Manifest - Icing Conditions

Discussing Ep. 2.13 Season Finale

So, this was both entertaining and disappointing in some respects.

So what I said about Zeke still holds true. He should have died. And yet, he didn't. Though I'm not that upset about it considering the implications they put to his survival and now I'm curious to know what it all means.

Like I said in my last review about the prospect of Zeke surviving, it was rather cheap. Much like it was with TJ "dying" and Ben and Olive grieving his death for nothing, so was all this done for nothing. Zeke's entire journey for the latter half of the season revolved around him dying, and he didn't die! And yet it's somewhat hard to be upset about it because of what it all could potentially mean. But I felt that him dying would have brought a rather sombre, if not profound, tone to the nature of the Callings and what following them actually means. So many people do good works and are unselfish and look out for others, and yet they themselves seem to be hit hard by rather dark days and difficult moments that if feels like there is no God or Higher Power looking out for them and that them doing good meant nothing if none of that good was returned upon them. With the Callings, that doesn't seem to be the message at all.

Clearly the ending with Cal being saved by the lightning and Zeke surviving was supernaturally helped along. But what message does that convey? For Ben (and perhaps even for Mick at this point), it's all about following the Callings. Do what the Callings tell you, and you'll be just fine in the end. Everything will be just fine at the end with no severe consequences at all. After all, Zeke was brought back to life, no longer suffering the effects of frost bite and seemingly having survived his Death Date. And when you look at the overall Stone family, they have been surely blessed by the Callings in almost ridiculous ways. TJ survived (where was he btw, considering Cal got kidnapped the night before). Grace and her baby survived. Cal survived. Zeke survived. Hell, Mick even got to see her own mother at the wedding! Everybody who was ever important to the main characters survived under extraordinary circumstances.

They went through the motions of grief and loss but it never had to stick because those tragic incidences were never permanent. If they're going to follow the Callings simply to get peace and security and never lose a loved one in return, then what happens when they follow the callings, and someone they love still dies? What then? Will they still have faith? What they have, essentially, is a reward-based relationship with the Callings, and that's dangerous. They're like dogs now, with the Callings telling them to do XYZ, and they get a treat for their good work. I think they missed an opportunity with killing Zeke because it would have shown just how resilient the Stones are in the absence of a reward for their good works.

Having Zeke die would not have been the most horrible thing in the world. He got to do A LOT of things that people in general don't get to do, and even he acknowledged as much. He got to make peace with his family. He got to marry a remarkable woman like Mick. He got to live a life he never thought he could live or that he deserved to live. And because of all of that, I actually grew to like Zeke. Hell, I respected the shit out of him when he asked Jared to take care of Mick when he was gone. That was classy! I liked Zeke's journey because it was very much a 'live in the moment' kind of life he was living because he knew he didn't have much time left and that Saanvi's 'cure' wasn't going to save him. He got all his affairs in order and was facing death with his eyes open and would have gone out like a hero. By removing the threat of death, it feels like there are no stakes now. I do wonder, though, if Zeke will still receive the callings considering he apparently no longer has a Death Date.

What I am excited about is that these three guys apparently might have survived as well. I was massively disappointed, even throughout this episode, that the three shadows that were haunting Cal were these three guys....three mere criminals. And the fact that they also appeared to Adrian months ago and he had nothing to do with the season finale, I was thoroughly confused and wondering why they appeared to Adrian at all. Well, it seems like we might not have seen the last of these guys. I thought it was really strange when Jace grabbed Zeke as Zeke was trying to get out of the water and Jace dragged him down. It seemed a rather arbitrary other than to create tension in the scene, but I'm wondering if it has some other significance. Of course, the question becomes....why would the Callings save these three if the Callings went out of its way to essentially kill them? I suppose that will be answered in the next season, though I do wonder if they are going to address Mick's comment that she felt that Jace somehow, someway, was aware of her nature and the Callings. It will be interesting given that Jace seems to be the psychopath of the group, willing to slit Cal's throat as a means to dispose of him, while his brother and the other guy don't seem quite as extreme.

What I'm hoping for in the next season is this tendency of Mick's to want to do everything on her own and leave people like Jared or Mikami or even Captain Bowers out of the loop when they have proven time and time again that they're there to help will go away. For fuck's sakes, I was shaking my head when she tried to get that meth and she told Jared to not get involved as though he couldn't help. It's been very clear throughout this entire season that she can't do ANYTHING without Jared's help! He has been so instrumental in helping Mick out, despite her hurting him the way she did. And though I understand that she can't necessarily trust folks like Mikami and even Capt. Bowers to understand the callings and to trust her when she gets weird visions and messages, I agree with Capt. Bowers that she should have had more faith in all of them.

Having said that though, I really felt like obstacles in the episode came down far too easily. Other than that hilarious incident with the Good Samaritan just sticking her nose in Mick's business and going so far as to get another cop involved, it seemed like there wasn't a lot of resistance. I mean, it was just absurd when Mick gave Capt. Bowers her badge and gun and said that she resigned. What the hell was she going to do after that? How was she going to go about saving Cal when she didn't have the support of the police department behind her? But when Capt. Bowers rejected her resignation and got the police force coordinated on it, only for Mick, Ben and Zeke to sneak out and do their own thing (once again keeping the Capt. out of the loop), I was fully expecting Capt. Bowers to just give up. Instead, she went along with it, despite Grace essentially threatening her and it was only the fact that she herself is a mother that she bothered to put up with Grace and her threats if Cal wasn't saved.

