Netflix's 'The OA' Was Too Weird To Live, Too Brilliant To Die
The Big Picture
- The OA tells an engaging story of interdimensional travel, near-death experiences, and unlikely bonds among a group of imperfect individuals.
- The series, conceived by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, was intended to explore a rich mythology with a five-season plan.
- The show's cancellation left fans hoping for a revival, highlighting its unique storytelling and the impact it had on its audience.
Once in a while, there comes a media project so unique that it stays with you long after its intended or, in this case, unintended end. When the first trailer for Netflix’s The OA was released, a seemingly simple story was teased, featuring Brit Marling’s Prairie, a blind woman who, after going missing for seven years, returns being able to see. After the series premiered, we’d come to realize The OA was so much more than just learning how she regained her sight. Prairie tells her story — which involves Russian oligarchs, human experimenting, near-death experiences, and interdimensional traveling — not to her family or the FBI, but to a group of people with nothing in common except the need to listen to her story. The series offers a rare engaging experience for the audience, where we are moved as well to suspend disbelief and feel part of OA’s tribe.
Conceived by Marling herself and Zal Batmanglij, The OA is divided into two parts — intended to be more had it not been cancelled. Part I deals with Prairie’s backstory, how she meets the people who define her life journey, and the way she’s given a gift by a mystic figure in order to be able to build a puzzle and move into another dimension. Part II amplifies the scope by incorporating another reality, different ways of traveling, and a mind-blowing cliffhanger ending. The OA took its time to establish its mythos and was set to expand as its last season showed us, but perhaps that’s what ended up playing against it into not getting renewed by Netflix.
The OA
TV-MAIn addition to her role as creator and executive producer of this mind-bending series, Brit Marling also plays the role of Prairie Johnson, a young woman who returns home after a 7-year disappearance. Her sudden return is not the only miraculous occurrence: everyone is shocked to learn that Prairie is no longer blind. While the FBI and her parents are anxious to discuss Prairie's disappearance, she won't talk about what happened during the time that she was missing. Zal Batmanglij, the co-creator and an executive producer of the series, is the director of every episode.
Release Date December 16, 2016 Cast Brit Marling , Jason Isaacs , Brendan Meyer , Paz Vega , Scott Wilson Main Genre Drama Seasons 2‘The OA’ Part I Keeps You Doubting if Prairie’s Story Is Real
Prairie’s tribe includes high schoolers Steve (Patrick Gibson), French (Brandon Perea), Buck (Ian Alexander), and Jesse (Brendan Meyer), plus one of their teachers, BBA (Phyllis Smith). As she relays her story to them – about how she escaped Russia, was sold to her adoptive parents, then kidnapped by Hap (Jason Isaacs) the “angel hunter”, killed and revived for years, in the meantime learning movements that could take her to another dimension — we get to see flashbacks that support her narrative. Still, there’s a part that asks if she's making it all up. This ethereal being now calling herself OA, the Original Angel, can’t be lying, right? The way The OA lets you decide when to believe Prairie's account is a genius interactive experience. When you eventually do, you even question yourself why it took you so long.
The OA clearly lets the viewer know how Hap’s testing is extremely unethical, but could also lead to the greatest revelation for humanity. He compares it to Galileo’s discovery that Earth is not the center of the universe, whereas life is not the center of human existence. Unbeknownst to him, by having Prairie, Homer (Emory Cohen), Scott (Will Brill), Rachel (Sharon Van Etten), and Renata (Paz Vega) go through near-death experiences, he gives them the ability to connect with their guardians, like Prairie’s Khatun (Hiam Abbass) — which, by the way, is how she recovers her sight. The guardians teach them a series of five sequential movements that will allow them to escape Hap’s prison by traveling to another dimension. They never get to fulfill this though, as Hap removes Prairie from the equation just when they learn the fifth and last movement. This is where Prairie's recounting clashes with her new gang, as they are essential for replicating the sequence. Prairie teaches the movements to the new gang, and – in a distressful and problematic school shooting – they use them to distract the perpetrator, getting her killed in their world while traveling to a new reality in search of Homer.
Part II of ‘The OA’ Amps Up the World-Building (and the Weirdness)
If any doubt remains about Prairie’s fate following Part I’s finale, Part II gets on with it quickly — the movements and the shooting provoke Prairie to shift to another universe where Hap and his prisoners also find a way to travel to. She occupies her body in that dimension, where she never lost her sight nor her dad, and everyone knows her as Nina. Meanwhile, detective Karim (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is investigating the disappearance of Michelle – Buck’s counterpart in that dimension – which leads him to a mysterious house that Nina owns in Nob Hill, San Francisco. They converge when he helps Nina escape Treasure Island, a psychiatric hospital commanded by Hap. Now, why does Nina end up again with Hap and company? Because they’re a constellation – as fellow traveler Elodie (Irène Jacob) explains – with a connection so strong, that it echoes through the multiverse.
Among the many discoveries posed in Part II, Nina has a connection to other living beings of the multiverse – specifically an octopus called Old Night (Eijiro Ozaki) and a tree network – who emphasize her uniqueness and explain Karim was sent by an unnamed figure to protect her (not unlike Riz Ahmed’s Elias Rahim from Part I). Back in the Prairie's original dimension, the tribe keeps trying to locate where she's gone. BBA is then revealed to have an interdimensional sensibility that allows her to track Nina, and they're able to converge in the second part’s climax.
