Manifest seems like it would like for us to agree with her: A strange woman in midtown Manhattan gloms onto Michaela’s young nephew, fellow returnee Cal (Jack Messina), while repeating the words “He is risen”-so Cal, I suppose, might be the second coming of the Lord Christ himself. Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh), whose robust eyebrows I believed were Manifest’s main character until the smoke monster showed up (more on that later), suggested that the disappearance was the work of God. Some theories for the disappearance of the flight peddled during a superserious pan-government meeting: an extraterrestrial encounter, a Trojan horse attack, body doubles, a wormhole. This is now a matter of national security! We know this because the show mentioned it on multiple occasions. government, no more evidence to explain how 191 people vanished into the air and less still about how, or why, they reappeared. Just, boom! No more plane, and, to the chagrin of investigators from the U.S. When we last checked in on the survivors of Flight 828, the mysterious voice had compelled a couple dozen of them to drive out in the middle of the night to the military airfield where their plane was being kept for inspection. But by the end of Manifest’s first episode, it was clear that things were taking a turn for a different kind of supernatural: One by one, our returnees began to hear voices compelling them to carry out minor acts of heroism.

The show was sold as a sci-fi-tinged mystery that would tell us precisely where that airplane went-a sort of latter-day Lost. If you tuned in for last week’s premiere, though, you might recall that Manifest is a possibly historic bait and switch.

As the plane taxied in to meet a cavalcade of police cars, your first question: “ Excuse me, what exactly is the problem?” As a very serious official announced that the 191 people aboard Montego Air Flight 828 had all been missing and presumed dead ( gasp!) for five and a half years, your second question: “OK, what exactly happened to the airplane?” If you, like the rest of America, were subjected to months of promos for Manifest, you probably have some questions.

Manifest what happened to the plane