Why Are Manifest Fans So Hell-Bent Upon Resurrecting The Show?
For the second weekend in a row, Manifest remains the most-watched movie or television show on Netflix, even after NBC canceled the series last week after three seasons. Fans were devastated by the cancellation and immediately took to social media to launch the #SaveManifest hashtag, which quickly began trending on Twitter. Me on my way to NBC headquarters to kindly ask them to #SaveManifest pic.twitter.com/OvuK23KKOp  Mandy #SaveManifest (@lexiesdrew) June 18, 2021  Fans have been asking Netflix pick up the series, and those efforts are might be underway. In fact, a story about its potential resurrection was one of the most popular stories on Deadline over the weekend. Fans are clearly passionate about the series, despite ratings that put it on the bubble over on NBC, where the average number of viewers fell from 6.5 million in its first season to 3.1 million in its third. Whats interesting, however, is how much interest there has been in the broadcast network series, despite the fact that it has essentially been ignored by critics since its opening season. Neither the second nor third seasons even have enough reviews to merit a Rotten Tomatoes score. Full disclosure: both season 2 and season 3 have only one rotten review a piece, and they were both written by me. In fact, in 17 years of writing reviews, Ive probably received more hate mail from Manifest fans than I have about any other show for which I have written. Im not complaining, and though I do not like the show, I do appreciate the passion exhibited by the shows fanbase. Its hard to say whats so compelling about the series, however. It does have an intriguing pilot, but as other critics noted during its first season, the dialogue is wooden, and it might be the most laughably bad show of the pilot season. Nevertheless, the series gets consistently high audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes viewers, and over on IMDB, the average viewer rating was higher than that of the most recent season of The Walking Dead. There is something about Manifest with which audiences clearly connect. Its hard to pinpoint exactly what that is, however. The dialogue is wooden, the writers tend to abort storylines when it is convenient, and the series seems to have only a superficial understanding of its own themes. Moreover, its almost impossible to write about it at length without drawing comparisons to Lost, although the series seems happy to lean into those comparisons. Showrunner Jeff Rake is on the record stating that he has a six-season plan for the series, but its not entirely clear to me that the series even knows where its going from one episode to the next, much less a full six seasons. And yet, viewers clearly have a huge affection for the series, and many of those who love the show have even acknowledged its many problems. In fact, I have received emails from a few people who have told me they like my hate recaps, acknowledged that things I have written are accurate, and yet still really enjoy watching the series. The bigger reality is this: I think Manifest is bad, and yet I have continued to watch it for three seasons because I still enjoy it all the same. Its not good, but theres also nothing else like it on television. It is absolutely bonkers, and yet every character on the series confronts its ridiculous plot turns with complete dead-faced seriousness. No one on the series bats an eye when, for instance, they zap a piece of driftwood from Noahs Ark that surfaces from a crack in the ocean floor with something called Dark Lightning, which is weirdly a real thing. When three meth heads rise from the dead after being frozen in a lake for months and decide to  rob an ice cream shop, no one scoffs at the absurdity of such a decision. There is a character played by Holly Taylor (Paige Jennings from The Americans) who at one point lights a bedroom on fire and waits for an infant named Eden to save her to demonstrate that the baby is her guardian angel. It is crackers!