The actress talks to ET about the season 4 midseason finale, directing and where the series goes next after those big cliffhangers.
Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched Part 1 of Manifest's final season.
Resurrected sci-fi drama, Manifest, answered a lot of looming questions in Part 1 of season 4, which dropped Friday on Netflix. But with the final 10 episodes of the series still left to go, there were several major bombshells and cliffhangers that left viewers desperately counting down the days.
In the last episode of the final season's first half, the shocking truth about the Death Date was revealed and one of the main characters made the ultimate sacrifice as the threat of a world-ending apocalypse became clearer and clearer. As Cal (Ty Doran) battled leukemia, Michaela's husband, Zeke (Matt Long), discovered along the way that it was the grown-up teenager who was the key to it all, using his supernatural powers to absorb Cal's illness -- sacrificing himself in the end, while sparing Cal. Unfortunately, Michaela arrived just moments too late, discovering a dying Zeke as they said their gut-wrenching final goodbyes.
It all came about because Angelina (aka the Dark Angel), in possession of the sapphire, was keen on kick-starting the apocalypse by the Death Date. And Cal (aka the Dragon) may be the only one capable of going up against Angelina and stopping her destructive plan. After a dramatic showdown between Angelina and Cal, in which Cal seemingly destroyed the sapphire, a fragment of the broken jewel remained in her hand and she moved forward with calling for the end of the world, as the Big Apple began to succumb to lava. Will Cal and the others be able to stop Angelina from ending the world before Death Date?
"I think since Day 1," Manifest star Melissa Roxburgh told ET's Ash Crossan of Cal's significance to the story. "He's always been that pivotal character just because he's the innocent. He's the one who has done no wrong. All he does is draw his pictures about the future. But he's really the innocent heart of the show, so for that you get to kind of see him lead the way up through that. In every good show, there’s a creepy kid doing drawings!"
Roxburgh admitted Zeke's sacrifice was difficult to come to terms with, but ultimately served the story and made sense for the character.
"Honestly, I thought it was really cool. I thought it was great writing," the actress reacted. "You get to see why Zeke does that and how Zeke does that and it just comes from such a deep place of empathy, so the fact that it becomes bigger for Zeke -- almost like an addiction for Zeke -- and then he gets to end that addiction with a really good act or gesture, I thought that was really great writing."
"There’s no true goodbyes in Manifest," Roxburgh noted, referring to Zeke's many deaths over the seasons. "Also Zeke has died so many times that at this point I feel like good riddance, I’m just kidding!" On a more serious note, she acknowledged it was "horrible" in the sense that Michaela had little to no time to "say a proper goodbye." "So that was the hard part. I think just being in the scene with him, she gets there a little bit too late."
With Michaela now a grieving widow, Roxburgh said she's not sure whether romance is in the cards for her character at the moment, even with Jared (J.R. Ramirez) lurking in the wings.
"Of course, it’s a drama. It's Manifest and the feelings aren’t gone. Like they have been there since Day 1. Jared and Michaela love each other a ton and it’s been super-duper messy but there’s just so much love there that you can’t just walk away from each other," she said.
"I am Team [Both] for different reasons," Roxburgh later added. "I think Zeke is Michaela’s rock and they have this supernatural connection that she does not have with Jared because he hasn’t gone through what they have gone through. But Jared is loyal and he's been there and they have a history that her and Zeke don’t. So it’s for different reasons."
But with the fate of the world in jeopardy, when Manifest returns to kick off the last 10 episodes, Roxburgh warns Angelina "goes pretty far." "She takes things dark, for sure," she teased.
"It’s a countdown to a Death Day. They're not sure, to be honest. They're trying to figure it out along with the rest of them and they're finding new creative ways to get there and the stakes just keep getting higher and higher," Roxburgh teased. "I don't think they had a plan in mind, so much more rolling with the punches -- and the punches get harder and harder."
While things don't look promising now, the actress promised viewers will be satisfied with how things wrap up.
"I would say so," Roxburgh said. "This is such a hard show to wrap up 'cause there’s so many moving parts, but I would say that the fans are going to be happy with how it ends up just because it’s such a hard show to wrap up. The way our showrunner [Jeff Rake] did it was really beautiful, for lack of a better word."
She also stepped behind the camera to direct an episode in the second half of the season, and she briefly reflected on the experience.
"It was kind of my first time directing so it was a huge learning curve, but I had so much fun doing it," Roxburgh said. "We're in season 4-slash-5, whatever you want to call it, and the whole crew is just so seamless at this point. I thought it would be so much harder, but everyone really just wants Manifest to be the best show possible. It was such an awesome experience doing it on this show because I felt so supported, but we just had a group of creatives really wanting the best for the episodes of the show. So it was a blast."
Lastly, Roxburgh hopes fans of Manifest enjoy the first 10 episodes of Part 1 as much as the cast had bringing it to life.
"One, thank you for helping us get here 'cause we really wouldn’t be without them. And two, I just I hope that they enjoy it as much as we had. We had so much fun filming it that I hope they enjoy it to the same degree 'cause there are some people that have been with us since Day 1, like even some of the background that we had on our show had been there since Day 1 and so it really just feels like a collective, including the fans."
Part 1 of Manifest's final season is streaming now on Netflix.
RELATED CONTENT:
