Manifest: A Hidden Captain Daly Detail Could Have 3 Implications

A hidden detail in the Manifest season 3 finale about Captain Daly has important implications about the show’s future. In a shocking scene at the end of the episode, the Flight 828 pilot appeared in the cockpit of the plane at the Eureka facility. A shocked Dr. Gumpta watched as he appeared before her eyes and then vanished again.

Daly showing up in the finale raised a number of pressing questions. When he and Fiona disappeared in another plane in Manifest season 1, there was a great deal of speculation over when he would return, if Fiona would be with him, and what actually happened to him. The plane was supposedly shot down, but Daly remained confident that he would be able to recreate the events that made the plane and the passengers disappear in 2013. If Daly was right, he’ll be able to come back in 2024, just in time for the end of the series and the characters’ Death Date. Dr. Gumpta seeing him in Eureka was a sign that Daly had somehow returned early.

A hidden detail in Captain Daly’s cameo casts doubt on the idea that he returned at all. In the season 3 finale, Daly was wearing his pilot uniform from the series premiere, not the black jacket he was dressed in when he vanished with Fiona. This has multiple implications for Manifest season 4. First of all, it implies that the character seen in the cockpit is an earlier version of Daly, specifically the one who was piloting Flight 828 when it took off in 2013. If that’s the case, then Manifest wasn’t actually revisiting the mystery of where he went with Fiona. In other words, his fate is still up in the air. Viewers may not get an answer about Daly until the show’s story progresses to 2024 (which is when he said he would return).

If it’s true that season 3’s Daly was from before his disappearance, that suggests that the time travel theories about the plane were right all along. In season 2, the passengers found out that for at least a moment, they may have been at the same time and place as Al-Zuras and his crew in the 16th century. If the passengers were traveling in time for five years, they could have briefly visited multiple time periods. That would explain both the Al-Zuras Calling and Captain Daly popping in at Eureka in 2021.

Since Daly didn’t mention the experience he had in the season 3 finale in Manifest season 1, it could be that the Flight 828 passengers actually did have some awareness of what was happening, but they all lost their memories. As far as the characters know, they didn’t go anywhere when they were on the plane, but that could just be a result of memory loss. Either way, Daly appearing in the finale has led to more questions than it has answers. Hopefully, Dr. Gumpta and the rest of the Eureka scientists will be able to get to the bottom of the Captain Daly mystery when Manifest returns.

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