What if The OA's final twist wasn't just setting up another season? What if it was inviting us to become part of the story?
⚠️ SPOILER WARNING
This article contains spoilers for The OA Parts I & II. We're diving straight into the ending of The OA, including the final dimension, the identity of its characters and what might have happened next. If you've somehow avoided spoilers since 2019, that's impressive, but this is your chance to escape.
There are television cliffhangers, and then there's The OA. Most shows leave you wondering whether a character survived, who committed the murder or what happened to the spaceship. The OA ended by suggesting that its characters had jumped into a world remarkably like ours, complete with actors, cameras and a television production called The OA.
And then Netflix cancelled it.
Honestly, you couldn't make it up. Although, given the show we're talking about, there's a small part of me that still wonders whether somebody did.
I've been thinking about that ending again, particularly the idea that the third dimension wasn't supposed to be just another fictional universe. What if the series was gradually preparing us for a story that would break through the screen? Not necessarily into our actual reality, but into something that looked so much like it that the distinction would become almost impossible to recognise.
My theory is that Part III was going to make the audience question whether they were watching the story or participating in it. And perhaps the first two parts had already shown us how.
The Ending That Broke Television
Let's revisit those final minutes, because they're still wonderfully bonkers. After everything involving Hap, Prairie, the movements and the different dimensions, the story suddenly takes a turn that makes the previous sixteen episodes look positively straightforward.
Prairie arrives in a world where she's apparently an actress called Brit Marling, working on a television programme. Hap appears as Jason Isaacs, complete with his British accent, and we're suddenly looking at what seems to be the set of The OA itself. Meanwhile, Steve manages to follow them, recognises Hap despite the new identity and jumps into the ambulance with him.
I remember watching that sequence and wondering whether I'd accidentally changed programmes. One minute we're dealing with interdimensional travel; the next, we're apparently behind the scenes of the very series we've been watching. It's an extraordinary trick, and one that makes you immediately want to go back through everything looking for clues.
But here's the detail I think matters most. The characters haven't simply arrived somewhere unfamiliar. They've arrived somewhere that challenges the nature of their entire existence. In this world, Prairie's experiences could be dismissed as scenes from a television script, and Hap has the perfect opportunity to convince her that the person she believes herself to be was never real.
That's a much more frightening prison than another locked room. If nobody believes you're the OA, and even you begin to doubt it, how exactly do you escape?
Was the Third Dimension Actually Ours?
This is where the theory starts getting interesting. The obvious interpretation is that Prairie and Hap have travelled into our reality, where the actors are playing themselves and The OA is just a Netflix series.
Except it's not quite our reality. In that final dimension, the relationships and circumstances surrounding the actors don't entirely match the real world. The familiar names and film set make it recognisable, but there are enough differences to remind us that we're still watching fiction.
And I think that's deliberate.
Rather than literally sending the characters into our universe, the show seems to be creating a fictional version of it. That would allow Part III to explore an incredibly strange question: what happens when someone discovers that their entire life might be a television programme?
Imagine Prairie trying to explain that she's travelled between dimensions, only for everyone around her to insist she's an actress recovering from an accident. She might remember Homer, Hap and the movements, but how much faith could she place in those memories when the world itself provides such convincing evidence that none of it happened?
It would be like waking up tomorrow and discovering that everyone you know insists you're a character from EastEnders. You'd probably have a few questions, beginning with why nobody mentioned the cameras.
The Puzzle Was Already Escaping Into Real Life
Now, remember the house in Part II, the mysterious game and the increasingly dangerous puzzle? Karim's investigation introduces us to a world where solving riddles isn't just entertainment. The puzzles begin affecting the people playing them, blurring the distinction between a game and something much larger.
There's also that fascinating warning that the puzzle eventually goes into real life. At the time, it works as a clue about the game's dangers, but after the finale, it's difficult not to wonder whether it was pointing towards the wider structure of the series.
What if the creators were preparing us to think of the show itself as a puzzle?
Throughout Part II, we're encouraged to examine symbols, notice connections and question whether apparently unrelated events belong to the same larger pattern. By the finale, we're watching characters cross into a dimension where the programme exists as a production. It's not a huge leap to imagine Part III pushing that idea further, inviting viewers to look beyond the episodes for meaning.
I don't mean that there was necessarily a secret website containing the finished third season, or that completing a particular puzzle would have unlocked another eight episodes. That would be fantastic, obviously. I'd happily lose an entire weekend to it. But the idea I'm interested in is more about storytelling than hidden content.
Perhaps Part III would have made us feel like investigators, trying to work out which details belonged to the fictional world and which appeared to connect to our own.
Why Steve Might Have Been the Key
For all the attention the final dimension receives, I think Steve's arrival in the ambulance is just as important.
