Two weeks ago, Netflix announced that they were cancelling The OA. The news about the cancellation came after Netflix announced that they were cancelling the animated show Tuca and Bertie after only one season. Many others shows were cancelled as well.
The OA followed Prairie Johnson, played by Brit Marling, that was missing for seven years and suddenly returns home discovering her blindness has been cured. Some people believe that the gift of having her sight restored was a miracle, but others believe that it could be something dangerous.
Fans are now picketing Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles and New York this week trying to get them to save the show. They have started the hashtag #SaveTheOA, which appeared on Twitter as soon as cancellation was announced. Fans are carrying signs and one woman started a hunger strike.
Emperial Young stopped eating on August 16th. She currently is standing from 11am to 7pm on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood demanding that the show gets brought back. “The OA isn’t like most shows. The sincerity, the philosophy. It’s just such an important show to so many people,” said Young, who is a Los Angeles-based writer. “It deals with so many important issues, trauma and grief and mental health. It’s also this relentlessly creative, amazing experience, and the storytelling is just incredible.”
The second season was released in late 2016 and was expected to return this spring. The season hurled viewers as they followed the story of Johnson. The second season in major cliffhanger that left fans reeling. Marling announced that she was “deeply sad” that she would not be able to “finish this story.”
The issues of the cancellation of The OA revived the popular critique that Netflix’s surplus of content that keeps the streaming service from advertising its new shows to its viewers. Popular shows such as Mindhunter and Dark are not advertised, thus fans of the show will have to go out and search to see if there are new episodes released. Hopefully #SaveThe OA will help keep the show alive.