Jack Messina is reportedly in negotiations to return as Cal for Manifest season 4, despite his character being recast. So how can he be back?
Despite the Manifest season 3 finale’s Cal twist, it looks like Jack Messina may be coming back to play the character in season 4. When it was reported that Netflix is picking up the series for a 20-episode fourth season, it was mentioned that Jack Messina is among the actors in negotiations to return.
As the character who has the strongest link to the Callings, Jack Messina’s Cal has long been central to the NBC series and the Flight 828 passengers’ efforts to understand what’s really going on and how to survive the Death Date. In the season 3 finale, Manifest seemingly altered the status quo forever with Cal by having him touch the tailfin and vanish. At the end of the episode, Cal made a shocking return, but with an entirely different appearance. Played by Ty Doran, Cal was apparently 17 years old, which was the same age he would be if the plane had never disappeared. Somehow, Manifest managed to age Cal five years in the span of a single episode.
In the aftermath of the reveal, Manifest showrunner Jeff Rake tweeted what sounded like a farewell post for Jack Messina, which furthered the impression that the show was done with the younger version of the character, but new reports cast doubt on this idea. Messina being in negotiations for a season 4 deal raises questions about what Manifest is really doing with the character and how it’s going to make use of two Cal actors. Judging by the finale’s ending, Doran is Manifest’s primary version of Cal going forward, but there are ways of keeping Messina in the picture.
One possibility is that Manifest intends to use flashbacks to show what happened to Cal when he touched the tailfin. It seems that it took him to a place in time where he was able to live his life for five years before coming back to his home. A flashback storyline with Messina’s Cal Stone could explore what led to that moment when he reunited with Grace (Athena Karkanis) in the finale. Since so much time passed, such a story could be a multi-episode arc that gives Messina plenty to do as the younger Cal.
Another option – albeit a more complicated one – is that Manifest embraces its time travel elements and uses both versions of the character at the same time. It could be that traveling in time and becoming Ty Doran’s Cal was not a result of touching the tailfin. Instead, he could return unchanged at the beginning of season 4, with the older take on the character making recurring appearances throughout the final season as a time-traveler who provides guidance in their journey to stopping the Death Date. If Manifest takes this route, the two incarnations of Cal could even cross paths.
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