(Slight spoiler alert for season one of The OA. You’ve been warned!)
Netflix’s latest sci-fi series dropped a little more suddenly than we anticipated. With only four days notice, The OA mysteriously appeared in Netflix lists everywhere. Even more mysteriously, the creators of the series are Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, who previously worked in indie filmmaking.
The pair had a telephone interview with the Hollywood Reporter about The OA, which they also co-wrote (Batmanglij also served as director while Marling starred as the character of Prairie). When asked about the secretive nature of The OA‘s release, the pair had a good humor about the choice, as Batmanglij said, “I guess the beauty of Brit and I not being too well-known is that no one really cared! We relished in that. We asked actors for the most part not to make announcements when they got cast, and we had a Braille logo that we used as The OA logo, so when we were filming in New York state there weren’t signs that talked about the show. We just tried to make it something that was off the radar and I guess Netflix liked that too.”
The creators also discussed their fascination with near-death experiences, which of course played a part in the Netflix show. Marling said, “One thing that happened many, many years ago is we’d met a young woman who had a near-death experience. It was a very harrowing story — she described the sensation of leaving her body and being outside of her body and looking down at herself in the hospital room, and she described the sense of peace she sort of felt. The only lingering thing in her mind . . . was do the people that I love know how much I love them?” As Batmangli notes, the two wanted to “try something new” with The OA, and we may not see the last of it.
The Hollywood Reporter asked about the possibility of a second season, and in pure Netflix fashion, the choice is still open. Marling is quoted as saying “I think 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.” Batmangli also echoed a similar idea of having a story outlined, but there appears to be no official talks for season two as of yet.
Season one of The OA is streaming on Netflix now.