The OA
Our Review
Netflix’s strangest, most sincere mystery: Prairie Johnson, a blind woman who disappeared seven years ago, returns sighted — and gathers five strangers and a teacher in an abandoned house to tell them where she was, in installments she demands they experience in darkness and total silence. The story she tells (kidnapping, near-death experiences, angelic visitation, interdimensional movement through dance) is either a miracle or a delusion, and the show holds both possibilities open with masterful control.
Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s creation is unclassifiable — part sci-fi, part cult drama, part portrait of traumatized people who need something to believe in — and its first season’s finale is one of TV’s great rug-pulls. Season 2 goes full multiverse and finds awe in it. Canceled after season 2’s cliffhanger, one of Netflix’s most painful cuts — the #SaveTheOA flash mobs performing the movements in public were one of fandom’s most beautiful protests.
Verdict: Watch it. Believe, or don’t — the show trusts you with both.