Unfinished Dimensions: The Lingering Hope for ‘The OA’s’ Return

There was a time when Netflix bet big on different proposals only to leave fans disappointed when the dreaded cancellations came. Last August marked the five-year anniversary of one of the most painful decisions for The OA fans: not giving the beloved series an ending.

Created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij and starring the former or Jason Isaacs, the show has won over audiences with its desire to present a captivating mystery that navigates between science fiction, fantasy and the supernatural. If five seasons had been planned (and sold to the platform), it will ultimately only have two.

In August 2019, after several months of no news, Netflix canceled The OA at the end of its season 2, leaving fans, creators and actors speechless.

Five seasons or one movie

Even Jason Isaacs continues to hope that the five-season plan that the show’s creators had could continue. Last January, the actor had in fact mentioned the subject after praising the work of Marling and Batmanglij (via Collider).

​​”They laid all the foundations and then they let all the actors flesh it out and that’s why I think there’s never been anything like it. I’ve never seen anything like it. I absolutely loved it and, by the way, even though it got canceled after season 2, they have all five seasons in mind. And if you’ve seen season 2, you know, where we left off, we can pick it up at any time, we’d be willing to if we had the opportunity.”

Jason Isaacs had previously stated that he was absolutely speechless when Marling and Batmanglij told him about what they had planned beyond that for Season 3.

“My head was spinning, with what was going to happen, and how I was going to do it, and what it was going to be. And then, of course, it wasn’t me. It’s Hap inside a version of Jason Isaacs, in a universe that they were going to create, so there were all sorts of fantastic possibilities for that. And it’s a world where Jason Isaacs is married to Brit Marling, by the way, which a lot of people thought was true. They were just very smart to play with those expectations and come up with things that were interesting and smart, but also moving and human. And they changed the rules of the game, all the time. Season 2 was so different from Season 1, and Season 3 was going to be very different from Season 2 as well. I’m sorry to everyone, and especially sorry to me, that we don’t get to see it.”

Netflix

Fans, meanwhile, have been theorizing about what might happen next. Netflix, for its part, had offered the creators the chance to end the series… with a movie. They refused, saying it would be difficult to wrap things up with so little footage available.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last year, Will Batmanglij raised the subject: “The OA ending was unexpected to me, but they tried to wrap it up with a movie and we said no. So I wasn’t upset about it; I was more confused. If you’re Netflix, why not just end it with more than just a movie finale? Why not end it with a third season? That would force us to put all three seasons together. [restantes et prévues] into one and close it out, and then you could outsource it to Max or Hulu or somewhere else.”

He added: “You can do so much with it if it’s finished. This idea of ​​all these unfinished houses sitting on their platform, I just don’t see the economics of it. It’s much better to have something finished and then license it and make money off of it for the next 10 to 20 years. So we didn’t feel any bitterness about that…”

Would a sequel ever be possible? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, both seasons of The OA can be rewatched on Netflix.