NBC Renews ‘Manifest’ for Season 3

NBC has officially renewed its hit science fiction drama series Manifest for a third season. Announced Monday, exactly 10 weeks after the series aired its Season 2 finale, the renewal came alongside the cancellation of several other series at the network, including Bluff City Law, Indebted, and Sunnyside.

According to TVLine, throughout Manifest‘s 13-episode sophomore run, it averaged just under a 0.7 demo rating and garnered nearly 4 million viewers. Although those numbers were down roughly 40 percent from Season 1, Live+7 DVR playback boosted them to a 1.5 rating and 7.7 million viewers. Those numbers meant that Manifest was ranked sixth in the demo among NBC‘s 12 dramas, falling behind the likes of This Is Us, the three Chicago series, and New Amsterdam. In audience size, The Blacklist also came ahead of it.

Although not faring the best among its competitors on the network, Manifest still managed to receive an 83 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for its second season, while also gaining praise from critics. In Melinda Houston’s review for the Sydney Morning Herald, the series was praised for “the plotting is reaching Lost levels of complexity and weirdness but the thematic issue that has made Manifest so satisfying — the implications of being unchanged for years while the world has moved on around you — continue to reverberate.” Meanwhile, TV Fanatic‘s Lizzy Buczak wrote that, “based on the midseason premiere, the highly-anticipated second season is shaping up to be a thrilling ride.”

Created by Jeff Rake (The Mysteries of Laura), Manifest follows a group of passengers arriving in New York City, only to be horrified to learn they are five and a half years late and everyone they love assumed they were dead. None of the passengers showed signs of aging, and they soon learn that adjusting to life is not easy, especially when they begin hearing voices and seeing hallucinations.

The series also includes a unique love triangle. When Michaela arrived, she thought she was about to get engaged to Jared, but he married Lourdes (Victoria Caregna) while she was gone. In season 2, another love triangle began, with Michaela, Jared and Zeke.

“I think that the triangle itself lends to all the characters and the things that they’re going through,” Roxburgh told Parade. “For Michaela personally, it’s following her quest to fix the mistakes that she came back with and to be a better person. And for Zeke, it’s to make amends with his past. For Jared, it’s maybe letting go of some stuff. But that all unravels in very dramatic ways throughout season two.”

Manifest stars Melissa Roxburgh as Michaela Stone, Josh Dallas as her brother Ben and Athena Kardanis as Ben’s wife Grace. J.R. Ramirez, Luna Blaise, Jack Messina, and Parveen Kaur also star. Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis is one of the show’s executive producers.