Note: Contains spoilers for The OA.
After a two-and-a-half-year wait (it probably felt more like 10 years to diehard fans), The OA: Part II finally hit Netflix back in March 2019.
Eight fresh episodes were ready and waiting to greet fans and, as expected, they were as trippy as everyone had hoped.
What to Read Next
You will, no doubt, have many, many questions following that finale, one being: will there be a Part III?
Here's everything you need to know.
The OA season 3 release date: When will it air?
Netflix has angered a significant portion of its subscribers with a raft of big cancellations recently, from Santa Clarita Diet to Designated Survivor, and there are no plans to stop anytime soon.
The OA is the platform's latest casualty, with the series dropped after just two chapters.
"We are incredibly proud of the 16 mesmerising chapters of The OA, and are grateful to [co-creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij] for sharing their audacious vision and for realising it through their incredible artistry," said the streaming service's vice president Cindy Holland.
"We look forward to working with them again in the future, in this and perhaps many other dimensions."
Marling also responded to the news, sharing her emotional reaction on social media.
"Zal and I are deeply sad not to finish this story. The first time I heard the news, I had a good cry," she said.
"So did one of our executives at Netflix who has been with us since the early days when we were sketching out Hap's basement on the floor of our production office in Queens. It's been an intense journey who worked on and cared about this story."
Jason Isaacs, who played Hap, previously spoke about how Batmanglij (director) and Marling (Prairie Johnson) had enough material for another three seasons.
"They've got all five seasons mapped out in their head. They did before they started," he told RadioTimes.com.
"And that's one of the reasons, I think, why the show was originally picked up by Netflix. Because they arrived with this thing that was fully formed. It's their singular voices. It doesn't bear the stamp of any kind of executive development.
"I'm so invested in seeing it as a fan that I hope to God that people like the show as much as I do because we'd like to get a season three, four and five."
But, at least for this moment in time, Part III has been taken off the table.
The OA season 3 plot: What would happen?
Initially, Designated Survivor was cancelled by ABC before it was eventually picked up by Netflix. And despite One Day at a Time being given the boot by Netflix, it was subsequently saved by Pop – so there is still hope that The OA could get another season.
But what would it look like?
According to Kingsley Ben-Adir, who featured in season two as Karim Washington, a private detective on the hunt for a missing teen, the third chapter will be just as wild.
"I know where it's going in the next season, which is nuts. Like, unimaginable," he told RT.
"Like, not even in a way I'm trying to sell it – it's crazy. You think it goes there, but then it goes there and there and then there.
"If you think about what happened in season two, the noir-ish tech thriller aspect of it, one thing's for sure, they're never gonna repeat themselves.
"Everybody will be rewarded by the time we reach the end of the journey."
Isaacs added: "It's not like The Fast and the Furious. You don't add a couple more cars. It's likely to be something entirely different.
"Season one and season two in many ways couldn't be more different. And I have no doubt they'll do the same, because they don't bore themselves, or they don't want to bore the audience.
"Only Netflix knows the real answers, but I feel like literally everyone on the planet wants to know what happens next, because in Starbucks, buying gas, anywhere I go, people go, 'You gotta tell me'.
"And the truth is, they don't really want the answers from me, they want the answers from Zal and Brit, who write it together, and they want it told on the screen."
Sorry, we just distracted ourselves imagining The OA crossing over with The Fast and the Furious. Who do we need to pay for Part III to include a scene in which The Rock has an argument with a psychic octopus? Because we'll cover any financial settlement to make that happen. We're not bluffing.
The OA season 3 cast: Who's returning?
If another streaming platform or broadcaster does decide to snap it up, we'd expect Marling to return as Prairie alongside both Ben-Adir and Isaacs.
But it remains to be seen who else would make a comeback.
All we hope is that enough of the cast return to follow up on the fairly massive Part II twist that the characters of The OA end up behind the scenes of a show that looks a lot like The OA – complete with 'Brit' playing The OA, and Jason Isaacs playing, well, Jason Isaacs. Talk about writing what you know!
The OA season 3 trailer: When will it land?
If Part III is brought back from the dead, we'll pop the trailer here for your viewing pleasure when it lands.
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Instagram and Twitter account.
Freelancer writer
Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist.
Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets.
He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more.
Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions.
Sam is the co-host, producer and editor of the Arrow Video podcast, which has seen year-on-year growth since its creation in 2017, gaining over half a million listens in that time.
His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others.
In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them.
Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best.
