‘Manifest’s J.R. Ramirez Warns ‘Not Everyone May Come Out Alive’ in Season 2
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 2, Episode 5 of Manifest, “Coordinated Flight.”]
Jared (J.R. Ramirez) hasn’t been making the best decisions since the return of Flight 828 — and specifically Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) — and that continues in Monday’s episode of Manifest.
Jared’s still hanging out at the Xers bar, following up his night with Tamara (Leah Gibson) by clashing with her brother Billy (Carl Lundstedt). But that dynamic takes a turn by episode’s end. Michaela’s investigation into the Xers behind coordinated attacks against Believers and passengers seemingly leads her to the group’s headquarters, only for the place to have been cleared out before the police raid. (However, she does spot the car used to run Grace and Cal off the road.)
After Michaela notes they must have a leak in the precinct, we see Billy thank Jared for doing him a solid before introducing him to Simon, who wants to show him his appreciation.
“He’s always done everything for Michaela because he loves [her],” Ramirez told TV Insider at a recent NBC junket in New York. “He comes to his realization this year that as a human you can only take so much rejection, so he moves on from all that. He meets a group of people that are going to take him down a very entangled, difficult complex path that he needs to be very calculated with because at the end of the day, there’s going to be a few main characters at risk towards the end of the season. He’s going to have to be very smart with his movements because not everyone may come out alive.”
As for what’s going on with that meeting at the end, all Ramirez would tease is, “What you see — and this goes for every character this year on Manifest — is not what you get. What you think is going to happen may not be what’s going to happen.”
(Peter Kramer/NBC)
Things are quite rocky between Michaela and Jared ever since she threw him under the bus “as a rule-breaking obsessive detective” (his words) in court to get Zeke (Matt Long) out of prison. (It doesn’t help that Michaela and Zeke are now together.)
“Jared’s always going to love this woman, but the unimaginable happened,” Ramirez said. “They came back after five and a half years, he went on a spiral where he lost control of everything because he loves this woman. He went a little crazy. … He just knows [Zeke] came out of nowhere and has a connection with her he could never have. At the end of the day, he just wants her to be happy.”
But while he and Michaela aren’t getting along, the opposite is true for him and the new captain. “Jared really, really likes the boss, and you’ll see why as the episodes go on,” Ramirez said. “He has a nice connection with her.”
And with everything going on in these characters’ lives, especially his, Ramirez thinks Jared could use a vacation — but not one where he ends up returning after five and a half years. He’s not sure his character could’ve handled being a passenger.
“He’s pretty logical when it comes to everything, so he would’ve spiraled out of control,” he said. “He wouldn’t know what to do with himself because he likes everything to be A, B, to C. This would’ve thrown him for a loop. We see how he’s handling not even being on the flight.”
Let’s just hope he can handle whatever he’s getting himself into with the Xers, Billy, and Simon.
(Craig Blankenhorn/NBC)
Manifest, Mondays, 10/9c, NBC
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