Spoilers for The OA Season 2 ahead. Just when you thought The OA couldn't get any weirder, the Netflix series pulled a meta twist that will seriously make you question your own reality. But as wild as The OA Season 2 ending is, you actually should have seen it coming. The show has been dropping clues all along.
In the season 2 finale, Karim finally gets to the rose window in the House on Nob Hill, and at first sees Nina/Prairie flying above San Francisco in full Original Angel mode. However, when a dove flies threw the window — which seems to be some kind of a portal to other dimensions — it messes everything up. OA falls out of the air, and the illusion is broken. Suddenly, Karim is looking down on the set of The OA, on which Brit Marling and Jason Isaacs are actors. There are models of the house on Nob Hill, as well as one of Karim's own boat home. However, not everything is quite right. Marling has been injured from the OA's fall, and Isaacs is still a little bit Hap. Homer, who Prairie was holding when they jumped, is also not there.
Karim calls out to Michelle (or Ian Alexander, the actor who plays Buck) and Michelle follows. After climbing a ladder and reaching back through the window, Karim is jolted back to his dimension and Michelle wakes up in a bed, alive and well. Or is it Michelle? What if it's Buck? What if Michelle was playing Buck on television? Got an OA headache yet?
Isaacs and Marling ride away in an ambulance, mirroring what happens to Prairie after the school shooting in Season 1. Someone's running after the ambulance, also similar to the end of Season 1, but this time the runner catches up. Not only is it Steve (like in Season 1), he knows who Hap is. Steve has a full head of hair, too, indicating that he is also an experienced inter-dimensional traveler at this point.
There were certain clues that this fourth-wall breaking twist was coming throughout the season. For one thing, Prairie and Hap often refer to their other dimensional selves as "same cast, different play" — hinting that "all the world's a stage" and this meta reveal was on the way. Elodie also tells Hap that in one overwhelming dimension she was an actress who starred in mostly French films... like Irène Jacob, who plays Elodie on The OA.
Additionally, Scott's NDE clued us in that one dimension involved people that called Prairie/Nina "OA," while she called herself something that started with a "Bri" sound. That's referring to Marling, as we now know. Scott's NDE also let slip that in this dimension, Hap has a British accent — like Isaacs. Scott said that they love each other, and in this dimension Isaacs and Marling are married, though they aren't IRL. Isaacs has been married to a filmmaker named Emma Hewitt since 2001. So this isn't, like, really the real world or anything.
What does this mean? Is this the reality that Hap and Prairie will have to navigate if The OA returns for Season 3, one where they are actors playing their other selves? That certainly opens up a lot of fun possibilities and potentials for next season, but knowing The OA, it won't be what anyone is expecting.
