ben tries to talk him out of this but Quinn is a man possessed and demands Ben pay for what’s happened. He’s more convinced than ever that he’s behind everything bad happening.

When Eden shows up, she hands over a doll and that’s enough to at least stop Quinn from pulling the trigger. Ben is adamant that he wants to try and stop the end of the world, not cause it, and he’s been trying to do this for a while. Ben urges Quinn to put the gun down and let them work… but he refuses to let them go. It’s enough for Quinn to leave and give up.

Because we haven’t had much drama in the Michaela subplot, Michaela decides to go out for a run, and she happens to run right past Tom’s place and he notices her, deciding to stage a coup to attack her. When he pretends to be trapped under his van, he dupes her into letting her guard down and begins choking her.

Vance and Cal show up and manage to save her just in time. However, it turns out Tom has bigger plans afoot. He’s actually dead-set on blowing the place sky high, with a van laced with explosives.

Michaela deduces that perhaps the Callings aren’t gone, its just that they’re not receiving them now. As a result, she believes they need to use Cal’s ability to head onboard the plane once more and experience each of the different Calling to try and figure out what’s going on – one at a time. Through a whole bunch of flashes, Cal sees every single Calling at once. He decides to try and dig out one at a time so they can survive their death date, but that’s going to take some time.

Back in the detention center, Ben decides to speak up on behalf of everyone and points out that he doesn’t know what the future holds. He knows that a lot of them don’t have family but all of these passengers have found kinship in one another, and are now a big family together in many ways. They have 9 months left to find little joys in life and make the most of it. He organize the troops and manages to get this place turned around so it becomes a new home.

The Episode Review

So Ben now becomes the de-facto leader of this commune, who are on their own now and isolated from the others. Could Ben be the perceived “Moses” in all of this, given we’re going the route of religious symbology? Could he the be one that’s supposed to lead the people through this dark storm?

Cal still has the Callings, which is perhaps obvious given he’s one of the Pillars here alongside Angelina, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the show is gearing up for a big showdown between the two.

However, all of this is peppered in with long, drawn out subplots and scenes that could have easily been cut down. The Angelina and the Michaela storylines could easily have been whittled down and saved us all a lot of time! Time that is rapidly running out in this show.