For Netflix, the stealth release of The OA proved to be one of the last great surprises of 2016. Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s mind-bending supernatural series premiered late last year after little-to-no fanfare, favoring Internet buzz and general word of mouth over an aggressive marketing push.
It’s a campaign tailor-made for a platform that ostensibly encourages binge-watching and sure enough, excitement for The OA ballooned towards the tail-end of 2016, so it’s small wonder why Netflix has wasted no time in ordering a second season. Confirmation of the renewal comes to us by way of Vulture, who hosted a live Facebook interview with lead star Brit Marling earlier this morning. Her announcement was accompanied by a fleeting trailer for The OA Part II (see above), which teases the show’s return and little else.
For the uninitiated, The OA orbits around Prairie Johnson (Marling), a young blind woman who inexplicably returns to her hometown following a seven-year absence. Claiming to be an angel, Marling and Batmanglij’s head-scratching series then explores her interaction with a group of teenagers and their curious teacher. Emory Cohen, Scott Wilson, Phyllis Smith, Jason Isaacs, Alice Krige and Patrick Gibson are among those who co-star, and in our review of the first season, we found that “The OA is able to transcend the implausibility of its fantastical elements to illuminate and elevate humaneness and humanism.”
Something always survives, it seems, and we’ll find out exactly what Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij have in store when The OA returns for a second season on Netflix. No word of an exact release date just yet, but considering how secretive Netflix was last time around, we wouldn’t be surprised if a new batch of episodes dropped inconspicuously sometime in the fall.
