The OA is a new Netflix show that everyone is gushing and going on about. I binged all eight 54 minute episodes over a few days and found the only interesting thing about it was that there was a transgender character played by a transgender person. Honestly that’s what all the buzz about the show seemed to be.
To spare you hours of cringing at the disturbing concept brought into the show, the weird mythical Arabian guardian character guiding our protagonist, and spending the first hour and a half of the show wondering what was happening or what the plot was, I’ve written this play-by-play article outlining what happens. Spoiler warning, obviously.
Right off the bat, The OA, our main character, is walking on a bridge and jumps off, while a nearby child films it. The video goes viral and alerts Nancy and Abel because, surprise surprise, The OA happens to be their missing-for-seven-years blind daughter, Prairie. Only thing is she’s not blind any more, and has mysterious scars covering her back. She insists she can’t tell anyone about what happened and is trying to find a way to interact with this person named Homer.
The OA finds our troubled teen Steve, first introduced to us with sex, and his punching a wall when his friend with benefits leaves because she wants to date someone in choir instead of him. Steve deals drugs in an abandoned house on The OA’s street, and she goes to ask for a router. Steve delivers, then asks her to pretend to be his stepmom to his parent-teacher conference so that his parents won’t find out he punched the choir boy his fwb is interested in. The teacher, later nicknamed BBA, is moved by The OA’s words and upon seeing Steve’s dad in Costco, tells him his new wife is great. Steve’s biological mom is with Steve’s dad, however, and Steve and The OA’s cover is blown. The OA, needing a favor from Steve, posts a video on YouTube asking for help. She sets up candles and a meeting spot in the abandoned house and Steve, BBA, Steve’s friend Jesse, an honor roll full-ride kid French, and our token trans boy Buck meet up. The OA explains she needs their help and then begins to tell them what happened in the seven years she was gone.
This is just the first episode. It drags on and on through so many hoops and still doesn’t bother to explain what’s going on. After this set up that didn’t establish anything but leave the viewer at bay, The OA explains that she was born in Russia as Nina and that her family was targeted by the Russian mafia that attacked her school bus. She died in the attack, but as she died she traveled to some subconscious dimension where this vaguely Middle Eastern guardian tells her if she wants to live, she’s going to need to take her eyesight. Which she does in a really CGI Ursula soul-sucking sort of way. It’s weird.
Nina’s dad is paranoid about the Russian mafia so he sends her to an American boarding school for the blind, until he dies and she goes to live with her aunt who sells babies (what? What???). Nancy and Abel show up and Nancy is convinced that Nina (The OA, remember? Too many names for our protagonist) needs her, and renames her Prairie. Prairie is convinced that her father is alive and won’t stop dreaming about him and sleep walking and sleep talking in Russian so Nancy and Abel decide to medicate her because apparently sleep talking and walking and nose bleeds are indications of psychosis. Clearly.
When Prairie turns 21, she runs away from home and goes to New York city to try to find her dad, who she firmly believes is alive. She plays her violin on the subway in the hopes that he would hear it and know it was her, and instead attracts the antagonist of the show, Hap. He guesses immediately that she’s experienced a NDE (Near Death Experience) and then convinces her to travel with him to wherever in the country and literally locks her up in a cage with three other people in adjoining cells. The other jail mates, Rachel, Scott and Homer, are all stuck with Hap’s mysterious experiments. After years of trying to decipher Hap’s actions, Homer realizes that he’s been drowning them to simulate and study NDE’s. It’s so creepy and disturbing to watch.
A lot of other stuff happens, including Prairie experiencing another NDE in which she regains her eyesight and is convinced they’re angels, Hap captures a girl from Cuba by using Homer to have sex with her so Hap can knock her out and trap her, and Scott is miraculously brought to life by Prairie and Homer doing “movements” they learned from their NDE’s and then bam the gang decides they need to get all five movement to travel to a different dimension to escape. Yup, that’s what happens. Hap gets sad and lonely because he feels excluded from his prisoners (Uh, yeah dude). Honestly, so much happens in this show it’s hard to know what to touch on what’s important.
Meanwhile in reality, Steve, Buck, Jesse, French and BBA are all struggling to believe The OA’s story, bonding together, grappling with death (BBA’s brother, Theo Allen (The OA…oh wow, incredible) has passed away from substance abuse...? It’s very unclear), and group fighting. When The OA finally gets to what she wants them to do (learn the five movements so they can transport her to an alternate dimension so she can get to Homer and the others), she continues to tell them what happened all while teaching them the movements.
What happened is that a state trooper found out Hap’s lab and prisoners and uses Homer and Prairie to “operate” on his ill-stricken wife. They begin to heal her of her ALS (I think it’s ALS? It’s only mentioned once) and surprise, she has the last movement from her NDE as a child! She teaches the two the move, and then Hap kills her and the state trooper, throws Prairie out in a forest, and drives back to escape the dimension with the others.
French discovers The OA might have been making the whole thing up and the very same day, The OA’s weird dreams she’s been having are deciphered and she runs to the school’s cafeteria, where her five people are. Completely out of nowhere, like that recent viral video created by the Sandy Hook parent survivors, there’s a school shooting! The five know that they need to perform the movements then, and do. The ending is incredibly ambiguous- The OA gets hit with a bullet and either dies or is transported to the dimension Homer and the others are in…or by performing the movements, the five are brought to a different dimension that doesn’t result in the shooter hurting anyone but The OA…or The OA was making up what happened from shock and trauma and the movements distracted the shooter long enough for someone to knock them over. Viewers have no indication as to who the shooter is.
This show is hours of squicky topics without anything really satisfying to gain from it. Props to the casting director for having a trans boy play a trans character, but Buck isn’t even listed on the Google banner as a main character. The only trans related things discussed were that he goes to Steve for testosterone and that his dad keeps dead-naming him.
If you’re easily triggered, don’t bother watching the show. If you’re hoping to get something worthwhile, don’t bother watching the show. If you need something to fixate on for a few hours and you want answers, that’s what got me stuck into continuing to watch episodes. Be warned: the answers aren’t all met in the show. If you want to see a lonely nice-guy scientist torturing and experimenting on a Cuban and white people (some with dreadlocks…ugh.), then by all means, go ahead and watch.
