'The OA' - Season 1 Review

So far it is undetermined whether or not The OA will continue for a second season. Assuming that it does not, there are 8 and only 8 episodes of weird and confusing events to sort through.

First of all, let me say that if you don't like weird or quirky shows, do not watch The OA. If you don't like vague endings where you aren't sure what was real and what wasn't? Also do not watch.

In general, this was a weird show. Really, really weird. The idea is that Prairie Johnson has re-appeared after being missing for many years. When she left she was blind. On her return, she can see. Prairie meets a group of five others who she tells her story to.

This seems straightforward enough- except that it isn't. The main topic surrounding Prairie's mysterious disappearance is that of Near Death Experiences (NDEs), notoriously confusing and unexplained even outside of the world of television.

If you are trying to decide whether to watch or not and you haven't been dissuaded by the previous points, give it a go. Likely you will either like it or hate it, but it's only 8 hours of your life right?

***Spoilers ahead***

I personally was not the biggest fan of the show, but I will admit there are a lot of questions that I would like to have answered after having just watched the season finale. For one, the answer to the biggest debate: was Prairie's story real?

Despite the book scene where some people may have been convinced that the whole NDE and five movements situation was a figment of Prairie's imaginative and possibly ill brain, I remain sceptical about both possibilities.

Ultimately I think that for fantasy's sake I will pick the 'everything is real' side of things, but there isn't much reasoning beyond that. However, the possibility of a second season makes me more confident in that pick. What would they have to make another season out of if everything was a lie?

Another pressing question is: what was Elias (the psychiatrist) doing in the Johnson home in the middle of the night? Did he plant the books in order to cover up the existence of inter-dimensional travel? Is he just a creepy stalker?

Then there is the school shooting. Did the group really perform the movements or was that in Prairie's head too? And why would the movements work so anti-climatically? It works so Prairie gets shot and put in an ambulance? That seems suspicious. Maybe that is also the point though - inter-dimensional travel has to hide itself behind a guise of NDEs and serious injuries otherwise it does not work. In that case, does Prairie actually die in order to travel, or just seem to die and live in the other dimension on a different time-frame so that she can come back without a prolonged death?

There are a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. What are your thoughts? Do you think that there should be a second season?

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