Manifest Creator Reveals Whether The Series' Ending Will Change

"Manifest" has had a wild and crazy ride almost as intense as the plane trip its lead cast of characters went on in the pilot episode.

After three seasons on NBC, the show was abruptly canceled. It came as a shock to fans who had become invested in the mystery of how a group of people seemingly managed to travel five years into the future with no recollection of how it happened. They re-enter a world that assumed they were dead, and their family, friends, and loved ones have all moved on with their lives without them. Fans had a lot of questions that needed answering, and without a moment's notice, it appeared as though the show would always remain an enigma. 

Of course, where there's a will, there's a way, and Netflix came to the rescue. In the past, the streaming platform has come to renew series like "Designated Survivor" and "Lucifer" for one more round, and it's giving that same chance to "Manifest." Netflix has ordered one final season of 20 episodes for the supernatural series.

Hardcore fans will know the original plan was for the show to have six seasons, which is a much longer time for the mystery to play out. With only 20 more episodes to close out the story, it's natural to wonder if the planned ending will change at all. Now, series creator Jeff Rake has set the record straight.

Before Netflix's renewal came to pass, there was a lot of speculation of how more "Manifest" could ... well, manifest. Would the finale occur as a two-hour movie or perhaps a four-episode arc? That's what Jeff Rake initially thought as he told Entertainment Weekly, "The endgame won't change at all. For those who've been tracking this story through June and July, they'll remember that I was hopeful in the early weeks after cancellation that someone would step up and allow us to make something as modest as a two-hour movie."

It would have been an immense undertaking to wrap up all loose ends in two hours, especially when considering the cliffhanger ending of Season 3. Fortunately, Rake has roughly 20 hours instead of two to finish everything. "When I've talked in the past about having a roadmap all the way to the end of series, that didn't mean that I had a roadmap for literally every single episode," explains Rake. "I have a roadmap with a series of twists and turns and flags in the sand that we would ultimately hit in order to tell the core stories within our mythology and within our relationship drama. So it will not be a particularly difficult exercise to overlay that same exact roadmap onto 20 episodes. It will be quite organic."

It's bound to be good news for fans worried about receiving a truncated ending. The past two seasons have had 13 episodes apiece, so technically, it's almost as if the show's getting one and a half more seasons to finish off its story. One way or the other, fans can rejoice in getting the "Manifest" ending they would've gotten even if NBC kept the show going for six full seasons.