A lot of people are in the general thread are, or have been, watching this show. However the potential for spoilers ruining it are high and this is going to be one of the more controversial shows with many loving or hating it.

- The Dance Moves: Before I delve too deeply into my own analysis, what if we kept everything in the show the same but set it in the Harry Potter universe and instead of "movements" they were learning "spells". Does that help?

- So The OA turns out to be an unreliable narrator. Maybe. Early on she tells the newly formed group, "I need you to pretend to trust me until you do". She's also speaking to us. Why does she need to be believed? Why does she even need to ask when we're predisposed to do just that?

- "Play within a play" goes back at least to Shakespeare but I think this show is also aspiring to metafictional and 4th wall heights. We're watching a story about a woman telling a story. She may be misleading her audience. And audiences are conditioned to trust the storyteller by default even though many stories seek to deliberately mislead the audience to improve dramatic effect. Can you trust The Walking Dead or Westworld's storytelling any more than you can The OA's?

- She's not necessarily using those books to be Keyser Söze. She could be doing her own background research just like the boys. If she thinks she's an angel it would make sense for her to start reading up on them. You don't need to have The Odyssey on hand to name a character in your story "Homer". The plot doesn't really parallel like "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". So if you need to believe her story is true, there you are.

- The only thing we know for sure is that she was having a prophetic dream about the school shooting. Other accounts of prophetic dreams come from OA herself and so are unreliable. She does say to the group something to the effect of, "I'm going somewhere and need to leave something important behind" so her goal was likely to have a near death experience with the group (which she apparently does get in the end). She did regain her sight, but hysterical blindness is a thing so that could just be part of her craziness. As could her disappearance (being homeless for years could easily account for her malnutrition &etc) and the scars may or may not be self-inflicted.

- Steve running after the ambulance parallels OA's release.

- I think the premise of this show is: "The universe is made of art". And these near death experiences unlock savant level artistic gifts like that can reshape the universe:
Violin
Singing
Guitar
Dance (movements)
(Again, if it makes you feel better, call it "magic" instead of "art", especially dance - ie they're D&D style bards)
At least these are the obvious ones. What about drawing and scarification? What about storytelling?
I think that within the show, storytelling is also "magic". And certainly to characters within a story or tv show the ability to rewrite the story would be magic. The writers and producers behind the show would be gods. So OA is trying to rewrite the laws of her universe, allowing her to cross dimensions, by telling a story which may or may not be true. And maybe, as part of another universe looking in, we're supposed to be involved in that?

- But what does "true" even mean here? We know the show isn't real. We know it's fiction. We're not watching People vs OJ. Why should we be upset to find out, "no, really, the story actually isn't true"? A fictional character in a fictional tv show tells us a story and we're upset or amazed that story may not be "true". Of course it's not true! But we somehow expect it to be true "within the context of that story's universe". Again, why? Because there are some unwritten "rules" about storytelling. Because we carry these assumptions with us. Because we allow the writer to fool and mislead us, but only so far. We expect the writer to "play fair". Because in the end we insist on retaining the power over the story, not the storyteller. And when the storyteller takes it and reminds us it's not our story....

- Even if I'm totally off base and I've read way too much artsy crap into this, this show has made me think about it way more than most shows do. Yes, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions - too many for many viewers I'm sure. And the dance-magic, which may or may not actually work, is going to turn off a bunch of people. But I'm glad I watched it and I enjoyed the ride. If I never get answers or if they unsatisfying it won't be the first time.

The FBI councilor is really puzzling to me. Would the FBI really offer such a service instead of just referring for a victim's advocacy group or independent shrink?

Why was he in her house? Is he monitoring her? Did he plant the books? Maybe to discredit her if needed?

OA says Hap killed a rival mad scientist. So he's not the only one experimenting in this area. This implies the government likely is too. So are that aware of The OA and her potential significance? Have they been minitoring her, both in her own house and while she's tellign her story?

Is the FBI guy her handler? Babysitter? New captor?

