The OA Is Billed As A Must-Watch For Stranger Things Fans

Netflix struck gold over the summer with the science-fiction-’80s throwback Stranger Things. It’s hoping there’s more gold in the well with The OA. The eight-episode first season of the show starring Brit Marling in the lead role became available to stream on Netflix today.

Marling stars as Prairie Johnson, a woman who returns to her hometown seven years after vanishing. Johnson was blind when she disappeared, but now can miraculously see again. What happened to Prairie? Where as she been? Johnson won’t talk about any of that when she shows up in the town hospital with scars all over her back.

The marketing campaign for The OA has played on the Stranger Things similarity and left a lot to mystery. No one had heard of the show before the trailer showed up on Netflix’s Facebook page early this week. The premiere date being less than a week away made it even juicier. Several reviews, such as this one from Melissa Leon at The Daily Beast, say the show shares more in common with HBO’s Westworld. Being compared to either hit show will serve The OA well.

The OA has several connections to Missouri and more importantly, St. Louis. Missourian Brad Pitt is involved with the show through his Plan B Entertainment, which gets a co-executive producer credit on the show. The show has Johnson’s hometown is somewhere in Missouri. Kelly Jackson, a radio host on local station KTRS and a weekend anchor at KSDK will appear in a small role at some point in the first season, according to Joe Holleman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

St. Louisan Phyllis Smith, who you most likely know from her run on The Office, plays an Algebra teacher pulled into the mystery.

It was a chance meeting with a woman at a party that gave Brit Marling the idea to create The OA along with director Zach Batmanglij. Marling recounted that first meeting that would inspire the show to USA TODAY.

“I saw her from across the room, and she just seemed to be operating at a different frequency,” Marling says. “So when she told me she had this near-death experience — and described leaving her body and what she felt inside herself on the return — you understand why she felt like a person who was both apart from the world, but also more deeply in it. The idea of a character like that became really appealing.”

Watch the trailer for The OA below and binge-watch it this weekend on Netflix.

The OA Netflix trailer

 

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