NBC’s Manifest: What happened to Captain Daly and Fiona Clark?

Once again, NBC’s Manifest raises more questions than it provides answers to. The most recent episode left fans wondering what happened to Dr. Clarke (Francesca Faridany) and Captain Daly (Frank Deal) during their spotaneous flight?

Warning! Spoilers for the latest episodes of NBC’s Manifest follow. You’ve been warned.

On the latest episode of Manifest, one of Flight 828’s passengers went rogue. Well, it was actually the pilot, but Captain Daly had a good reason.

At about midway into the episode, Daly comes to the realization that the only way he’ll be able to prove that he’s not responsible for Flight 828’s disappearance is by replicating the event. To accomplish this, he hijacks a plane — taking Dr. Clarke with him.

Daly, still under the assumption that Dr. Clarke played a hand in the coverup, holds her hostage. He doesn’t intend to kill Clarke but forces her to accompany him on his plane ride. Daly believes that Clarke can help him replicate the night’s events — and if she can’t — they’ll die trying.

The two of them get a plane into the air without authorization, forcing air traffic controllers to call in the National Guard for support. They launch two fighter jets to escort Daly’s plane to the ground but the Captain refuses to comply.

The pilots give Daly one final warning or face being shot out of the sky. Daly, however, remains stubborn and continues to push through another storm of Dark Lightning. And despite being pursued, Daly reaches the portal they traveled through before. The bad news is they’re fired upon.

Daly’s plane disappears a second later and the pilots report that the target has been destroyed. It appears as though Daly and Clarke were killed in an explosion but a scene at the end of the episode reveals that no remains of the plane were found.

Not a single piece of the plane is recovered, raising another important question — did Captain Daly actually make it through the storm?

While Daly’s flight supposedly ended with fighter jets shooting him out of the sky, the absence of wreckage could mean that he flew through the Dark Lightning just like he did with Flight 828. If so, Daly and Clarke are likely alive in the year 2024 as he anticipated — that is unless they were actually shot down.

There is a chance that both things happened. It’s entirely possible that the fighter jets pursuing Daly did hit him but the impact happened moments before they traveled through the wormhole. If that’s the case, Daly’s mission proved just as futile.

Hopefully, Daly outmaneuvered the missiles long enough for them to find safe airspace in the future — assuming their voyage did send them into the future and not another period of history.

In any case, Daly and Clarke’s whereabouts are bound to come up at another point in season one of NBC’s Manifest. Whether it’s in the future or in a government facility, we have a feeling that Clarke and Daly’s story-arcs are far from over.

Manifest airs Mondays on NBC. Episodes are uploaded to Hulu the following day. For more on Manifest, follow us on the Hulu Watcher Twitter Account @HuluWatcherFS or on the Hulu Watcher Facebook Page.