Hap has apparently reached a world where he can hide behind a new identity, and Prairie may struggle to remember who she really is. But Steve arrives with something Hap can't easily explain away: knowledge of the world they've left behind.
He's effectively carrying the truth across the boundary between fiction and reality.
That could have made him essential to Part III. If Prairie believed she was simply Brit Marling, Steve might have been the person trying to convince her otherwise. He would be asking her to believe a story that sounds completely impossible, just as she once asked him and the others to believe hers.
It's a rather lovely reversal when you think about it. In Part I, Prairie gathered a group of people and asked them to trust her account of extraordinary events. By the end of Part II, one of those people might have been about to return the favour.
And that gets to the heart of why I think The OA works so well. Underneath all the dimensional travel and bewildering mythology, it's a story about belief. Not necessarily believing everything you're told, but being willing to consider that reality might be larger than your own experience suggests.
Steve's final appearance captures that idea perfectly. He doesn't need everyone else in the ambulance to understand what's happening. He knows who Hap is, and that's enough to tell us the story isn't finished.
Was the Cancellation Part of the Story?
We should probably address the elephant in the room, because this is where The OA theories can get a little carried away.
When Netflix cancelled the series in 2019, some fans wondered whether the announcement itself was part of an elaborate fourth-wall-breaking storyline. Given that Part II had just ended inside a world resembling a television production, you can understand why people made the connection.
Imagine a programme that ends by entering something resembling the real world, only to disappear from that world entirely. If any show could make an apparent cancellation feel like a narrative twist, it would be The OA.
But there's an important distinction between a fascinating fan theory and what actually happened. The cancellation was real. Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij have spoken about losing the opportunity to complete their planned story, and there's no convincing evidence that a finished third season has been secretly waiting for someone to solve the right puzzle.
Still, the coincidence is almost cruelly perfect. The series ended by blurring fiction and reality, and its disappearance prompted viewers to search the real world for an explanation. Fans began examining clues, discussing dimensions and wondering whether the story might somehow be continuing beyond Netflix.
Whether intended or not, the audience ended up behaving rather like the characters in the programme.
And I can't help finding that fascinating.
My Theory: Part III Was Going to Make Us Doubt Everything
So here's what I think was being set up.
Part III would have taken place primarily in a dimension that looked very much like ours, with Prairie trying to recover her identity while Hap used the rules of that world to keep her under his control. Steve's arrival would have created the first serious challenge to Hap's version of events, forcing Prairie to confront the possibility that her supposedly fictional memories were real.
But I suspect the cleverest part would have involved us. By placing the story inside a television production, the series could have made every familiar element feel suspicious. Interviews, actors' names, behind-the-scenes footage and even the act of watching The OA might have taken on new meaning within the fiction.
We'd have been left asking a question that sounds ridiculous until you've watched the programme: if these characters know they're in something resembling a television series, what exactly does that make us?
I'm not suggesting the show had a magical way of crossing into reality. I'm suggesting it was preparing to tell a story where the audience's relationship with the fiction became part of the experience itself.
And given how brilliantly strange the first two parts were, I wouldn't have been surprised if the eventual answer made this theory look embarrassingly unimaginative.
Maybe We Were Looking for the Wrong Thing
The frustrating thing about The OA is that we'll never know whether these ideas are anywhere close to what was planned unless the story eventually continues. The creators had a larger, five-part narrative in mind, and two parts can only reveal so much about the full picture.
But perhaps that's why the ending has stayed with so many of us. We weren't simply left without an answer to a mystery. We were left at the exact moment the show appeared ready to change what kind of story it was telling.
For me, the most interesting interpretation isn't that Season 3 was secretly released somewhere or that Netflix's cancellation was an elaborate trick. It's that The OA was building towards a world where the boundaries between character, actor, storyteller and audience would become increasingly difficult to separate.
The first part asked us to believe Prairie's story. The second showed us that other dimensions might exist. The third, I suspect, would have asked whether we were quite so sure about our own.
And honestly, if someone ever discovers that all we needed to do was perform the five movements in front of our televisions to unlock Part III, I'm going to feel extremely silly.
Although I'll probably give it a go.
About The OA
The OA is a Netflix mystery and science-fiction series created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. It follows Prairie Johnson, a young woman who returns after seven years missing and tells an extraordinary story involving captivity, near-death experiences and travel between dimensions.
The series stars Brit Marling, Jason Isaacs, Emory Cohen, Patrick Gibson and Kingsley Ben-Adir. Two parts were released between 2016 and 2019, before the series was cancelled.
This is an original Scene It Coming theory examining the storytelling possibilities suggested by the ending. It is not evidence of an unreleased third season or a secret continuation.
