The OA (Netflix, Seasons 2)
Apr. 1st, 2019 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroA formerly-blind woman who had been missing for seven years reappeared, gathered followers with a crazy story of imprisonment and near-death experiences, and taught them all angry Tai Chi magic movements. What really happened?
The second season goes ahead and validates the “yes, it was supernatural” path of the first season, which, to be fair, it kinda had to.* The five movements do, in fact, all you to travel between dimensions in the multiverse, and that’s what OA did, and her crazy stories were all true. (For that matter, it’s reasonable to continue to assume, as I came up with in my first-season review, that The OA jumped through dimensions several times, and was in fact in a different dimension during the first season from the one Hap had held her in—it was just close enough to her original pre-Hap life and also involved “Prairie” going missing that she could fit back into it. That would explain why the kids couldn’t find any evidence of her story despite their research: It hadn’t happened in their universe!)
They did go out of their way to explain the books and the FBI agent as not being contradictions to the OA’s story in the first season (the adoptive dad ordered them on the therapist’s suggestion; the FBI agent claims to be sent to help “her”).
The season’s first big revelation is that NDEs are glimpses of the future in a different reality, as opposed to an afterlife. This, in turn, shows that the creators had some idea where the later seasons would go when they made the first one.
But apparently, of course, they also felt the need to include dreams predicting the future, telepathic octopuses, and mediums who can talk to interconnected trees. Oh, and a psychedelic puzzle house that might be just gas-induced hallucinations.
Despite going full meta for the ending, the pieces of a proper ending are all there and appropriately foreshadowed: As long as OA is in Nina’s dimension, the boys are all in comas in Hap’s lab, so it isn’t safe for them to jump. Once OA and Hap jump into the “real” world, the boys and BBA are all good to move. The premonition OA had when Old Knight killed her indicates that she, as Brit Marling, will be on a plane and will be visited by herself; and per the tree she needs a “tribe” with her, but the boys and BBA have all just jumped to her side, and Homer will be in that dimension (presumably as Emory Cohen). So basically, when you see a headline that Brit Marling and Emory Cohen are together and she’s slamming Jason Isaacs with a slate of lawsuits, you know why.
Also interesting is the clear body count this dimensional jumping leaves behind—despite there being an “Elodie” in that dimension, her body is apparently left in a coma when she travels. In the dimension(s) of the first season, Hap’s prisoners are all dead in a field and BBA and the boys are comatose in an abandoned mental hospital. Do that dimension’s Dr. Percy and Nina wake up to find Dr. Roberts dead, unclear why they’re on the roof and what the dancing machines are? (Also: It’s been a couple of days. How the hell did Hap commission five giant dancing robots in that time? Or maybe we missed a few weeks while the boys drove from Michigan to the Bay Area while dodging the cops, Karim recovered somewhat from mercury poisoning, and Nina...sat in her bathtub.)
* It’s not strictly impossible that the episodes in the second dimension are purely fantasy, and what we see of the boys and BBA are, in fact, them all going crazy following the death of their cult leader in a school shooting. The people of that dimension aren’t left with any evidence to the contrary.
Overall: Despite remaining totally batshit, I think embracing some of the supernatural elements definitively made the show stronger. It doesn’t actually need a continuation from here (the main arc’s conclusion is obvious), but it’ll be interesting to see if it does get a third season.
The second season goes ahead and validates the “yes, it was supernatural” path of the first season, which, to be fair, it kinda had to.* The five movements do, in fact, all you to travel between dimensions in the multiverse, and that’s what OA did, and her crazy stories were all true. (For that matter, it’s reasonable to continue to assume, as I came up with in my first-season review, that The OA jumped through dimensions several times, and was in fact in a different dimension during the first season from the one Hap had held her in—it was just close enough to her original pre-Hap life and also involved “Prairie” going missing that she could fit back into it. That would explain why the kids couldn’t find any evidence of her story despite their research: It hadn’t happened in their universe!)
They did go out of their way to explain the books and the FBI agent as not being contradictions to the OA’s story in the first season (the adoptive dad ordered them on the therapist’s suggestion; the FBI agent claims to be sent to help “her”).
The season’s first big revelation is that NDEs are glimpses of the future in a different reality, as opposed to an afterlife. This, in turn, shows that the creators had some idea where the later seasons would go when they made the first one.
But apparently, of course, they also felt the need to include dreams predicting the future, telepathic octopuses, and mediums who can talk to interconnected trees. Oh, and a psychedelic puzzle house that might be just gas-induced hallucinations.
Despite going full meta for the ending, the pieces of a proper ending are all there and appropriately foreshadowed: As long as OA is in Nina’s dimension, the boys are all in comas in Hap’s lab, so it isn’t safe for them to jump. Once OA and Hap jump into the “real” world, the boys and BBA are all good to move. The premonition OA had when Old Knight killed her indicates that she, as Brit Marling, will be on a plane and will be visited by herself; and per the tree she needs a “tribe” with her, but the boys and BBA have all just jumped to her side, and Homer will be in that dimension (presumably as Emory Cohen). So basically, when you see a headline that Brit Marling and Emory Cohen are together and she’s slamming Jason Isaacs with a slate of lawsuits, you know why.
Also interesting is the clear body count this dimensional jumping leaves behind—despite there being an “Elodie” in that dimension, her body is apparently left in a coma when she travels. In the dimension(s) of the first season, Hap’s prisoners are all dead in a field and BBA and the boys are comatose in an abandoned mental hospital. Do that dimension’s Dr. Percy and Nina wake up to find Dr. Roberts dead, unclear why they’re on the roof and what the dancing machines are? (Also: It’s been a couple of days. How the hell did Hap commission five giant dancing robots in that time? Or maybe we missed a few weeks while the boys drove from Michigan to the Bay Area while dodging the cops, Karim recovered somewhat from mercury poisoning, and Nina...sat in her bathtub.)
* It’s not strictly impossible that the episodes in the second dimension are purely fantasy, and what we see of the boys and BBA are, in fact, them all going crazy following the death of their cult leader in a school shooting. The people of that dimension aren’t left with any evidence to the contrary.
Overall: Despite remaining totally batshit, I think embracing some of the supernatural elements definitively made the show stronger. It doesn’t actually need a continuation from here (the main arc’s conclusion is obvious), but it’ll be interesting to see if it does get a third season.
