‘The OA’: Netflix Cancels Series After Two Seasons

Netflix has canceled The OA, the mind-bending fantasy-drama series co-created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, four months after launching its second and assumedly final season. The show, which debuted in December 2016, starred Marling as Prairie Johnson, a once-blind woman who returns home after being missing for seven years, her sight mysteriously restored.

Cindy Holland, Netflix’s head of original content, told The Hollywood Reporter that the network is “incredibly proud” of the program’s “16 mesmerizing chapters.” She added, “[We’re] grateful to Brit and Zal for sharing their audacious vision and for realizing it through their incredible artistry. We look forward to working with them again in the future, in this and perhaps many other dimensions.”

Marling addressed the cancelation in a lengthy Instagram post, writing that she and Batmanglij are “deeply sad not to finish this story.” She continued, “The first time I heard the news I had a good cry. So did one of our executives at Netflix who has been with us since the early days when we were sketching out Hap’s basement on the floor of our production office in Queens. It’s been an intense journey for everyone who worked on and cared about this story.”

Batmanglij was more succinct in his social media eulogy, writing, “The OA (2016-2019).”

In 2017, Marling spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the show’s long-term vision and scope. “From the very beginning when we were on our own daydreaming a story, we definitely thought, ‘How can we construct something that, many seasons out, has a satisfying end?’ So there is an end and there is an answer to every riddle, and nothing is done to just be sound and fury going nowhere. It all goes somewhere. And as to whether or not we get to tell that, I certainly hope that we do. There is a place that season two already begins in our minds and a place in which it ends.”