‘Manifest’ Season 2, Episode 5 ‘Coordinated Flight’ Review: Exers Vs Believers

Another battle has begun on Manifest. Unfortunately, the Major has to sit at the sidelines for now and let the exers and believers take the spotlight. And when these two start sniping at each other, you know that things are going to get pretty complicated on Manifest. Despite the shift of the storyline, however, this new problem carries the same energy, frustrations, and excitement. I mean, people are stabbing each other’s backs, wives are popping up out of the blue, and people are beating each other up. It’s pretty much just a few inches short of too much, but I’m living for the chaos. Plus, it’s quite interesting to see where this all goes. So, without further ado, here’s what went down in this week’s episode of Manifest.

Exer Church Attack

Like a good churchgoer, Olive (Luna Blaise) attends to her tasks and goes above and beyond. However, one unfortunate morning, a bunch of exers comes barging into the church and starts wrecking everything. Olive’s only companion Isaiah (Olli Haaskivi) tries to stop the men, however, they end up beating him up badly. So, Olive rings the fire alarm which scares the guys off before running off herself.

Peter Kramer/NBC

Later on, she finds Adrian (Jared Grimes) and begs him not to give the police her name. She’s still afraid of her parents finding out about her membership. Much like her, Isaiah prefers to keep his lips sealed. Although he’s badly bruised up, he refuses to answer any of Michaela’s (Melissa Roxburgh) questions for some absurd reason. Instead, he prefers to spew out something from Adrian’s sermons.

Right on cue, Adrian arrives at the church. And as much as Michaela tries to convince him that things might escalate from simple baseball bats, Adrian prefers to lie low. He thinks that if they go on the offensive, people would fear the passengers. What he wants is for the world to accept them as miracles and to see them as beacons of hope. This translates to Michaela as a simple PR campaign to fill Adrian’s pockets and his ego. Just as Isaiah’s silence and the lack of witnesses start becoming a serious problem, Michaela’s new partner Drea (Ellen Tamaki) finds footage of a potential witness.

Road Troubles

To make things more complicated, it’s not only the church of the believers that are under attack now on Manifest. On a drive out, Grace (Athena Karkanis) and Cal (Jack Messina) call Ben (Josh Dallas) for some last-minute dinner requests. However, Ben’s distracted. He had another calling. And it told him to “save her.” Suddenly, a blue truck pops behind Grace. She tries to move to the side to let it through. But, instead, it slams into their car and leads them to hit a tree.

Peter Kramer/NBC

Grace and Cal (Jack Messina) emerge unscathed. But, Ben still takes them to the hospital to check if Grace’s baby is ok. Fortunately, the baby which the doctor accidentally reveals is a girl is fine. But, she makes Grace stay a couple more hours in the hospital to really make sure. This leads Ben to think that his calling was about his baby.

When Michaela arrives, Ben tells her the accident might’ve been deliberate. He thinks that Grace and Cal were targetted because of 828. And he feels that the more that people like Adrian evokes 828, the more attacks would happen. So, Ben begs Michaela to send him all of the passenger related attacks the NYPD has.

828 Discrimination

The strange thing is the officer who took Grace’s statement didn’t seem to give a damn. It’s the same thing with the believer church. The responding officers seemed to want to get the cases off their hands as quickly as possible. They’re the kind of cops you don’t want to help you. And it didn’t just fly by Michaela’s attention. She knows no one is taking these 828 cases seriously and she’s afraid the next one would end up with a dead 828 passenger.

Peter Kramer/NBC

Later on, Michaela and Drea interview Walter (J.D. Williams), the only other witness to the men who attacked the believer church. Right from the get-go, he can’t keep his answers straight. And the two women manage to make him slip quite quickly. See, they didn’t tell him about the church. But, Walter seemed to know about it fairly well and he clearly isn’t a fan of the believers. However, NYPD chief Kate Bowers (Andrene Ward-Hammond) doesn’t think a simple little slip up can incriminate the guy.

