Brit Marling Had a ‘Good Cry’ After Finding Out That ‘The OA’ Won’t Be Renewed
Fans hoping to see how the cliffhanger from season two of The OA resolved itself got some bad news on Monday. Netflix announced that it won’t be renewing the trippy sci-fi saga from creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, Variety reports.
“We are incredibly proud of the 16 mesmerizing chapters of ‘The OA,’ and are grateful to Brit and Zal for sharing their audacious vision and for realizing it through their incredible artistry,” Cindy Holland, vice president of original content for Netflix said in a statement. “We look forward to working with them again in the future, in this and perhaps many other dimensions.”
Since Netflix is typically secretive about viewership data, it did not cite a specific reason for the cancellation, but it’s no secret that The OA is one of the more challenging shows on the streaming platform, as it tells a multi-dimensional story that explores themes of faith, mortality and the afterlife. Shortly after the news was announced, Marling took to Instagram where she explained how heartbroken she is about Netflix’s decision. “Zal and I are deeply sad not to finish this story,” she wrote. “The first time I heard the news I had a good cry. So did one of our executives at Netflix who has been with us since the early days when we were sketching out Hap’s basement on the floor of our production office in Queens. It’s been an intense journey for everyone who worked on and cared about this story.
Marling also tied together her love of sci-fi, and its relation to telling stories about women. “It’s hard to be inspired to write stories about the ‘real’ world when you have never felt free in it,” she explained. “As a woman writing characters for myself and other women, it has often felt to me as if the paved roads for travel in narrative are limited.”
Marling says that sci-fi allows her to wipe “this ‘real’ world clean like an Etch-A-Sketch,” and “imagine anything in its place.”
“So we did.”
Check out the rest of Marling’s lengthy post below.
Related: Lunch With Sharon Van Etten: On Motherhood, The OA’s Secretive New Season, and Moving Out West
