The OA, short for ‘The Original Angel’, really caught me by surprise. To be honest when I first watched Season 1, which aired in 2016, I hadn’t expected it to be so good. Both the actors and the story-line are a pleasure to see unveiled bit by tortuous bit.
The plot starts backwards, that is, we are first faced by a young lost woman who had disappeared from the face of the earth for seven years, and who suddenly re-appears in the middle of a dark road. When the police take her home, her parents are overjoyed to see her of course, yet they are also weirded out and even, perhaps, a bit frightened. This is because ‘Priarie’, their adopted daughter, had been blind when she disappeared, she had been blind ever since they first saw her as a young girl – and now, she can see perfectly.
The mystery of Priarie, where she was for the last seven years, and how she magically regained her sight, is deeper and more strange than anyone can imagine. This is no detective mystery, it is not just a series about a kidnapping case or about a victim being brought back to light. It is so much more.
Priarie sports strange scars on her back. She has nightmares and is terrified of many things around her. Yet, we see her struggling to contact someone. Someone her parents don’t know. Someone she must reach out to at all costs. Fearing she will harm herself, the police suggest that Prairie is not allowed to go out of her house unaccompanied or to have access to the internet, given her fragile mental health. This further inflames and angers Priarie, who instead of talking to her therapist about what happened to her, chooses to secretly upload a video on YouTube asking anyone who feels a connection to her, any stranger who wants to help, to come to an abandoned house nearby at midnight and meet her. The important thing, she says, is for them to leave their house door wide open when they leave home… ‘You have to let me in’.
A combination of five mismatched strangers results from this video. Strangers who throughout the series, form an unlikely yet very strong alliance, a friendship which will go much further then they thought would be possible. Prairie tells her story to these strangers, and through them, to us.
I do not want to give any spoilers, yet one thing I must say is that whether you are religious or not, whether you are Catholic or not (I’m not) and whether you believe in magic or not, this series will surely touch a chord in you – one which, perhaps, you did not know you possessed.
Season 2 of ‘The OA’ premiered in 2019. The main actors still include Brit Marlin, Scott Wilson, Emory Cohen, and the great Jason Isaacs. Can’t wait to watch Season 3! Although this hasn’t been confirmed yet, I have no doubt it will be, since the series is so popular.
Darkly Dreaming Moonsong 