Also, the fact that Cal had Jace's brother, Pete, who was very sympathetic and caring towards Cal also helped things along, to the point that Cal was able to send a message to Olive which helped them locate him. So they definitely had a lot of help in regard to getting Cal back, and while I definitely felt a sense of danger for Cal, the fact that Zeke got a vision where Cal was safe and sound, it was more a sense of how they were going to get to that point where Cal was safe rather than if they were going to get to that point. And now that they've basically made death a moot force in this universe, I wonder if I will feel any kind of tension from now on considering every time a main character has been put in any kind of danger, they've gotten out of it with minimal consequences.

Though I will say, they did take a risk and caused a huge death, one that was both unexpected yet somewhat anti-climactic. Given that The Major was a prime antagonist for much of last season and the first part of this season, I have to admit that I was majorly (pun intended) disappointed that she went out the way she did. First off, I don't understand how or why Saanvi was able to get such access to her. While I was impressed with Saanvi's gusto and attitude in wanting to take on The Major, I found her massively annoying in the way she compromised not only her own safety but that of Vance as well.

At first I thought that she confronted The Major with Vance's blessing, that she was able to get on that ship and confront The Major as part of a plan that she and Vance had set up. Apparently, that wasn't the case. How she managed to even get on board without Vance knowing about it was strange in and of itself. He was clearly keeping tabs on The Major, and he knew that Saanvi was prone to taking matters into her own hands, sometimes in very reckless and dangerous ways. So how she was able to separate herself and mosey on up to The Major and confront her is rather perplexing to me.

But not only that, she goes and blows Vance's cover! I was surprised that The Major actually believed that Vance was dead since she seemed to know everything else that was going on, from Mick and Zeke's wedding to Zeke's deteriorating condition. But she clearly didn't know about Vance until Saanvi went and opened her big mouth! What I found interesting about The Major's line about Mick's wedding was that she thought it was lovely, sounding like she had an actual mole IN the wedding itself. I'm going to take a guess and say that it's the one person who i don't want it to be!

I like Mikami. I really do. I like her style, her attitude and her looks. She's been there since the beginning of the season, always willing to help Mick out in any way that she needed her to. And I would totally want to see her get together with Jared. But that line from The Major about the wedding got my attention and considering that the Xers had people within the police force, internal affairs and the police union, I could totally see Mikami being an agent for The Major. If she was assigned to Mick as her partner, it would be a great way for The Major to keep tabs on a significant 828er. So that's the theory that I'm going with right now. Though having laid that out, I could also see Mikami turning her back on The Major and her assignment given how close she has become with Mick and the Stone family at this point. Also, given what happened to The Major at the end of the episode, perhaps there isn't a need for Mikami's services after all.

Once again, I didn't get Saanvi's resourcefulness nor her plan. How did she track down The Major to that park? She obviously didn't have Vance's help, so how did she find The Major? I will give her credit for her plan, for infecting The Major with a disease (which, I have to say, was topical given what's going on in the world....when The Major started coughing, it was a very eerie sight) which she had the antidote to but it got broken and lost in the struggle between them. So Saanvi's plan to infect The Major and get her to tell Saanvi how to save Zeke kind of backfired. But what I thought was interesting was how The Major had no interest in finding a cure but rather sought to replicate and weaponize the callings, which she found they couldn't do. So Saanvi was left with a dead end in terms of finding a cure for Zeke. But as it all turns out, it was for nothing!

I don't know if they're trying to frame it that Saanvi's tragic turnout is a result of her defying the Callings and trying to get rid of them or if it's just her bad luck and her impulsive nature that got her into this mess. Perhaps it's a bit of everything. But for sure, Saanvi really got the bad end of things here. She did all of this, from tirelessly researching and experimenting on herself to perfect the cure, to hunting down The Major and compromising Vance's life, to poisoning The Major and eventually killing her.....she did all of this for the 828ers and, more importantly, for Zeke! And what happens? It was all for nothing! Much like everything else in regards to Zeke, it was all for nothing because the Callings decided to save him at the end.

I suppose it wasn't entirely for nothing given that she could come up with a cure within a week. But that wasn't good enough for Saanvi as she thought that Zeke would be dead by then. So she went out and tried to coerce the cure from The Major. But even so, even if she does have a cure, would Ben and the others want to take it considering the miracle they've witnessed with Zeke's revival? So if anyone got really screwed over this season, it's been Saanvi! She got rid of the callings but she went loopy for a bit, got rejected (again) by her former lover, is stuck with the murdering of a high ranking military general of a gov't shadow ops that can hunt her down and kill her and everyone she ever knew and has a potential cure that, most likely, nobody will want to take! Damn!

Of course, they left us with a hell of a cliffhanger, with Ben seeing a vision of a plane exploding mid-flight, and a fishing boat picking up the wing of a plane that is thought to belong to Flight 828. So what does this mean?  I think they're going to be revisiting the concept of time travel again since they never really got to the bottom of that. I'm thinking TJ, in his visits to Egypt, will probably uncover something or other. Meanwhile, I'm more intrigued by Jace and his buddies surviving the fall into the frozen lake. Because you have to wonder if that lightning strike wasn't just to save Cal but to begin the transition of those three criminals into what Griffin turned into last season (which they never really explored either last season or this season). Griffin tried to turn his callings into fame and fortune and died as a result. Will these three criminals suffer a similar fate?

What I'm also hoping for the next season is answers to Simon and Erica and the relationship to The Major.....who takes over for The Major.....how will the three criminals come back and what will their relationship be with Adrian.....and what does it all mean for the Stone family.

It's really all up in the air at this point given the corona virus is wreaking havoc with shooting schedules along with everything else. I guess we'll have to wait and see!