All I know is that it ranks as a top 5 show for me in terms of "had incredible potential and **** the bed"

It had a True Detective S1 ceiling and is hitting a True Detective S2 floor. Maybe not even...

The OP is too deep for me but there really was no reason the FBI guy should have been at the house unless there is more to it. He wouldn't be there to check in on her as her shrink, he would know they were out of town.

TLDR:

Everything The OA said is true. She's being discredited on purpose (books were planted or are explainable, FBI guy saying it was her dealing with trauma is very convenient while he's breaking into her house too) - by the FBI councilor? Some big conspiracy? The show itself? (it's just another swerve?)

The OA's story is (mostly?) false. But we know there's something more here than, "she cray cray" because she did know something bad was happening at the school. So what was she trying to accomplish by telling the story? "Magic"? She's crazy but also "magic"?

Either way, we're almost back to square one which is what frustrates a lot of people.

And of course "modern dance" is a pretty tough sell....

So I can understand people being turned off by the result but even at worst I'm happy to see TV try something different and fail than grind out another CSI NCIS clone.

Homer stayed remarkably buff for a guy just eating some dog food pellets for seven years

Naz at the house made no sense

Feel like there was a huge letdown after solid midseason buildup

Good analysis, OP. I'm confused about the show, too, but I did enjoy it.

The only thing that really bugged me was, how did she make those marks on her back - and why do it on her back in the first place, if it was to write down notations for the movements? She can't see them!

I must've missed when she had premonitions about something bad happening at the school....when did that happen??

Does anyone know if this is a one-ff or if there are plans to continue for another season?

Ok, just read an article in Rolling Stone with the creators of the show, and they are planning a 2nd season.

Some interesting things they mentioned:

The story within the story - the captivity - is not a flashback - it's the 4 kids and the teacher's interpretation of what the OA is telling them.
The FBI counselor showing up in the OA's house at the end is supposed to be weird and shocking - so we're on the right track. You're asking the right questions.
The books in her car do not necessarily mean she's an unreliable narrator - the OA could've just been researching about things that have happened to her. But that doesn't explain how a blind girl who regained her sight while in captivity can actually read.
The place the OA goes to when she dies is not a purgatory - it is a place very specific, that the creators are not revealing yet - but they say no one has guess it yet.

Saturn obv

Dom, idk who see mentioned the dreams to but she said she gets pieces but doesn't know what they mean. She said she was right about the bus crash, wrong about her dad, I think it was FBI guy.

She had sight as a child and was in school so she learned to read then.

I would think a lot of her story could be fact checked. She should have places of where the captives lived before abduction. The Cuban musician has to have some info on her.

A sheriff was murdered who had a wife with ALS near where she was dropped off.

A sheriff getting killed/going missing is where I would start my google search if I was those kids

I think, knowing that there will likely be a season 2, there is a chance that the books were sent to her, rather than her ordering them herself, to help jog her memory in some way, or to help her better understand her situation, rather than her using them to make up a Keyser Soze type narrative of her own. I'm not sure how much that would put me off the series but I guess it could be the case. They didn't look like they'd been read. (grasping, I know )

I don't think the government is complicit or involved in the experiments, when Hap is leaving the hospital and passes the identity/key card to the nurse he tells her to go and check the abandoned morgue, suggesting to me that all of his mentor's work is being conducted in secret.

The only comment I have to add is that they covered it not being purgatory in one of the episodes. The teacher asks if she thinks the place she goes to could be purgatory, and OA says, fairly adamantly, No, I don't think it is. It would be a pretty crappy twist if this was a misleading statement.

The main issues still unexplained for me are the scars on her back, and the relationship with her "parents". I half expected when she woke up from the final dream and came downstairs to be confronted by her adoptive father at the front door that the twist was going to involve him molesting her and this would all be about her childhood coping mechanisms.

Overall I'm still pretty confused by it all but I did enjoy most of the episodes until they started involving the dance stuff which I didn't particularly enjoy as an arc.