'The OA' was Gearing Up To Build a Robust Mythology
In only 16 episodes, Marling and Batmanglij concocted a story with the richest of mythologies in sci-fi. While the audience was already introduced to the glimpses of other realities through near-death experiences and then movements to travel to said realities, Hap later realizes there are other ways to achieve dimension-traveling. His encounter with Elodie introduces him to mechanical boxes that replicate the movements – allowing for travel without the need for other humans. After he sends Scott to Nina's house in Nob Hill, he also uncovers that every mind holds the multiverse, and can be mapped out if harvested (literally, like a plant) correctly. That way, Hap seeded a whole pool of minds that grew the multiverse from within. If that already seems too much, it's also revealed that – through the ingesting of the petals that branch out of the harvested beings – you can previsualize the dimension you will jump to. Oh, to say this show is wild is an understatement.
Up to now, Part II’s finale stands as one of the most innovative plot twists in recent TV history by meshing fiction and reality. After Hap is able to create gigantic replicas of Elodie’s mechanical boxes, he entraps Nina among them, and – while she apparently comes to her full angel potential – they both travel to another universe – ours. That's correct, Nina and Hap appear at a movie studio as themselves. In this dimension, while filming The OA as Marling and Isaacs, she suffers a life-endangering fall. While rushing to a hospital to get her treated, the show gives us its last twist. Thanks to BBA's newfound abilities, Prairie's tribe was performing the movements at the exact same place and time, albeit in another dimension, and one of them managed to make the jump along with Hap and Nina. That way we learn Steve managed to cross over, ready to confront Hap/Isaacs and reconnect with Prairie/Nina/Marling. This cleverly orchestrated plot twist brought an even deeper layer of complexity to the show and its characters that would've surely blown our minds yet again had there been a Part III.
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‘The OA’s Uniqueness Lies In Its Modesty
The OA is low-budget sci-fi at its best. Many of its scenes take place in ordinary suburban settings – Costco, Olive Garden, Goodwill, Applebee’s. It’s a fantastic storytelling device that resonates with middle-class America. Science fiction is not exclusive to billionaire playboys. Apart from the scenes involving Khatun, Old Night, the tree network, and the mechanical boxes that replicate the movements, not much CGI is needed to concoct this elaborate tale. It is through Marling’s mellow voice, the movements choreographed by Ryan Heffington, and Rostam Batmanglij’s magical theme song, that we get immersed in this world of wonders.
The series is also about second chances, unlikely bonds, and acceptance. OA appreciates the value of reinventing yourself, and that's why her tribe is made up of imperfect beings: Steve is a bully who’s taken wrong decisions, Jesse struggles for his voice to be heard, Buck is fighting to be recognized as the boy he is, French aims to be his family’s rock while coming to terms with being gay, and BBA just wants to be able to connect with anyone while grieving her estranged twin brother. It's their humanity that makes them special, but also what plays against them when being unable to deal with their emotions. The death of one of them comes not because of interdimensional experimenting, but rather because of an overdose after not being able to overcome OA’s departure from their world. The OA didn't enter their lives because they were perfect, but rather because they weren't, in the hopes of them coming through together as a group.
What Happened After 'The OA' Was Cancelled?
CloseIn August 2019, the show was cancelled with a bunch of loose threads and then some. A group of fans was hopeful this was a publicity stunt following “Brit’s accident,” in which the cancelation would be fictional, and the show would continue following her "recovery," but that wasn’t the case. “How would The OA have continued?” is a question we may never get the answer to, but Isaacs has stated there was a five-season plan that blew his mind when he was told about it. Marling herself has confirmed the five parts were part of the plan all along. She's still dumbfounded when people meet her and start doing the movements. It makes her ask herself how a show on a global-reaching platform, which was trending on social media, didn't make the necessary numbers for Netflix at the time? Perhaps the answer lies in Netflix being a very different place back when they decided to give The OA a go, than years later when they decided to cancel.
The efforts to bring The OA back were plenty. Fans took to Twitter to get the hashtags #SaveTheOA and #TheOAIsReal trending. The movements were performed and uploaded to social media by several users. A physical performance took place in front of the Netflix headquarters that also included a woman going on a hunger strike. A GoFundMe campaign was launched and raised $5,500 for a Times Square billboard with fan art and the #SaveTheOA hashtag. While a movie was still being considered to give closure to the story, it was ultimately dropped by Netflix.
Marling and Batmanglij Reunited for 'A Murder at the End of the World'
With The OA – plus their previous individual works, like Another Earth and The East, respectively — Marling and Batmanglij proved their unique vision can produce engagingly strong and tight stories. Teaming up with FX, the pair released A Murder at the End of the World in 2023. Starring Emma Corrin, Harris Dickinson, and Marling herself, the series sees some of the most talented and influential people in the world invited by Andy Ronson (Clive Owen's version of Elon Musk) to a winter-y retreat. Things go awry when one of them is murdered, and Corrin's Darby tries to get to the bottom of it all. A Murder at the End of the World, while not as wild as The OA, is a delicately weaved mystery that is bound to keep you hooked with every twist, saving the best for last in its neatly-wrapped conclusion. Given it was always meant to be a limited series, thankfully there aren't any loose ends left in this show.
The interactive multimedia experience The OA offered was unique but short-lived. Had Netflix been smart enough, they would’ve taken advantage of the spotlight the fans shone on the show and painted this as a fake cancellation to go with the series’ storyline, but sadly they weren’t. Marling’s truthful and heartbreaking statement after the cancellation is enough to make any fan wonder what could have been. Nowadays, The OA would’ve been more successful with the multiverse genre boom, but that’s a “what if?” scenario left to be answered in another dimension.
Stream The OA on Netflix in the U.S.
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