“Squawk” – Aired on November 4, 2022
Writers: Simran Baidwan & Sumerah Srivastav
Director: Mike Smith
Grade: 4 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Note: This review was published little less than two years after the episode aired, but written without any knowledge of the events taking place in future episodes.
“Squawk” serves its primordial purpose, bringing the long arc of search for Eden to a close. It makes use of the series’ usual tools, convenient callings and timely flashbacks, to pack in a series of events taking place in a matter of around 48 hours in a presentable and entertaining way. Solid performances by Holly Taylor, Ty Doran, Jared Grimes, and Matt Long, help matters since they play the four characters (Angelina, Cal, Adrian, and Zeke) in this episode who struggle to manage the heavy burden of their emotional baggage. It’s also nice to see, albeit a luxury for Manifest, an episode focused on neatly divided A and B stories instead of several plots advancing simultaneously in a rush.
Let’s dive in.
We pick up right where the previous episode “Go-Around” ended, with a flabbergasted Vance arriving to the Stone household, ranting about Ben going after Eden two hours earlier without letting him know the location. He is not surprised to learn that his family is not even aware of this. “There’s no way this ends well,” he states.
Next, we see Ben tied up and gagged at the basement floor of a building at the compound where Adrian hosts 828’ers. Jared stops by to follow up on the fertilizer-purchase lead from “Go-Around.” Erika and Adrian explain that large quantities of fertilizer were needed to grow the ingredients necessary to produce honey with a better flavor. Jared wishes them good luck and leaves, but Erika is uneasy about Ben’s presence in the compound, and Jared is uneasy about what Erika “is up to” with all that fertilizer.
In the B story of the hour, Saanvi goes under a functional MRI machine under Troy’s supervision to see if her brain somehow is receptive to ultra-low frequency (ULF) discovered in the black box, exploring the possibility of “someone or something” communicating with the passengers through ULF. The machine, however, shows no sign of such evidence in her brain scans.
Back at the compound, Eden follows a bee down to the basement and notices Ben tied up. It’s a potent moment, because Ben finally sees his daughter standing right there in front of him, but is helpless to do or say anything as Angelina arrives just in time to pick Eden back up in her arms. She refers to Ben as a “very bad man” and says to Eden, “Mommy is here to protect you,” as she gives an evil look toward Ben to induce him into further rage. We see him screaming from behind the gag as Angelina walks away with Eden, and the generic begins.
A short scene at the compound confirms that Erika is definitely cooking up a bomb with all the fertilizer, some liquids, and whatnot. This is followed by Zeke’s counseling session at work that ends disastrously. He fails to use his powers – apparently for the first time – to heal his patient and notices his hands are shaking. This whole “absorb other people’s pain” healing routine is starting to have a negative impact on his health, as expected by anyone and everyone at this point.
Erika introduces herself to Angelina at the compound, because she has the brilliant idea (!!) of informing Angelina that she has placed a bomb in every room of the building, so that if the law enforcement were to come, they can sneak out the back with the remote detonator and blast it with everyone inside. She says all this as if it’s supposed to make Angelia feel safer. Seriously, is there any logical thought process behind Erika to do this? What is there to gain for her by letting an unstable young girl with a baby know about the planted bombs? I would like to beam back in time to the writers’ room and be a fly on the wall as they discuss this scene.
Ben tries to gain the sympathy of one of the 828 residents named Donovan (Germar Terrell Gardner), trying to convince him that Adrian is hiding Angelina and his daughter at the compound (nobody but Adrian is supposed to know that they are hiding there), and that Donovan should free him.
In the meantime, Cal and Olive are at Vance’s operating center, so to speak, and joining them are Saanvi and Troy. Saanvi decides to sample Cal’s scar on his arm as he and Olive update Saanvi on the mythological objects glowing the night before. It points to divine consciousness and they concluded that this is where the 828 flight was all the missing years – I’ve maxed out on this far-out-there turn of story in my last review, won’t repeat again here. Needless to say, Saanvi wants Cal under the FMRI machine.
