5 Ways Faith Plays a Role in Netflix-Trending Show ‘Manifest'

Photo courtesy of NBC.

When the 2018 NBC show “Manifest” was added to Netflix in June this year, it quickly began trending . It’s now been on the platform’s “top 10 trending” for weeks. The show is a “Lost”-esque procedural drama and was recently canceled after its third season — leaving mysteries unsolved and viewers frustrated with questions. 

“Manifest” begins with 19 passengers on Flight 828 from Jamaica to New York, all of them with a different, complex backstory. A bout of turbulence leaves the passengers frightened for their safety, but they land with seemingly no problems. There’s just one troubling anomaly — for the people on the ground, Flight 828 has been missing for five years. Families and loved ones of the passengers have moved on entirely, for better or worse. 

The show is full of biblical references and themes. We’ve compiled the best for you here. Warning: our list includes light spoilers for “Manifest.”

1. “Callings”

As if returning to their lives five years later wasn’t strange enough, the passengers of Flight 828 begin to realize more has changed than just the world around them. In the first episode, passengers and siblings Ben and Michaela begin receiving almost identical visions in the city. They hear a voice telling them to “set them free,” which leads them to rescue two kidnapped girls. Michaela, an NYPD detective, is praised for the coincidental rescue; her ex-boyfriend had been on the case for months. 

The visions have no clear, rational cause and instead appear to be prophetic. They involve only hearing a voice, often a flash of light and an image, and they lead the characters to save a life in one way or another. It becomes clear that it isn’t just Ben and Michaela having these “callings,” but it’s all of the passengers from Flight 828. They’re bound to resolve these callings to save others’ lives — and their own. 

2. Romans 8:28

This New Testament verse serves as a lynch point for the themes of “Manifest,” particularly in the first season. The verse reads: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” It was Michaela’s mother’s favorite verse, stitched onto a decorative pillow in her home as a child. In the pilot episode, it appears to her as she experiences her first “callings.” 

The number appears everywhere: it’s the number of the flight the passengers are on, it’s the address where Michaela finds the kidnapped girls, it’s on clocks and license plates. It symbolizes the goal of the characters throughout the course of the show to work together for good and help others, even if they’re reluctant (which many of them are). 

3. Faith vs. science

As Ben and Michaela begin having these callings and learning more about the time they missed, they both search for an answer why. Along the lines of “The X-Files” leads Mulder and Scully — or, if you’d like to keep up the “Lost” comparisons, Locke and Jack — Michaela becomes the believer, and Ben becomes the skeptic. 

Ben’s background as a mathematician drives him to pursue the numbers in search of an answer. Michaela, who once drew personal significance from her mother’s beliefs but has since severely lapsed in faith, begins to believe again. For her, it opens a large and genuine crisis of faith that drives her character forward. It’s what makes “Manifest” different from other classic believer/skeptic pairs that the siblings have been compared to. With others, it’s a question of the supernatural (or unexplained in general) vs. science. But Michaela deals very directly with a childhood Christian faith that makes the dichotomy an interesting one to explore. 

4. Noah’s Ark

Earlier, I mentioned that the abrupt cancellation of “Manifest” left viewers hanging. Likely, à la “Lost,” the show runners intended to drop a bunch of mysteries in the show’s middle to entice viewers to wrap them up in final seasons in a way that leaves viewers satisfied but still guessing. The third-season cutoff denies the show that chance — and leaves mysteries like the one of Noah’s ark. 

In the third season, a piece of 6,000-year-old wood washes ashore in Turkey, near Mount Aratat, where Noah’s ark supposedly rests. It’s discovered that the wood appeared on the same day that the flight disappeared. This hints that the miraculous work of God is responsible for the disappearance. Additionally, the wood is believed to be able to give scientists the ability to “recreate miracles,” creating a bridge between faith and science. However, the wood is thrown into a volcanic crack in upstate New York. So much for those miracles.

5. Redemption and rebirth

While disappearing for five years presented the passengers of Flight 828 with extreme and unheard of challenges, it also offered them all a chance to start over. Ben’s son, Cal, is dealing with a cancer believed to be terminal. When they land, cancer research — developed by someone on the plane! — will save his life. Characters get to reevaluate their relationship with their family members, friends and spouses. It’s difficult, but it’s the chance to start over. The mysterious season three even alludes to the fact that the characters may have been resurrected and given a second chance to life.

Creator and director Jeff Rake attributes these things to his Jewish faith. 

“As a Jewish writer, I’m inspired by Jewish themes of redemption, second chances and tikkun olam. We come to discover that the characters are flawed human beings who’ve been given a second chance, an opportunity to redeem themselves,” he told the Jewish Journal. 

Jillian Cheney is Religion Unplugged’s 2020-21 Poynter-Koch fellow who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. She also writes on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.