The OA

[p1t1o]

The OA is a recent TV series steeped in mystery and in its current status, like many stories, is open to "interpretation" - ie: what we know so far from what we have watched could fit with several, disparate explanations.

If you havn't realised yet: SPOILERS

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Rather than go through all possible explanations, I'll just give mine. I dont have a "grand unified" picture of the story, only some parts do I think I have the "correct" impression.

Firstly, the last sequence, specifically the moment when they stand up to perform the movements, had me burst into tears, much to my *own* surprise, but I digress...

 

I think that the metaphysical aspects of the story are real. I do not think that the story has been made up by her in response to trauma. Through some kind of interaction, this group of people have been exposed to a set of techniques for manipulating reality in a heretofore unexpected manner.

The techniques are not "artsy-fartsy", they are not healing with "the power of love" or any hippy mumbo-jumbo. The movements are movements of matter through space. Some physical law dictates that certain complex movements of matter through space/time have a specific impact on underlying reality. The "perfect feeling", the different emotions that the performers display in concert with the motions are similarly, movements of matter through space/time, but on a much more subtle level. It is a physical effect, similar to how me making a pencil move in a certain manner through space/time can convert a plain piece of paper into a story, or a work of art - the emotional content of the 5 moves are not equivalent to my emotional makeup if I was, say, using the aforementioned pencil to write an emotional story, they are (just like the grosser physical movements) equivalent to the pencil.

I was thinking that sometimes in stories, some characters/superheroes are given powers limited only by their imagination. And how these powers are so often squandered in the most base of ways:

Example 1 - In one of the Green Lantern movies, the green lantern, using his essentially unlimited powers, uses giant fists to beat up a bunch of people.

Example 2 - In the movie "Lucy", Lucy is granted essentially unlimited power and defeats a hallways of assailants not by brute force or firepower, but merely by removing their threat, and placing them physically out of her way.

I always thought that my first instinct if intervening in a violent conflict with unlimited power would be to cease all atomic motion within a volume of space.

Then these 5 come along in the last sequence of the OA, ostensibly angels granted a great-if-not-unlimited power, in confronting a violent attacked, deal with him in a wholly unexpected manner - by changing, or attempting to change (the way I see it they were interrupted) the very reality underlying the situation. Whether they meant to "cure" his violent urges by using their movements in a healing manner like the other times, or whether they meant to change reality in another way (say, by forking the timeline by force to a track where the violence was much less - perhaps the cook who tackled the shooter was not an interruption but was exactly this). Perhaps they didnt know what they would do, but they knew to do the movements.

Anyway, the nature of their intervention was an extremely inspired piece of cinema, if you ask me.

***

Moments before the cafeteria sequence, BBA is exiting the school due to the alert. She turns back and re-enters the school. This may have just been a natural protective instinct to her pupils, but this doesn't quite scan (the environment is one similar to a fire drill, maximum safety is if everyone leaves the buildings ASAP. She even gets in the way of quite a few people trying to exit on her way back in). It seems more like she felt she was needed and she knew where. She was not told to go there by the OA, she received no instruction. Yet all necessary actors were on-scene at the prescribed time. This lends weight to the idea that this is not the OA's fantasy.

Similarly, these kids in the cafeteria did not just learn a funny dance and decide to try their luck against a live shooter with it on the off-chance they distract him long enough to end the situation without being shot down immediately. They had conviction in the real power of the movements, more than that, they were able to perform flawlessly (or so we persume...) in the face of extreme danger. This says to me that the "gift" almost has a will of its own, acting through these people, they are influenced in some way to take these actions. Or were at least assured of their validity. The way it happened they all acted almost on instinct. A newly learned sequence of mere movements does not become this sort of instinct very easily and they had only known them for a few days.

Something brought them together at the right place and time that wasn't the OA telling them to by making up a story. Random chance seems implausible, unless by the manipulation of random chance.

***

On the nature of the "other dimensions" and their NDE travels:

The OA states that the "future is dark", not dark-evil, dark-dark.

This seems to be relating to the starry, "space-field" environment where the characters go during a NDE and where they meet Khatun.

This realm can be returned from if one makes the choice to, apparently represented by the act of consuming a living creature within the realm.

References are made to the "many worlds" interpretation - that a "new" universe/dimension/layer is split off any time a choice is made.

Reference is made to many of these realities being "layered" together, much in the way we would traditionally imagine parallel universes.

They do not require their bodies to visit Khatun, whereas it can be inferred that if travelling to one of the "alternate layers", it would be physically similar to our own universe, thus you would require a body.

It is stated that one may lose ones memory if one travels between "dimensions".

 

As far as I am concerned, the "correct" interpretation of this is still pending further information, we can still only make guesses to tie the above together. At the moment all I have are questions.

Is the starry realm where Khatun resides a "layer"/"dimension"? Or is it an in-between place? One does not seem to require a body to go there.

Is the starry-realm out-of-time?

Why are the entities there concerned with human acts of "great evil" (and why this specific act)?

Does inter-dimensional travel require someone's death? Does the travel actually resemble dying? Is "normal" death an interdimensional transit?

Have they or the OA already traveled and forgotten?

Are any of the "present-day" main characters actually persons from Hap's lab in new bodies? New bodies seems out-of-scope for me, mainly because it would either require the hi-jacking of someone elses body/life or the creation of an entirely new life from scratch (so who lives that bodies childhood and when?)

I mean, bring time travel/manipulation into the equation and the bets are really off - is the timeline on one layer even matched up at all with any other? Or with the starry realm?

***

Khatun makes reference to "averting a great evil", which appears to be the shooter at the end.

This seems a fairly trivial matter to be referred to as a "great evil" by an entity that exists out of time and can bring about decades-long plans to bring extremely implausible possibilities to bear.

Especially when, say, The OA's own bus-crash (implied as a similarly terroristic/human-violence event) as a little girl is fairly comparable to this "great evil" (the tragic deaths of a busload of young girls vs the tragic deaths of several magazines-worth of schoolkids).

Tragic and messed-up as school shootings are, why was *this* event singled out as a "great evil" requiring the (sometimes tragic in its own right) manipulation of many people's lives over many decades and the unleashing of reality-bending powers to avert?

This inspires the question - was the shooter in fact the "great evil", or is it still to come? Seems less likely since a 2nd season is not for sure, they have only said that they would love to do one. Would be weird to leave out the "great evil" for season 2 not even knowing if there would be one.

***

Yeh, so, an incomplete picture to be sure. Its not just a "its up to your own interpretation" thing, there does not seem to be enough information to resolve many important questions. The creators themselves do say that there is a "correct" interpretation (in that they know how they would continue the story should a 2nd season go ahead) and they have stated that here are many clues within the show, many I am certain to have missed. 

Loved it though and even if it ends here, a very fine piece of work indeed, IMHO.

Edited January 4, 2017 by p1t1o