The OA: Part II- A Review

This was a good birthday present.

I’ve been waiting to write this review for three years.

The last time I wrote about The OA, I wasn’t even on Medium yet; I wrote some theories about it on Tumblr, specifically arguing back and forth for whether or not Prairie’s story was true or not.

My… how far we’ve come in just eight episodes.

After season one, I called it “a very captivating show.” Now, at the conclusion of season two, I’d probably call it some of the best story-telling on television.

Massive SPOILERS ahead. Seriously, if there was ever a television show that you should watch fresh and spoiler-free, this is it, so turn back now if you haven’t finished watching all available episodes of The OA.

Answers and More Questions

When I finished watching the first season, there wasn’t even a confirmation that there was any more of this story to come. For all I knew, Prairie’s story ended when she was shot outside the cafeteria, leaving us all wondering whether or not her story about her captivity, her near-death-experiences, and the movements that would move her on to another dimension was true. That first season did such an excellent job of leaving you in doubt over everything.

And it was such a unique set of episodes that I would have been fine if that was it. But by the time I wrote about it on Tumblr, Brit Marling (star and creator) had confirmed that a second season was in the works. And that left me conflicted. I wanted answers, badly, but at the same time I was afraid that the answers to the questions I had would end up falling short of the mystery of season one.

The first thing I have to say about season two is that it feels like a very different show than the first season, and yet it is still familiar. It is still, unequivocally, The OA. But the story we discover in the second set of eight episodes is vastly different from the previous eight. In fact, roughly the first thirty minutes of episode one doesn’t even follow any of the characters we know from season one (or so we think). But that doesn’t matter; it’s damn compelling writing. Whether the…