Note: contains mild spoilers for The OA season 2.
Since The OA first appeared on Netflix at the end of 2016, everyone who has watched it has puzzled, and argued, over the ambiguous, head-scratching plot.
On the surface, it was the story of Prairie (Brit Marling), a blind girl who disappeared from her family home for seven years and then returned, sight restored, with a bizarre tale to tell of being imprisoned underground by Hap (Jason Isaacs), a man obsessed with near-death experiences.
Befriending a group of teens and a teacher in her Michigan neighbourhood, Prairie told them the utterly bonkers story of her captivity and taught them the strange physical 'movements' she and her fellow captives had learned.
She told her new friends that she was the "OA" (short for "Original Angel") and that the movements were something mystical and possibly life-saving. Which came in handy in the final episode when the show took off in a completely different direction as a shooter attacked the school.
One of the joys – or frustrations, depending on your outlook – of The OA’s first season was that so many questions were left unanswered by co-writers Marling and Zal Batmanglij, with "What the hell have I just watched?" being just one of them.
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As the first season ended, the kids themselves were questioning OA/Prairie’s story, unable to find any facts to back up her tales of being a Russian immigrant who was playing the violin in a New York subway station when she first encountered Hap. And the discovery of a box of books under her bed that related to her tale – including one on near-death experiences, plus Homer’s Iliad (the fellow prisoner she was most drawn to was called Homer) – also led them, and us, to question what was true and what she had made up.
And that was part of the mind-bending/teeth-gnashingly annoying fun of it all. Had we just watched something that was all in the head of the OA? Is she in a coma, dreaming it all? Was some of it true, or none of it at all? Was Hap right in thinking there were other dimensions to travel to? And what were those mad, arm-flailing movements all about?
If you liked The OA for its ambiguity and would prefer not to know the answers to those questions, you may wish to approach the second season with caution as – in the six episodes made available to the press before the whole season arrives on Netflix this Friday – some of those most puzzling brain teasers may have been answered.
While there is a whole new story to ponder – there’s a detective named Karim (Kingsley Ben-Adir) searching for a missing girl in a twisting plot involving gamers and a mysterious millionaire – the new season also revisits OA’s teenage friends (and teacher BBA) as they head off on an ill-advised road trip looking for their own answers and, most importantly, takes us in a whole new direction with Prairie/OA herself.
It’s no big spoiler (it’s in the trailer) to reveal we rejoin Prairie after she was shot at the school, as she zips/poofs/magics into the body of Nina (Prairie’s original Russian name) in an alternate timeline, while dying in the original first season dimension. Hah! That answers two questions, right there.
This new dimension is a world in which Joe Biden is president (hurrah!) but Duran Duran still exists (phew!) and Nina/OA/Prairie ends up in a San Francisco mental institution run by Dr Percy (aka Hap) while Homer is her therapist. Hap remembers her as OA, as do the other patients (who are Hap’s captives from the other timeline) but Homer does not.
So in just the first couple of hours of the new season, it seems that one of The OA’s biggest mysteries – is OA for real? – is cleared up. That’s likely to divide viewers – especially those who don’t want everything to be explained, or would have preferred it to all be a dream just like Bobby Ewing’s legendary shower in Dallas.
And if we take it as true that OA, Hap and his captives have travelled to another dimension, many other questions seem to have answers, too. It would appear that Prairie’s unbelievable story from the first season is really true: she was held captive, she’s not just your average human, and Hap really is the psychopath (in both universes) she described. Even the books under the bed are explained and add weight to her story.
But is answering these season one questions such a bad thing? Certainly not when you have Marling and Batmanglij throwing in new puzzles just as old ones are apparently solved. (And we wouldn’t put it past them to upend their entire narrative so far and present another totally different interpretation – in a show with few boundaries that's so enjoyably bananas, why shouldn’t they?)
As well as the new mystery of the missing girl that leads to some strange, literally house-sized puzzles and the jaw-droppingly mad character Old Night, the reveal that there are multiple dimensions throws up even more questions than it answers (are there more versions of OA in other timelines? Can she choose where to travel? Is there a Brexit-free dimension?) as well as opening the story up to be even wider (and weirder).
So there are still many mysteries to be solved as you absorb The OA’s second season, and with its scope widened from suburban Michigan to, well, everywhere, it manages to be stranger, more puzzling and even more addictively demented than the first season. Unless we dreamed it all, of course…
The OA: Part 2 will be streaming on Netflix from tomorrow (Friday, March 22).
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Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
