Manifest – Season 4 Episode 17 “Threshold” Recap & Review

Threshold

Episode 17 of Manifest season 4 sees us jump forward 8 months again. It’s May 2nd 2024, one month until the death date. Ben has managed to keep the supplies going in the Detention Center and in fact, they have a whole thriving commune going.

However, the supplies are running dangerously low now. They need to start rationing goods, despite having a whole nursery of new plants ready to go. Should they still be around after the Death Date arrives, they need to try and make the most of this.

Vance and Cal are still with Michaela but the latter is worried about Cal driving himself into the ground. He’s been pulling all-nighters, constantly sifting through a myriad of different Callings to solve this once and for all. This latest Calling sees him being choked by plants while sitting in a seat 14F. As we soon learn, this is linked to Autumn Cox, who obviously has quite the complicated history with the 828ers, and is currently running in Angelina’s crew.

Michaela reminds them that despite how they feel about the passengers, they’re dedicated to solving these Callings no matter what. As they start to look into this, Cal realizes that it’s linked to the Stone residence back home. Michaela can’t go though, given she needs to look after her father, so it falls to Jared and Cal.

They head back, and are shocked to find Angelina there with all the rogue passengers she’s now calling her “flock”. She claims that she’s been Called here and she needs to judge the passengers, and that she’s the Archangel. Cal is having none of this and is livid. While they talk, Jared finds a picture with Autumn showing off purple vines, and the former snaps a picture of it, believing they have what they need to push forward with solving the Calling.

There’s a big blackout at the Detention Center, as it seems like the latest bunch of tremors have taken out the breaker system. Unfortunately, this also means the power over to the life-support patients has caused all of them to start flatlining. Joe is there though and he comes up with a solution to try and get this going with a new generator. Hey, what happened to the sinkhole with the lava in the detention center? Any word on that?

Ben allows Olive to make a big banner, while Joe helps Ben with getting a flare. They intend to make a big noise and try to get outside help. Why they haven’t bothered to do this in the last 8 months is another unanswered question for this season!

Michaela and Vance work together and realize the purple vines from Cal’s Calling are actually related to an abandoned building a block away from the Detention center. And guess who owns it? Drea. Drea’s family have owned this building for a while and as we shift across to Drea, we learn that she’s actually trying to build an underground tunnel.

Jared and Cal head inside, where they hear Drea calling out for help. There’s a shady guy inside who claims to be a contractor and he tries to pull a fast on on her. However, she’s also pregnant… with Jared’s baby. Jared and Cal stop the unknown man, who slips away. Before they can do anything further, after untying Drea they hear gunshots sound outside as the soldiers begin firing on those on the rooftop. It seems like the efforts to get help have fallen on deaf ears.

Jared helps Drea to smash through to the other side of the wall in the basement and it gives those inside the Center a way out. They also have a brand new power source, courtesy of Drea’s breaker and she manages to save everyone in the life support so they don’t have to choose who lives or dies.

With the wall opened up, everyone has their own plans for what they intend to do next., with some of the passengers deciding to leave. Drea and Michaela patch up their differences over the former’s pregnancy, before it’s all happy families and messing about time. However, Cal heads off to see Marko in intensive care. He holds Cal’s arm, where he gets a Calling for the peacock.

At the top of the feathers happen to be the sapphire. It seems like Angelina is right and this peacock seems to represent that Divine Consciousness we’ve been hearing about. Does it mean that her and Angelina need to work together?

The Episode Review

Manifest throws in another time jump, getting us closer to the Death Date and the end of everything. Given how wasteful this season has been with its pacing and time, it’s perhaps unsurprising to see this occur. There have been so many redundant scenes in this and with less than a handful of episodes left, it remains to be seen exactly how this one is going to end.

So far this second part has been sprung out and you could easily have condensed this down into less parts. The writing has been rather sloppy across the board and there are so many plot contrivances that you could point out. From this episode alone you have the fact not a single person inside the detention center have mentioned the lava sinkhole. They also just decide to leave through that tunnel, without any resistance from the guards outside while Zimmer has just disappeared from view completely.

However, seeing glimmers of the puzzle pieces start to come into view though is definitely a nice touch and hopefully the episodes ahead are an improvement.