'Manifest' Theory

Watching the first episode of the new show on NBC, Manifest is about a flight that left Jamaica in April 2013 and lands in New York City in November 2018. The crew and passengers don’t remember landing anywhere and haven’t aged a day. Now the government is trying to figure out where they have been as the passengers of the flight try to get their lives back together.

The show follows a police officer, Michaela, who was on the flight with her brother, Ben, and his son, Cal. Cal has cancer and was given only six months to live. But now that they were on the flight, he technically has lived with the disease for over six years. His twin sister is now five years older than him.

After they leave the airport where they were questioned, they find out that their mother had passed away and the female character's fiancé had left her and married her best friend. They show her talking to her brother’s wife about getting her life back and how they couldn’t keep her apartment so now she’s living in the basement. As they go to hug, she hears herself say in her head the word everything.

The next day riding the city bus she again hears herself saying slow down. So she tells the bus driver but he ignores her telling her that he doesn’t go to her job and tell her how to do it. Then the voice yells in her head, causing her pain, to slow down. And she yells it at the bus driver, who stops the bus and just misses hitting a kid chasing a ball.

She tells her brother what happened and he tells her to keep it to herself or people will think she is crazy. Then denies anything is happening to him.

The next scene Michaela is running past a locked fence and she again hears her voice saying to set them free. All she sees is barking dogs. That night she goes back to the fence and sees Ben show up to open the fence as well.

The next day the incident is brought to her ex-fiancé detective who helps her return the dogs. But when they do, she discovers two young girls he had kidnapped. Everyone begins calling her a hero but the detective is curious to know how she knew they were there.

The episode ends with a large group meeting on the outside of the fence where the airplane is being held. They all agree that they felt like they were called there. Then the airplane explodes and burns to the ground.

Episode two focuses more on the passengers' relationships with the people who weren’t on the plane. Ben’s daughter Olive reveals to him that his wife was seeing someone else. Michaela attempts to get her police job back and is sent to therapy. She then tries to connect with her best friend who married her ex-fiancé. At Cal’s cancer testing he draws a family portrait as he waits with a shadow standing behind the family.

One of the passengers does an interview with a news station and talks about her experience. She claims the government knows all the answers but isn’t telling them anything. The episode ends with the lady watching her interview, a shadow moves behind her, and then it appears as if she is shot by the shadow as blood splatters across her television. The same shadow the boy drew in his family portrait.

My theory for where the plane disappeared to and why the passengers only remember being on the plane for 2 and a half hours compared to 5 and a half years is simple. They were taken by aliens during the lightning storm.

The reason the passengers are hearing things and feel a connection to each other is because the experiments the aliens did on them unlocked something in their brains that they are just scratching the surface of. The didn’t age because they were most likely in a type of hypersleep that prevents aging, something a lot of science fiction uses when traveling through space.

This would explain the disappearance of the plane and the connection the passengers have. The shadow would most likely be an alien making sure the passengers don’t reveal or remember what happened to them.

Again this is just a theory and only more episodes will show what truly happened to them, unless the show gets cancelled. Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, a tip would be appreciated, also please share on Facebook and Twitter.