Brit Marling Responds to The OA Fans' Effort to Save the Series

There are three types of people in the world: those who never saw The OA, those who did check out a few episodes but couldn't get into its most quizzical elements, and those who became utterly obsessed with the wild, dimension-bending story of Prairie/OA/Nina (Brit Marling) and her pals both within and above Hap's (Jason Isaacs) underground bunker. For those of us in the last category [thrusts hands into the triangular salute], Netflix bummed us out hard when it decided not to move forward with a third season, let alone the three more the story needs to be complete.

What the streaming service might not have taken into account is that the prevailing message of The OA is to never stop believing in and fighting for the universe you want, no matter how dreary the current landscape gets. Fans have obviously taken that tenet to heart because they've been flooding every Netflix account's Twitter feed with #SaveTheOA messages.

Whether Netflix is taking note or not, the effort has caught the attention of Marling and co-creator Zal Batmanglij.

In a lengthy Instagram post shared over the weekend, the series' co-creator and star wrote, "We're humbled, to be honest floored, by the outpouring of support for The OA. ... Your words and images move us deeply. Not because the show must continue, but because for some people its unexpected cancelation begs larger questions about the role of storytelling and its fate inside late capitalism's push toward consolidation and economies of scale."

Marling added that she'd had a personal interaction with at least one person for whom The OA was more than just a show and whose commitment to the cause of bringing attention to the series was especially touching to her. "The other day Zal and I pulled over to offer a bottle of water and food to a young woman who has been protesting the cancelation of the show on a street corner in Hollywood. As we were leaving she said, 'You know, what I'm really protesting is late capitalism.' And then she said something that I haven't been able to forget since: 'Algorithms aren't as smart as we are. They cannot account for love.' Her words. Not mine. And the story keeps going inside them."

In addition to the social media drive to save the series, some fans have been practically willing one theory about the cancellation into existence as Quite a few Original Angel believers have become convinced that Netflix isn't really cancelling the show, but that the news was just a ruse meant to play into the very meta moment that capped off The OA: Part II.

We Need to Talk About That OA: Part II Ending

The last few moments of Season 2 saw OA dreamily rising into the sky thanks to that mechanical dance crew, ready to claim her true status as an Angel, until a bird flew through the window room's dimensional portal and knocked her into a new dimension. In this new place, she's an actress named Brit who has fallen on the set of her show and is being rushed to the hospital with Hap, now calling himself Jason Isaacs, with no memory of who she is or why she hates him. The fact that the show within the show would be shut down in the wake of Brit's injuries alone might be enough to make fans question whether Netflix's cancellation of The OA is real or just a wink at the fans. But eagle-eyed viewers have also been combing through the cast and creatives' social media posts for more clues that this is all part of a bigger plan.

Hey, weirder things have happened in OA-land.

When The OA's cancellation was announced on Aug. 5, fans had just kicked off a #SaveTheOA social media drive that had been planned for the same day. Despite that terrible timing, fans continued to intensify their efforts even more, taking those transportive dance moves public in an effort to save the show from entering the void (and leaving our most burning questions unanswered).

There are also several Change.org petitions demanding an OA rescue, including one addressed to Netflix that boasts more than 50,000 signatures. Fans are doing their best to time those healing moves just right and resurrect this show before it's too late. After all, as the wise Khatun once told Prairie, "To exist is to survive unfair choices."

The OA Seasons 1 and 2 are currently available on Netflix.

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