Is Zeke Dead in 'Manifest'?

Farewell, Mr. Landon. The final episode of Manifest season 4, part 1 saw viewers bid a sudden—if inevitable—goodbye to Zeke, whose enormous powers of empathy had been drowning him all season long. In the last moments of part 1, Zeke's powers were the end of him: Upon learning that Cal is the Dragon, the only person who can save 828 passengers (and the entire world) from sure ruin, Zeke realized that he was the only person who could save Cal's life. He took Cal's hand and—um—absorbed Cal's cancer, though Zeke hung on long enough for Michaela to come home so he could say a final goodbye.

Though Manifest continues to blur the lines between the dead and the living—and never more so than in Manifest season 4—creator Jeff Rake has confirmed that Zeke Landon is, unfortunately, dead. "Zeke is dead," Rake told Variety. "But there’s a powerful love that exists between him and Michaela...We have seen characters find ways to communicate with each other, death notwithstanding. So let’s see what Michaela can achieve because their bond is a strong one."

So while Zeke is very much no longer in the land of the living, he might still find ways to communicate with his wife in the final part of the series. But then...there's Jared.

You'll remember that Jared and Michaela have a long and tangled romantic history that dates right back to episode one, season one. The first part of the fourth season concluded that Michaela and Zeke were endgame—even Jared admitted at their anniversary dinner that he was rooting for those two—but that was before Zeke, well, died. Jared, meanwhile, is in an are-they-aren't-they situation with Drea, but let's face it: For Jared, there was only ever Michaela.

In his Variety interview, Rake weighed in on that, too: "When we come back for the final 10 episodes, there’ll be another passage of time, not anywhere close to the two years that we saw pass between Seasons 3 and 4, but a number of months will have passed. And it begs the question, “How many months does someone have to wait before ending their grief period and moving on?”" he said. "There may just be another chapter in store for for Michaela and Jared. So let’s take a beat, and see if there’s another opportunity for romance between those two."