'Manifest' Season 2 Episode 9 Review: Cal Stone comes back as 828 mystery deepens its connection to Al-Zuras
Spoiler alert for Season 2 Episode 9 'Airplane Bottles'
Last week's episode of 'Manifest' on NBC delivered the bombshell that TJ Morrison (Garrett Wareing) is still alive. Though viewers may be quite happy about it, TJ himself doesn't seem too thrilled. This week's episode features TJ sporting a case of survivor's guilt.
However, TJ's current affliction can also be attributed to the shared calling he is having with Ben Stone (Josh Dallas), Grace (Athena Karkanis) and Cal (Jack Messina). TJ has been staying with the Stones while he recovers and Olive Stone (Luna Blaise) couldn't be more thrilled that her boyfriend is still alive.
Our heroes don't understand that it's a shared calling at first, not until Olive — in her calling-free existence — points out that the storm they are seeing is not real. Olive just sees clear blue skies.
Slowly, each of them (except Olive) descend into madness and it is Olive who again deduces that what Ben, Grace, Cal and TJ are experiencing is what Al-Zuras and his men experienced on their boat — the one that disappeared just like Flight 828.
Once Ben and TJ figure out what Cal is trying to build — a replica of Al-Zuras's boat — they assist Cal in building it in the Stones' living room. Once that is done, the four of them are transported to Al-Zuras's ship itself where they see the silver dragon that Al-Zuras saw and wrote about — only, the silver dragon happens to be Flight 828.
Elsewhere in the episode, as TJ, Ben and Olive deduce that trying to get rid of the callings will only make them go mad, Saanvi (Parveen Kaur) spirals as a result of having taken the serum she made as a cure to the callings. Zeke (Matt Long), who goes to her to get his dose, decides not to do so after seeing Saanvi's "impulse control issues", which are not good for a recovering addict.
Meanwhile, the episode makes it quite clear that Jared Vasquez (J. R. Ramirez) is working undercover in order to bust the X'ers, but it looks like the NYPD has many more X'ers in its payroll.
For a show that deals with paranormal stuff to do well, it has to keep reinventing. 'Manifest' is continuing to successfully do so as this week's revelations take the story to another level. Where that leads our characters to is another issue but it is safe to say that we are quite worried about Saanvi's and Zeke's fates now.
We also hope Jared and Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) talk to each other and that Jared comes clean with her soon. It is possible that with Michaela on board, Jared would be more likely to succeed. As we saw in this week's episode, things could go bad otherwise.
We loved seeing Cal back on our screens again after the Stone twin was missing for many episodes -- something even the fans were not happy about. We just hope this continues to be the case -- featuring one Stone twin while compromising on the other gets quite tiring.
'Manifest' airs on NBC on Monday nights at 10/9c.