Meanwhile, Olive and TJ (Garrett Wareing) arrive at the hospital. And TJ offers to help Ben go through the cases of attacks on passengers. Two glaring similarities that became immediately apparent though is that all these cases had no witnesses and no evidence. And this leads Ben to think that they’re all connected. A few hours later, Ben manages to prove his theory right. After mapping the attacks, he and TJ find that the exers have been attacking passengers systematically to avoid suspicion. As it seems, there is now more than one villain in Manifest. 

The Key Witness and the Mole

Given Ben’s discovery that the church attack was related to her mom’s accident, Olive’s guilt soon has her heading to the precinct and telling Michaela the truth. She identifies Walter as one of the culprits and begs her aunt to still remain anonymous. However, Michaela can’t do that. It’s better the truth comes from Olive herself to her parents rather than someone else.

When she gets home, Olive takes up Michaela’s advice. She tells her parents about her believer membership. And as expected, both Ben and Grace flip out. Ben thinks that Adrian and his believers are making the passengers as different higher beings. And this makes the world fear them more. On the contrary, Olive thinks Adrian’s right and its the world that should open its eyes. After only achieving a screaming match, Olive storms off.

Craig Blankenhorn/NBC

Meanwhile, Olive’s witness account allows Michaela to arrest Walter. And just before he’s dragged to a cell, Michaela manages to get a probable location for the exer’s headquarters.  She immediately sets up a team. But, once they storm the location, the place is empty. And by the looks of it, it had just been cleared out. This doesn’t earn any favors for Michaela and only increases her superior’s doubts about her. However, Michaela spots the blue truck that hit Grace and Cal. She only needs to prove it was really the one.

Unfortunately, a new mole has sprung up on Manifest. The reason why Michaela’s operation failed is none other than freaking Jared (J.R. Ramirez). Although his reasoning is not entirely clear, it seems that his new girl Tamara the bartender has something to do with it. And after the operation, Tamara’s brother Billy takes Jared to meet someone: Ben’s colleague Professor Simon White.

The Star

After all that chaos with Olive, Grace finds Ben emotionally and mentally punishing himself in the basement. She tries to console him but then, she spots the compass that the bank robber passenger gave Michaela. Once she sees the peacock engraving, an old memory comes back to her.

A few years back after the plane disappeared, Olive and Grace happened upon a fortune teller. And one of the cards they drew had the exact same image as the one on the compass, a peacock inside a triangle with a star on top. According to the old woman, the star means hope. The exact words she said to them were “Look to the future with the possibility that everything will turn out well.”

Grace thinks that this might mean the callings are a way out of the death date. Unfortunately, Ben thinks that if Adrian keeps turning the world against them, they just might not find out. More than that though, it seems that the believers are putting a wedge in their family as Olive continues to believe Adrian. Later that night, after one of the believer’s gatherings, Ben attacks Adrian and threatens him to stay away from Olive.

A Life Left Behind

Elsewhere on the episode, Zeke (Matt Long) goes back into group therapy sessions for his drug addiction. And the first lesson he gets out of it is to face the people he has hurt while under the influence. As he has learned, it’s not just about earning their forgiveness. It’s more of learning to forgive himself and realizing that he’s a person that can be loved.

Craig Blankenhorn/NBC

With that, the first person he calls up is a woman named Courtney (Danielle Burgess). And by their conversation, it seems the two had a history. Despite Zeke’s efforts to make amends though, Courtney still seems bitter about how things ended with them. And she doesn’t think Zeke’s going to last in the program.

Later that night, while Zeke and Michaela are preparing dinner, a knock comes at the door. And surprise surprise, it’s Courtney. Apparently, she has nowhere else to go and Zeke’s mom told her where to find him. Just as things couldn’t get any more awkward, Manifest drops another bomb. As it turns out, Courtney is Zeke’s wife.

Manifest continues next Monday, February 10th, with “Return Trip” at 10/9c on NBC.