Sorry, The OA Fans: Show's Revival Is Realistic But Pointless

Summary:

• The OA is an outstanding sci-fi project from Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling that was abruptly canceled after its second season in 2019.
• The show's creators have not lost hope of reviving the show, but with the actors getting older every year, not all main actors will be able to return, which is a huge problem in the case of The OA.
• One of the best ways to continue the show is to write a novelization of it.

In 2019, Netflix premiered the second season of The OA, a sci-fi show created by indie director Zal Batmanglij and actress Brit Marling. Marling and Batmanglij co-wrote the script, and in terms of creative freedom, they seem to have no competition.

By the second season, the show had become a full-fledged rival to Twin Peaks, and thus one of the best shows of recent years.

For Marling and Batmanglij, this is apparently something like the main story of their lives: compared to The OA, the plots about the humble time traveler from Sound of My Voice and just two alternative worlds from Another Earth look no more than sketches.

The OA's episodes include not only the aforementioned parallel universes, but also a noir detective story, a teen cyber-horror, a puzzle adventure, and even a Lovecraftian encounter with a superintelligence from unknown depths.

Yes, the show was canceled after its second season, but the creators are still positive about the prospects for continuation. However, for this to happen, the creative conditions must be right – Marling and Batmanglij have already rejected the proposed Netflix movie that would have taken the story to its logical conclusion.

Given the positive mood of the creators, the support of the army of fans, and the success of Marling and Batmanglij's new show A Murder at The End of The World, the third season of The OA does not look like something impossible, another question is how much sense does it make to film it four or five years later?

Why Is The OA Season 3 Pointless?

Perhaps we're talking about a hiatus of even more than five years (considering that Netflix still hasn't even hinted at season 3), which poses the first two problems for the show's creators – not all of the actors will likely be able to return to their roles, and some of them will have matured too much.

Recasting a show like The OA, where everything is connected and intertwined, seems like an almost impossible option – each of the more than ten characters carries too much weight for the plot.

Some fans have suggested that the writers could use a story with Prairie/OA in a coma all these years to justify the time gap, but considering that the script was written for all of the originally planned five seasons at once, and the plot of The OA is extremely complex, intricate, and thoughtful, it is unlikely that the writers will break the already constructed concept.

The OA Could Be Turned Into a Novel

Some fans believe that the best way out of this situation would be a novelization of all five seasons – and that option does sound as a meaningful one.

Most viewers would be thrilled at the prospect of seeing the rest of the story, at least in graphic novel form. Still, there has been no information of such a project being in the works.