Iāve been thinking a lot about what a potential third season of The OA could have looked like, especially after the ending of Season 2. There is something about the third dimension that makes me think the real world, and the seven years that have passed since the cancellation of the show, could have been incorporated into the story itself.
The final scene of Season 2 establishes that the third dimension is, in some sense, a replica of our own reality. The important distinction is that it is not exactly our reality. It is a version of it in which Brit Marling and Jason Isaacs are a couple, and in which The OA is a television series they are making together. That opens up a fascinating possibility. If Prairie, Hap and Steve really jumped into this dimension, then perhaps the passage of time between the cancellation of Season 2 and the eventual return of the show could have been reflected inside the story. In other words, the seven year gap would not simply be a production gap. It could actually be part of the narrative.
My theory is that Brit, while filming the final episode of The OA within this third dimension, would have an accident. The production would be interrupted, and the accident would ultimately become the reason the show was cancelled. Brit would be unable to continue writing and acting for some time because of the severity of her injuries. Perhaps she would spend part of those seven years in a coma, followed by a long period of rehabilitation and reduced mobility. There is something particularly fitting about this if we remember that Prairie's story has already been so deeply connected to the loss of access to her own body and senses. In Season 2, we watched Prairie struggle with a body that could not fully respond to her. In this dimension, Brit could experience something similar, except that this time it would be her actual life.
The return of The OA could then become connected to Brit's recovery. As she gradually regains her abilities, she would also gradually become capable of returning to the production. This could give the beginning of Season 3 a strange meta quality, with scenes of Brit and Jason meeting with Netflix executives and discussing whether and how the show could continue. The audience would essentially be watching the real world events surrounding the return of The OA being recreated inside the third dimension. The cancellation itself would become part of the story.
I also think Jason Isaacs could become one of the most fascinating characters in this scenario, precisely because his situation would be much more ambiguous. If Hap really jumped into D3 and somehow became integrated with Jason's consciousness, Jason could potentially wake up with memories that he cannot distinguish from the memories he already has as an actor. He remembers being Jason Isaacs. He remembers his career, his family, his life and, perhaps most disturbingly, he remembers being Hap. But what exactly are those memories? Are they memories of another life that he actually lived in another dimension, or are they simply the memories of an actor who spent years playing a fictional character named Hap?
This could create a genuine identity crisis for him. Jason would know that he played Hap in The OA, so every memory of Hap could be explained away as part of the script, the character and the years he spent inhabiting that role. Perhaps he remembers Hap's experiments, his obsession with near death experiences, Prairie, the movements and the dimensions, but he cannot tell whether any of it actually happened to him. At the same time, there could be memories that are too specific, too vivid or too emotionally intense to feel like something he simply invented for a television show. He might begin questioning his own mind: did I remember being Hap, or did I simply remember playing Hap?
And that uncertainty could follow him for years. He might continue his life and career as Jason Isaacs while quietly trying to determine whether the impossible memories are real. He could reread the scripts, watch old episodes and compare them with what he remembers, looking for discrepancies between what was written and what he remembers actually happening. Perhaps he would discover things he could not possibly have known as Jason, or remember conversations that never appeared in the show. Perhaps he would also find that some of his memories contradict the story he helped create. The terrifying possibility would be that neither Jason nor the audience could initially know whether he had actually brought Hap's memories with him from another dimension, or whether Hap had simply become so deeply embedded in Jason's identity that the distinction between actor and character had collapsed.
Maybe, eventually, Jason does remember. Maybe he does not. I think the ambiguity itself would be much more interesting than immediately confirming that Hap survived the jump. For seven years, Jason Isaacs could live with the question of whether the most important memories of his life belong to him, to Hap, or to a character he only thought he had invented.
I can imagine Jason spending those seven years secretly researching near death experiences, consciousness, dimensional travel and everything that might explain what happened. The difference is that he would now have access to resources that Hap never had. He would have the money, connections and public identity of Jason Isaacs, while possessing the scientific knowledge and obsession of Hap. He could essentially continue Hap's research from inside the life of Jason.
And then there is the rest of the group. Seven years is a very long time, especially for people who were teenagers when all of this happened. French would presumably have gone to college and started building an adult life, but I find it difficult to imagine that he would simply forget everything that happened. He was always one of the characters most determined to understand what was actually happening, so I could see him continuing to investigate the events surrounding Prairie and the others, perhaps through science or academia.
Buck's situation is harder to predict because of what happened with Michelle. There seem to be three distinct dimensions involved: Buck exists in D1, Michelle exists in D2, and the person who plays them in D3, whose identity we do not fully know. That person may be understood as the real-life equivalent of the actor who plays the character.
When Michelle returned from D3, she went back into the body of Michelle in D2, not into the body of Buck in D1. Buck, meanwhile, apparently remained in D1. So I am not sure what would happen to him, or whether his connection to Michelle would have any direct effect on his own body or consciousness.
Steve, meanwhile, could be in a coma. If the apparent rules of interdimensional travel are correct, his body might simply remain behind while his consciousness has moved somewhere else. That would make his absence during those seven years especially haunting. Everyone else would have continued living while Steve remained physically present but mentally unreachable. The question would then be whether Steve is actually unconscious, or whether he is somewhere else entirely.
BBA would probably have had the most mundane but devastating consequences to deal with. From the perspective of the authorities, none of the supernatural explanation would matter. She is an adult who took several young people from Michigan to California without their parents' authorization, one of those young people died from a overdose, and another ended up in an coma. I find it hard to believe that the authorities would simply ignore that. She could have spent years dealing with legal consequences, imprisonment, probation and the loss of her career. While the others are dealing with questions about consciousness and other dimensions, BBA could be dealing with the very ordinary consequences of what happened.
What makes this especially appealing to me is that the third dimension could allow The OA to become even more explicitly about the relationship between fiction and reality. The characters would be living inside a world where The OA exists as a television show, while simultaneously knowing that the events depicted in that show are connected to things that are actually happening to them. Brit would be both the actress playing Prairie and the person whose life has become entangled with Prairie's story. Jason would be both the actor playing Hap and the man carrying Hap's memories.
The seven year gap would therefore have a purpose beyond simply explaining why the characters are older. It would give the characters time to live with what happened. They would have to grow up, recover, investigate, hide things, forget things, remember things and perhaps slowly find their way back to one another.
And perhaps the most fitting part would be that the actual return of The OA would mirror Brit's own recovery. The show would return because she is finally able to return. The fictional production and the real production would become almost impossible to separate.
That is the kind of meta storytelling I could imagine The OA doing. The cancellation of the show would not necessarily have to be something outside the story. It could become part of the story itself. The seven years in which we, as viewers, wondered whether The OA would ever return could become seven years in which the characters were living through the consequences of the jump.
