In the beginning of the Emergence premiere, a plane crash leads to police chief Jo Evans (Allison Tolman) finding a young girl (Alexis Swinton) who has no memory of who she is or how she got to the crash site. But as the episode wears on, the girl, whom Jo temporarily names Piper, showcases what seem to be supernatural powers. It leads viewers to believe that Piper may have caused the plane crash, but the question then is why?
Officially, the plane crash was reported by the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) as not a plane at all. The group said the crashed object was an unmanned drone mapping forest coverage. However, both Jo and investigative reporter Benny Gallagher are suspicious of that story. Jo was there, and she saw a plane. Benny's sources said that human remains were also discovered at the site of the supposed unmanned drone crash. And when the whole crash was cleaned up hours later and the story brushed under the rug, Jo and Benny began looking into things.
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One person Jo should be looking is at Piper. Throughout the episode, the young girl exhibited strange powers. When she was sitting in the car, the rain drops hitting the windshield collected in her direction, almost as if she was moving them towards her. When Piper got close to Jo's TV, it also interrupted the broadcast as if an electromagnetic source was overpowering the station. But it was when she was scared at the cabin and being chased by kidnappers that her powers came out the most. Metal objects began flying around the room as if drawn to invisible magnets and she was even able to move the heavy washer and dryer seemingly with just her mind. If her powers come out more when she's scared, that's a key factor to keep in mind.
After she was taken by her kidnappers, the kidnappers' car suddenly crashed. It didn't hit anything in the road, it just rolled over and crumpled up out of nowhere. Piper escaped unscathed. If she can do that to a car out of fear, could she have done that to a plane? Piper must be on the same wavelength that viewers are, because she asked Jo, "Do you think I crashed that plane?" Jo said no, she didn't think that, but she's probably just trying to placate the scared young girl.
Based on what Piper did to that car, nothing is out of the realm of possibility. Even the actress who plays Piper hinted that she may have had the power to take that plane down.
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"She's very resourceful and she's good at surviving. I think that she's really smart," Swinton said about Piper in an interview Forbes. She wasn't speaking directly about the plane, but she clearly knows that her character is capable of doing what she needs to do to get by. Perhaps crashing the plane was necessary for Piper to survive.
Maybe she was being moved via airplane by the group of people associated with her car kidnappers. Her terror-amplified powers may have messed with the plane's flight instruments or destroyed the metal exterior of the plane and caused it to crash. It would explain why Piper was at the crash site in the first place. The doctor who checked Piper out didn't think she could have been on the plane because she was unharmed, but she also sustained no injuries from the car crash.
Also, if one or more members from the kidnapping group were in the plane with Piper, it would explain why they were able to get to the crash site so quickly as fake NTSB agents. They would have known that the plane would be in the area and known that it crashed with Piper on board. Because Piper can't remember anything from before the crash, it's unclear exactly why she would have caused the crash — but it seems fairly certain that she did.