From this point forward, several things happen so that the essential characters ultimately converge on the compound in order to get to the real purpose of this outing, which is the resolution of the search for Eden:
– A calling with a bee leads Michaela to search for Erika, which then brings her, Zeke, Jared, and Drea to stake out the compound.
– Cal has a calling inside the FMRI machine which points to Ben and Eden’s location.
– Ben manages to untie himself.
– Donovan and the other 828’ers begin to turn against Adrian.
– Angelina and Erika also turn against Adrian and, using the threat of the detonator, take control of everyone in the compound.
The last 20 minutes are an intense race against time (read: the prospect of Angelina or Erika activating the detonator at any time) as Michaela, Jared, and Zeke enter the compound through a back door to find Ben. Cal, for his part, enters through the front to have a “private talk” with Angelina, reminding her of their connection from back when he was younger in the third season.
With Cal and Angelina away in another room, Erika gets distracted looking for them, leaving the other passengers temporarily unsupervised. Michaela arrives and instructs them to leave the building. Ben finds Eden in bed, grabs her and heads for the exit, but Angelina stands in their way downstairs with the detonator in her hand, setting up a stand-off in the corridor between her and Ben, Cal, and Eden. Angelina pushes the button thinking her “little angel” will protect the two of them from the explosion somehow, in the same way she imagines Eden finding a way to stop her from jumping off the bridge a while back (shown in a flashback). The bombs don’t go off immediately, and Cal grabs Angelina’s arms, allowing enough time for Ben to run out with Eden.
The bombs begin to go off before Ben can get back inside to save Cal, but somehow, Cal walks out moments after the explosions, hardly injured. Later, Zeke senses danger thanks to his powers and notices Erika coming out of the building (has no one died in the explosions?) pointing her rifle toward Michaela. He quickly grabs Jared’s gun and shoots Erika several times, unleashing all the rage inside him most likely accumulated from constantly absorbing other people’s negative emotions during his counseling sessions. Kudos to Matt Long for conveying Zeke’s pent-up anger through his stride and facial expression as he shoots Erika time after time, creating a quite a terrifying 15-second sequence.
The episode goes to great lengths to increase the health concerns for Cal and Zeke. Cal gets coughing fits throughout the outing, finally coughing up blood at the house in the hour’s closing moments. Zeke, for his part, is more and more unsettled with the use of his powers and his ability to control his emotions. They both tell everyone around them that they are fine, but why? Why not tell your close ones that something deeply concerning is brewing up and impacting your health in a negative way? It seems that their loved ones would be best equipped to help them get through those issues. They have relied on each other for over 3 seasons, why stop now?
The episode ends with Adrian driving and finding Angelina lying down injured on the highway, He helps her into his car and drives away.
Last-minute thoughts:
– Will someone please ask Cal what happened to Angelina? After all, he was in a physical struggle with her when Ben left the building carrying Eden, before the explosions went off. It only makes sense that someone would be curious enough to ask him about her. She obviously survived that ordeal, so did she escape from the struggle? Did Cal just leave her alive when he walked out?
– For that matter, Adrian also somehow escaped the explosions. I wish the episode put a bit more effort into fleshing out how these characters survived the explosions.
– Ashes keep coming down in various callings throughout the episode. I thought it related to the explosions in the climactic moments of the episode, but then why did Adrian see them again at the end while helping Angelina into his car?
– During Saanvi’s FMRI scan scene, Troy ponders the possibility of a higher power – he calls it “God frequency” – communicating with the passengers, in line with the divine consciousness narrative introduced in “Go-Around.”
– During Cal and Angelina’s struggle in the climactic stand-off scene inside the house, Cal tells Ben to run out with Eden and that he’ll be fine because he “remembered it.” He says later that he knew that the detonator was not going to go off in time. Did he remember seeing that happening while he was inside the glow, as in, inside the divine consciousness during the missing years? Meaning that he can predict things in the future? Apparently so.
Until the next episode…
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