Daryl Edwards breaks down the Manifest ending (Interview)

* Spoilers for Manifest season 4 part 2 below *

Well, it’s certainly a bittersweet time Manifesters. We’ve reached the end of the Manifest journey. But, that doesn’t mean we’re done talking to the lovely actors about the show and its ending. We still can’t believe everyone is getting a second chance — just as they deserve — after all they’ve been through.

And while the supernatural series answered most of our questions in the final episodes, it’s still left a bit open-ended with the reset button and all the passengers going back five and a half years, now living in a reality where the plane landed instead of going missing.

That’s why Netflix Life spoke with Vance actor Daryl Edwards about the ending, the Ben and Vance scenes that pulled on our heartstrings, and what the actor has personally taken away from the show. Read on below and be sure to scroll down to the end for the video interview as well!

Daryl Edwards on the Manifest ending

*The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

NL: So what do you think of the ending and the reset button?

Daryl Edwards: Some of it was great. Some of it was terrific. Like the scene at the airport where I come in with the same actress from the pilot. She plays the FBI agent. I hadn’t seen her in a while. And we both have cats. So we talked about our cats. So to have that come full circle, it was really nice for me. It’s very bittersweet because it’s the end. There’s a scene where I walk by Ben, my brother. But I don’t know him. So I basically ignore him. And that was kind of difficult really, it was very difficult [to play].

NL: I loved the Ben and Vance scenes in part 2. They had a couple of really nice ones. I agree it was very bittersweet to see you guys not know each other after everything your characters have been through. In this new reality, Vance is still going to be sucked into the whole 828 mystery because 11 passengers are still missing. Do you think they’re going to still become friends in this new reality?

Daryl: Well, Netflix, if you’re listening…

NL: Spinoff…

Daryl: Well, your mouth to God’s ears. The interesting thing to me with that playing in my mind is that Ben remembers. And he’s the leader of the group. His relationship with Vance in season 1 was very adversarial, and that took them to interesting places. Were this to continue, one of us is going to be adversarial because Vance is an investigator, and he’s suspicious of everybody. If you remember in the pilot episode, I walk right up to the co-pilot and the flight attendants and I say, “Who’s Daly?” This was all improvised by the way. He extends his hand to me and I don’t shake it. I just say, “Where did you put the plane down?” That’s Vance. He has an investigative style and is very, very direct. But after all of this has happened, there’s not going to be that adversarial thing coming from Ben. Maybe, I don’t know. That’s an interesting thing to speculate on.

NL: I asked J.R. Ramirez when I interviewed him if showrunner Jeff Rake told you where your characters might have gone if the story had continued a little bit more. But it sounds like you guys don’t know what’s in his mind.

Daryl: We know a little bit of what’s in his mind.

NL: Do you want to share?

Daryl: We can’t. Hopefully, if this writers strike gets settled — if you get a chance, to interview him, you can ask him about that.

NL: Fair enough. I will say, I was sad we didn’t get a Vance and Saanvi goodbye scene.

Daryl: Now you’re going to make me cry because let me tell you something about Parveen [Kaur]. These scenes, we don’t get to rehearse them. TV happens very, very quick. They’re complex scenes and I was nervous about a lot of the scenes that I had with Saanvi in particular. But Parveen, she would call me up and say, hey, let’s rehearse the scene. And I’m like, Parveen, you’re in a lot more of this than me. You’ve got a lot of work to do. Are you sure you want to? [And she says] yeah, let’s rehearse. Let’s just do it over Zoom. The reason those scenes are so crisp is because Parveen made the time for us to rehearse.

And no scene is a better example of that than the scene when I fire her. That’s one of the scenes that I am most proud of in the third season because we rehearsed it to the point where we didn’t have to think about it. And those emotional places that actors get to go to. We open that door during rehearsal and that is because of Parveen’s professionalism. So yeah, I wish I had had more with her. But what does happen in this season is that father-daughter thing where  he comes in and he sees that she’s got bottles and she’s been drinking, and then she’s going through emotional things. And he’s kind of looking at her and she’s looking back at me like, yes? So what? You know, that father-daughter dynamic? So that was nice to get to explore for sure.

NL: What project can we see you in next?

Daryl: Well, the next thing that’s coming up — I did an episode of The Blacklist. One of their last episodes. And I play another authority figure. I play an Air Force General. The episode was actually directed by Andrew McCarthy. We have had some great directors on our show and the mark of a great director is that he can bring you to places that you hadn’t really thought of. And Andrew McCarthy did that for me. I said, yeah, he’s an actor like our actors who become great directors like Melissa [Roxburgh]. Like Josh [Dallas]. They’re both great directors.

NL: I’m sure it was very cool to have both Josh and Melissa directing you all.

Daryl: And that’s what both Josh and Melissa did. They both impressed me in different ways. Josh as a person is a nine-year-old boy in his heart. You know, he’s a grown man but in his heart he’s a nine-year-old boy. His joy in directing was so apparent that it was infectious and it made it fun and you wanted to live up to those challenges that are in any scene because he was having such a good time.

Melissa shocked me because she’s so young and she was so at ease. Maybe she was nervous, maybe she was afraid as a director. I don’t know. But she was so at ease and so confident. She would give me a direction. She’d say it’s this, this, and this. And I go, yeah, you’re right. As I’m walking away from her, I had to do a double take because she was so secure. So it was a joy and I know that they’re both going to be directing other things in the future. Any actor who gets to work with them is going to be really happy and really lucky.

NL: What will you personally take away from the show, and what will you miss most about Manifest?

Daryl: Oh, that’s an easy one to answer. In most casts that you work in, there’s always one or two people — maybe more — who are not pleasant to work with or not easy to work with. Or problematic in some way. There’s always one in every cast and you work around it and you do the job. Everybody in this cast, they’re my friends. I mean, from the writers to the directors we’ve had to the crew members and the cast. They’re just wonderful. They’re good people, they’re all good people. And I’ve never experienced it before to be a part of a project where everyone was amazing. So  I hope I find it again. I’m going to miss seeing these people. I’m going to miss being on a set and being really happy to see every single face.

All four seasons of Manifest are now streaming on Netflix.