What We Could See In A Manifest Movie

Contains spoilers for "Manifest"

TV shows are canceled prematurely on what feels like a weekly basis. If a show has a devoted enough fanbase, however, there's always a chance it will get to come back and finish its story in some form or another. The latest show that refuses to stay dead is "Manifest," the religion-tinged supernatural thriller that was very much NBC's answer to "Lost."

If you missed out on "Manifest," the show follows a group of passengers from Montego Air Flight 828, which took off and mysteriously landed five and a half years in the future. Upon their return, the passengers found that not only was the world a much different place, but they were drastically changed as well. The passengers began experiencing visions they named "Callings" that showed various horrible events in the future, including their own deaths. At the end of "Manifest" Season 3, it was starting to look like the Callings have a purpose: to help the passengers prevent the end of the world in 2024.

NBC canceled "Manifest" shortly after the Season 3 finale. After that, the show quickly joined Netflix's top 10 most-watched TV shows, which led to speculation that the streamer might pick it up. Unfortunately, Netflix ended up passing on "Manifest" as well.

But there's still reason for fans to hold out hope. On June 30, "Manifest" creator Jeff Rake told Entertainment Weekly that he hopes his show can follow in the footsteps of other TV dramas that ended with a movie. Rake is currently outlining a "Manifest" film; here's what it might look like.

First and foremost, whatever the "Manifest" movie might look like, there's no way it can fully tie up all of the show's many loose ends. As he told Entertainment Weekly, Jeff Rake always planned for "Manifest" to run for six seasons, so a finale movie would have to wrap up all that story in only two hours.

"I just need a modest budget to tell the story. I am personally sketching out how to consolidate the back half of the series into a much more streamlined, cut-to-the-chase two-hour finale that would distill all of the hanging chads of the series. That's where my head is at," Rake explained. "There is a huge appetite for people wanting to know what's that end of the story, what happened to the passengers, what ultimately happened to that airplane.

Most likely, a "Manifest" movie would address the show's biggest remaining question, which regards the passengers' 2024 death date. During Season 3, Ben's son Cal has a vision that the passengers are all supposed to live only for the same amount of time that they had vanished. Since the plane disappeared in 2013 and returned in 2018, an absence spanning five and a half years, Cal's vision indicates that they would die in 2024 (with some exceptions). However, after Zeke dies early at the end of Season 3, the remaining survivors theorize that they might be able to avoid their deaths by obeying their Callings. Most likely, a "Manifest" movie would have to start with some kind of time jump that puts the plot closer to 2024, and would see the passengers racing against time to figure out how to avoid their fated deaths.

Of course, it's possible the Callings could affect more people than the 200 passengers of Flight 828. At the end of Season 3, religious fanatics come to believe that Ben is a harbinger of the apocalypse and try to kill him to stop that from happening. If the zealots are actually right, Ben and the other passengers would have an even bigger problem on their hands than just saving themselves. Unless we get a "Manifest" movie, of course, this will remain a fan theory.

As Rake told EW, however, "I want to channel all of my energy toward the future, toward the positive, toward a path that would allow us to finish the story. ... It may take a long time to figure that path out. It could be a year, and full disclosure, it may never happen! But I'm not going to stop trying."