Very few details about season 3 of The OA have been released, but it was set up to be one of the most outrageous yet.
Although the creators of The OA initially planned for the show to have five seasons, it was cancelled after just two.
As a result, fans never got to see the unimaginable plot that was planned for the third season of the show, but it would have probably been more outrageous than the first two.
Why was The OA cancelled?
When The OA was initially released on Netflix in 2017, it became very popular, because of its outrageous plot. The creators of The OA, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, initially planned for the show’s story to be told over a total of five parts.
However, Netflix announced in August 2019 that the show would be cancelled after just two seasons. It is difficult to determine why Netflix decided to cancel The OA ahead of, but the show’s viewership-to-budget ratio was most likely to blame.
What was going to happen in The OA season 3?
While sci-fi mystery shows are known for posing mind-boggling questions and challenging your idea of reality, The OA was in a league all its own.
As a result, there is an almost endless amount of ways that the third season of the show could have played out if it had not been cancelled.
In fact, although the devoted fans of the show did ample research to predict where the second season would go ahead of its release in 2019, no one could have guessed that the season would introduce an entire multiverse into the mix.
During the second season of the show, the two main characters Prairie Johnson (played by Brit Marling) and Hunter Aloysius “Hap” Percy (who is played by Jason Isaacs) even entered an alternate meta-universe where they appeared to be the actors themselves.
As a result, fans of the show assume that the third season would have probably introduced yet another alternate universe within the multiverse of the show.
It is also likely that Prairie would have continued on with her mission to stop the evil Hap in this new alternate universe, while travelling with him and Homer.
It had previously been revealed that these three characters were a so-called “cosmic family” and they would have kept this connection regardless of which dimension they found themselves in next.
Which cast members would have returned to the show?
The OA was cancelled so unexpectedly that little has been revealed about what the creators of the show had planned for the third season.
However, since Brit Marling was the executive producer, as well as the star of the show, it is likely that she would have returned for the third season.
Her collaborator and the other executive producer Zal Batmanglij would probably also have continued in his role in the following seasons.
It is also likely that most of the other main characters including Emory Cohen (Homer), Jason Isaacs (Hap), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Karim Washington) and Phyllis Smith (Betty) would have reprised their roles if the show was not cancelled.
Where would the show have ended up eventually?
The OA was constantly pushing boundaries in its first two seasons. In fact, when the show was cancelled, Cindy Holland, the vice president of original content for Netflix called Marling and Batmanglij’s vision for the show “audacious” in her farewell statement.
As a result, it is easy to imagine that they would have had incredible things planned for the rest of the story and this likely would have included a fantastical explanation for how and why all of the different dimensions and the characters on the show were connected to each other.
How would season 3 have differed from the previous seasons?
Kingsley Ben-Adir, who played Karim Washington in the second season of The OA revealed in an interview that the third season of the show was going to be “nuts,” “unimaginable” and “crazy”, which confirms that this season of the show would have probably been even more outrageous and mind-bending than the previous two.
He also added that fans would think that the season would be going one way, when in reality it would end up somewhere totally different. As exciting as this may seem, The OA fans may have to learn to accept that they will never get to see this vision play out.
The creators of the show and members of the cast have all acknowledged the efforts of fans who have tried to get the show back on the air, but Jason Isaacs admitted in 2020 that the show “won’t be coming back.”