One of the books was dog-eared whether by her or someone else.

A molestation angle would have been the worse thing they could have thrown in there.

For sure, it was just the way he looked at her as if he was guilty of something.

I don't think Hap is working for the government either. More that The OA is on their radar now since her return. It's a big media circus after all and she supposedly got her sight back.

Government may well have some general Men in Black or X-Files type department up and running. If her house and the meeting house is bugged then they're in the loop.

lol or the high profile missing QB named Homer? I mean Jesus.

Also how do you not skip healing the wife, THEN the sheriff arrests Hap, THEN you heal the wife. Jesus Christ.

doctor who is a pilot was close though

I don't understand why people on the Internet (beyond this forum) are ignoring a lot of obvious evidence in favor of her story being at least mostly true, inter alia:

A) She was indisputably blind for many years and is now indisputably no longer blind.
B) We know for a fact she was able to inexplicably calm down a rabid dog. She had a similar effect on Ms. Broderick-Allen in an encounter we know actually happened as presented. As part of that same encounter, we're given no reason to know how she could have known that BBA had lost a family member ("a sibling?"), but the OA knew. If her narrative is to be believed, the OA also had the same calming effect on a crying baby as a child (narrative implied).
C) She knew her premonition was tied to something going on at the school and headed to the school at the same time as the shooting.
D) She indeed spoke Russian as an adopted child in America based on the video she finds when she's looking for her camera (or at least I think that was the context; been almost a week since I watched it, just remember at some point she was briefly listening to herself as a kid speaking Russian and it was related to her camera).
E) The kids found evidence of: a) the bus accident in Russia around the appropriate time, b) the OA playing the violin in NYC.
F) She has the scars on her back.

But, seriously, she was freaking blind and then suddenly was not blind. Obviously, something supernatural is going on.

There were a lot of things tilting to me about the show (mostly involving the multiple times they easily could have escaped from Hap's), but overall I really liked it despite not liking the finale much.

Did she simply forget that Hap (Hunter Aloysius Percy) told her his name upon meeting her? That piece of information never came up again that I can recall.

I just finished ep2, I like it a lot. It was pissing me off early in ep1 but once it got rolling I'm totally sold.

i really liked the show until the last episode, which was just too much of "oh hey we got you hooked right, well now wait for season 2 sucker!" it's just really lazy, especially with more shows doing it just for the sake of doing it. there was no real growth from anyone character wise, which could have been accomplished pretty easily through her parents.

i am a fan of the world and the mystery in it, and there are some fun places it can go in a second season, it's just annoying how manipulative it felt by the end

I don't really agree with the take this season ended on a big cliffhanger. In fact, the producers have gone on record as saying that they deliberately intended to make it a season that could stand on its own, while still leaving open the opportunity to carry on the story if there was a demand for it.

i mean, if it stands on its own then it just ends with "was it real? MAYBE" but also theres no character growth at all. the main 5 characters didnt really learn anything or grow, her parents didnt really change, there wasnt really a story reason for her to be from russia, and a lot of other plot holes that are easily solved in a 2nd season. it was basically a full season of exposition. which is fine if you're setting up another season(s), but the season on its own ends annoyingly. just because the producers say they made it to stand on its own doesnt mean its true or well executed.

As with most things, it comes down to subjective opinion and taste, so this is fair enough, but for me it definitely ended in a meaningful way. That said, I of course want another season, even though I almost feel like another season will only ruin the story and make it all too straightforward.

For me, it ends on a note of "Does it even matter if it was all real?". And I disagree that the five main characters didn't have any growth. I feel like the ending scene of them doing ridiculous stuff in a school cafeteria in front of tons of other people was a fine ending to their individual stories. On a related note, I enjoyed how the show seems to comment on cults and sects and what leads people to join them.

i thought the show had awesome potential but then they blew it with the ending

someone said above it had a TD S1 ceiling but crashed and failed to reach it. totally agree. should have wrapped things up like TD did.