The OA
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
A blind woman walks into an police station in the Arctic with her sight restored, a new name, and a hand sewn map of the universe. Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij built The OA as a faith exercise: part one is a prisoner origin story told by a survivor to an audience that does not believe her, part two is the show asking you to prove what you paid attention to.
It is the most ambitious thing Netflix cancelled. The movement sequences are either the best dance scenes on television or a cult recruitment film with a budget, the Prairie Johnson origin hour is genuine television horror about institutional cruelty, and the ending is a thesis statement about storytelling as rescue. Marling’s performance is the whole argument: if you do not believe her, the show has nothing to offer, and if you do, it has everything.
Part one is complete art, part two is a beautiful argument. Cancelled on a cliffhanger, which is its own kind of statement.
Our score: 7.5/10.
