'The OA' Season 1 Cliffhanger Finale Leaves Prairie's Fate Unknown; Creators Brit Marling, Zal Batmanglij Dissect Truth

In season 1’s final episode, titled "Invisible Self," the series’ protagonist Prairie Johnson had to stop a school shooting. An imminent act of violence was teased throughout the show through reports of a shooter on the loose as well as the OA’s premonitions.

According to the recap on Entertainment Weekly, the episode concluded with a school shooting, a performance meant to be a functional interpretative dance, otherwise called movements. These movements can supposedly open a tunnel to an alternate dimension. It was also hinted that the OA was merely fabricating everything from the beginning and really woke up in a psychiatric ward and not in another dimension.

During an interview with Variety, creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij admitted that the season’s ambiguous ending was intentional. When asked if the OA was telling the truth, Marling replied, “I think there is something really delicious in the mystery about questioning the storyteller’s truth. Certainly, you go back and forth on it.”

She continued, “As an audience member, the boys are kind of your surrogate. I think just as the boys go back and forth on the truth of her story, you do, too. I think the place it kind of ultimately arrives at is that it maybe doesn’t matter as much the details are true, because there’s some essential core that she’s imparting that smacks of honesty. Whether part of the story is a metaphor, or it is a literal truth, tends to matter less when you get to the end and see that the DNA of the story contains something that just this group needed.”

Batmanglij added, “I guess I believe the trauma in her story is true. Maybe she couldn’t tell her story as it actually happened, but she experienced something. I don’t think the details matter. I think that there are lots of different interpretations. I think that’s what’s going to make it fun, if people do connect to it. If people see the show.”

The series stars Brit Marling as Prairie, a young blind woman who returns to her hometown after going missing for seven years. Prairie calls herself the OA upon her return and it is revealed that her eyesight is restored. She refuses to tell the FBI and her adoptive parents any details about her disappearance and instead assembles a team of five local residents to whom she tells her secrets to.

‘The OA’ debuted in its entirety on Netflix last December 16, 2016.