Manifest Boss Talks Season 4 Death Date Twist, 'Dangerous' Angelina and 'Lots' of Returns in Final 10 Episodes

The following contains major spoilers from Manifest Season 4, Part 1, which was released Friday, Nov. 4 on Netflix. Proceed accordingly.

The Dragon lives!

On the brink of death in Manifest’s midseason finale, Cal survived when Zeke used his empathic powers to siphon the teenager’s leukemia and take on the illness himself — ultimately sacrificing his life to save Cal.

Zeke decided on this selfless act after overhearing Olive and TJ conclude that Cal, who’d been called the “Holy Grail” since Season 1, is the key to saving humanity. According to the show’s creator and showrunner Jeff Rake, these Season 4 revelations — including the dragon tattoo and Saanvi discovering sapphire in Cal’s DNA sample — reaffirm that he is, indeed, quite special compared to the other 828ers.

“Cal saw things that no one else could see, and drew things that no one else was aware of,” Rake tells TVLine. “From the beginning of our story, it’s been clear there was something singular about Cal’s abilities.”

Cal’s second chance at life means that he can continue to help the other passengers as we near the end of the series. (A premiere date for Part 2 of the fourth and final season has not yet been announced.)

“It would be fair to assume, going forward, that whatever singular strength and power [Cal has] — whether you call him the Holy Grail or the Dragon — something about his abilities is going to be crucial in trying to save the passengers as they approach the Death Date in the final block of 10 [episodes],” Rake explains.

Read on for more intel from the Manifest boss, including the threat Angelina poses to the other passengers, and what to expect in the remaining episodes of Season 4.

TVLINE | The Death Date isn’t just for the passengers, but rather the entire world. How do you think that shapes the rest of the season, which feels even bigger now?
That’s always been part of the game plan as we now discover that the passengers are prophets. We’ve been hinting at this from the beginning. The choices that they make in terms of redeeming themselves, following Callings [and] doing the right things impacts not only their own ability to live or die, but the fate of all humanity.

What we’ve been alluding to is the fact that every so often throughout human history, God has delegated a representative or a group of representatives to determine whether humanity has gone so far off the deep end that God has asked the question, “Does this population of people that I’ve created deserve to keep going, or have they blown it?”

We try not to be so specific as to make it so on the nose about the Ten Commandments, because it’s much bigger than that. We tried to keep it broader, whether it’s a Judeo-Christian interpretation or a non-Western interpretation. We don’t want to pin it down to one story or another.

The stakes are giant now. Even as we get into the final 10 [episodes] and know that the very fate of the world is on the line, we’ll continue to tell very personal stories about the same characters that we know and love. The setting will shift a little bit and will be more focused on the community of passengers — less focus on just the Stone house. We’ll get to know some other characters a little bit more. It’s a really cool, interesting environment that we end up in for the final 10.

TVLINE | We saw Angelina walking out of the church looking like a harbinger of the apocalypse. Plus, we learned that she could fake a Calling with her powers. What does that spell for the other 828ers since they’re in the same Lifeboat and she’s on her own mission?
We’ve established that she’s more dangerous than ever. The Stones think she’s gone [after the stained glass crashed down on her], so their guard is down. They think that’s a risk they don’t have to worry about, but we saw that she slipped off into the night. The sky appears to be the limit in terms of what she can achieve. The question is, is she so dangerous and able to do so much damage that she can single-handedly take down the Lifeboat? That’s an open question as we go into the final 10. Is she singularly so powerful that she can destroy the Lifeboat and destroy humanity? Is Cal’s power and ability as the Dragon, and all the passengers, are they powerful enough to take her down?

TVLINE | I loved seeing Grace back as this ominous, pseudo evil version created by Angelina. Will we see more of her?
That was a really cool opportunity that we took advantage of, to invite back the lovely Athena [Karkanis], who was such a good sport to come and do that. Hopefully, that’s not the last we see of her.

TVLINE | We are getting towards the end of the series, and the answers are coming. Are we going to see past passengers or familiar faces popping up to close out the story?
It’s been incredibly important to me from the very beginning to answer anything opened and dangled, and we spent a ton of time in the writers’ room keeping track of every character [and] every Easter egg. We don’t want to be accused of leaving a bunch of hanging [threads] and frustrating our superfans, who’ve been paying such careful attention at home.

You can expect lots of returning characters. You can expect us to return to lots of our open-ended Easter eggs and us answering as many as possible; I’m hoping that you’ll find that we answered them all. We can regroup after Episode 20. I’ll meet folks on social media, and people can point out what we forgot to answer. Hopefully it’s not a lot, because we’ve really tried. We’ve really tried to bring back every character and answer every question, so I hope we did right by everyone.

What do you hope to see in Manifest‘s remaining Season 4 episodes? Sound off below! 

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