Manifest has been one of the more interesting case studies of the Streaming Age -- cancelled after three seasons by NBC in June of last year just as off-network distribution of seasons 1 and 2 began to absolutely take off into the domestic viewership stratosphere on Netflix.
The first two seasons of the Warner Bros. Television-produced sci-fi/fantasy drama about a missing commercial airliner that suddenly re-appears five years later, created by Jeff Rake, and produced by Robert Zemeckis, scored the biggest domestic subscription streaming audience of 2021, at least up until the week of June 14-20 of last year, on Nielsen's weekly U.S. streaming viewership ranker.
Netflix's global weekly audience rankings go back as far as the week of June 28 - July 4 last year. Manifest Season 1, which had already been on the platform for 18 days when that week started, and still hadn't been released by Netflix throughout most international markets, was the third most popular show on the platform worldwide in that frame with over 36.3 million viewing hours.
Also read: How NBCU Badly Misplayed Its Hand with 'Manifest'
Manifest: Season 2 ranked fifth with over 21.3 million streaming hours.
The "Manifesters," as they were dubbed by showrunner Rake amid a "Save Manifest" movement on social media, got their wish in late-August of last year, when Netflix relented and commissioned a two part, jumbo 20-episode fourth and final season of the hourlong drama.
This came despite a bummer August 2021 debut for Manifest: Season 3, which premiered to only 17.7 million viewing hours on Netflix and never climbed any higher.
With Netflix now fully in command of the controls, last week's debut of Season 4 fared better, delivering just over 57 million viewing hours and leading all Netflix TV shows for the week.
But we actually expected this show to climb a lot higher than it did.
Season 1 had, after all, surfaced on Netflix's Top 10 English-language ranker once again in early July this past summer, with Netflix finally expanding distribution of Manifest to Europe and Latin America.
Meanwhile, for comparables, Season 6 of former Fox series Lucifer -- another Netflix reclamation of a cancelled broadcast sci-fi/fantasy show -- debuted to nearly 76 million viewing hours in September of last year.
So it goes. Like the airline business, subscription streaming is tough and unpredictable.
Whodunit film sequel Enola Holmes 2, starring Millie Bobby Brown as crime-solving younger sister to her more famous brother Sherlock (played by Henry Cavill), actually led all comers on Netflix last week, delivering nearly 64.1 million viewing hours.
Here's how the rankings shaped up for the week of Oct. 31 - Nov. 6:
