‘Manifest’ Season 3 Episode 1 Recap: “Tailfin”

By
Kevin Finnerty
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Manifest Season 3 Episode 1
Melissa Roxburgh as Michaela Stone and Matt Long as Zeke Landon in ‘Manifest’ season 3 episode 1 (Photo by: NBC)

NBC’s mystery drama Manifest began its third season picking up three months after the shocking season two finale which found fisherman discovering what looks to be the tailfin of Flight 828. Season three episode one, “Tailfin,” kicks off with Ben Stone (Josh Dallas) in Havana searching for the fishing boat and the crew who found the tailfin. He finds the boat by using a drawing by his son, Cal (Jack Messina) and starts to snoop around when he has a ‘calling’ and sees himself, Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh), Cal, and a young woman in pain covering their ears.

Seconds after the calling, Ben receives a phone call from Cal who also experienced it and they’re quickly joined on the call by Michaela who saw it, too. They decide that the mystery woman they saw needs help and Michaela and Cal confirm they’ll try to figure out who she is.

Michaela hangs up, returns to Zeke (Matt Long), and informs him she thinks their honeymoon in Costa Rica is over.

The episode cuts to a scene of the woman lying on the ground in the dark in a small room, crying.

At the Stone home, Cal tells his sister, Olive (Luna Blaise), and mother, Grace (Athena Karkanis), that he had another calling. He thinks he saw Ben, Michaela, and himself before they were about to die.

Meanwhile, Dr. Saanvi Bahl (Parveen Kaur) is treating patients at a clinic while also trying to keep tabs on Ben in Havana.

Ben meets the fishermen on the boat and after briefly talking to them confirms they did find something unusual. He bribes them to show him what they found, and they take him to a storage area and unveil the tailfin of Flight 828. Ben slowly walks over to the tailfin and touches it. He immediately receives a powerful calling of Flight 828 exploding and is thrown back by an unseen force.

Unbeknownst to Ben and the fishermen, a local boy recorded the event on an iPhone.

Back in New York, a woman shows up at Michaela’s precinct looking for her to try to get Michaela to investigate the disappearance of her mother. Michaela’s partner tells her she’s not in and doesn’t usually work missing persons cases. Jared (J.R. Ramirez) notices the conversation and after the woman leaves, he asks Michaela’s partner about it.

Cal and Olive go over Ben’s information, timeline, and the list of passengers in an attempt to find the identity of the woman in the calling. They discover her name is Angelina Meyer (Holly Taylor). Cal calls Michaela and lets her know what he’s found, but is worried because he can’t get a hold of Ben.

Back in Havana, Ben wakes up with a slight head bleed but is otherwise okay after the tailfin calling. Just as he and the fishermen are about to do business on the tailfin, police enter the storage facility. It seems a local cop saw the video of Ben being thrown back on the kid’s phone and wants Ben to touch the tailfin again.

Fortunately, Vance (Daryl Edwards) is monitoring the situation and watching Ben’s back. He bursts in with backup and gets the local cops to stand down. Ben and Vance then get ready to drive the tailfin to a cargo plane they have waiting to fly them home.

Over in Costa Rica, Michaela and Zeke track down Angelina’s parents and ask them questions about their daughter. The deeply religious parents tell Michaela and Zeke that after returning from Flight 828 Angelina seemed to be going insane and lost her faith. They believe she went to New York.

A little later Michaela checks in with her partner and finds out that Angelina never returned to the States. A friend of Angelina’s has information to share and Michaela and Zeke pay her a visit. She reveals the last time she saw Angelina, she was acting paranoid.

In the dark room where Angelina is lying, she reaches for a knife that was slipped to her under the door along with a meal.

Grace takes Cal to be checked out by Saanvi and she tells him he’s fine. During the exam, Cal lets her in on his latest calling. Saanvi then checks in with Vance and he brings her up to speed about the tailfin.

Manifest Season 3 Episode 1
Jack Messina as Cal Stone and Luna Blaise as Olive Stone in the “Tailfin” episode (Photo by: NBC)

Back at the Stone house, Cal tells Grace and Olive they need to make room for a guest Ben’s going to be bringing home.

In Costa Rica, Michaela and Zeke return to question Angelina’s parents again and Michaela has another calling. She claims she’s feeling a little dizzy and asks to use their restroom. Michaela goes snooping around the house and keeps seeing a bright white light leading her on which way to go. To buy her time, Zeke fakes being dizzy and having a calling. Finally, Michaela finds Angelina locked in a cellar closet and takes her out.

Back in Havana, Vance and Ben are on a truck with the tailfin loaded in it racing to the airstrip where their cargo plane is waiting. Vance notices they’re being chased by the local police who want the tailfin. He realizes they’re gaining too quickly and they won’t have time to load the tailfin, so he tells Ben to go home and not to try to help him. Ben protests but Vance takes off in the truck with the tailfin to lead the local cops away. Reluctantly, Ben boards the plane without Vance.

Michaela and Zeke reach out to Saanvi and Alonso, an ally who works for Vance, to get themselves and Angelina back to New York. Alonso contacts Ben on the cargo plane and they re-route their flight plan to pick up Michaela, Zeke, and Angelina.

Ben, Zeke, and Michaela arrive home with Angelina and when Cal sees Angelina, he says, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

At the precinct, the woman who was there hours earlier comes back and talks to Jared about her case. She claims her mother who works for the government always sent her a rose from her travels but for three months she hasn’t received a rose. She knows her mother’s work somehow involved Flight 828 so she was hoping that Michaela would look into it. Jared looks at the file the woman has with her and sees that her mother is Major Catherine Fitz.

A little later at the Stone home, Michaela and Ben discuss the tailfin. Ben thinks it could change everything and tells Michaela he believes they died on Flight 828 and have been resurrected.

The final scene of season three episode one shows the lake where the three men who kidnapped Cal took him last season. The bodies of the men resurface and one opens his eyes and takes a big breath of air.




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