The OA is a science-fiction drama series created for Netflix by Brit Marling and director Zal Batmanglij, who previously collaborated on Sound of My Voice and The East. Marling plays a blind woman who vanishes for years and then returns with unexplained scars and her vision mysteriously restored. She co-stars alongside Emory Cohen, Jason Isaacs, and Scott Wilson.

The first season became available on Netflix today. I am excited to jump in.

I've watched six episodes so far. The first episode and third episode are absolutely fantastic. The series as a whole is incredibly ambitious and mostly engaging, though I don't think it's anything revelatory or anything. Brit Marling is great.

So they had a clip from it out in March 2015 already, but released the first season just now? And I have a feeling like Netflix did zero marketing for it.

I updated the first post tonight. It was just a Hollywood Reporter announcement article in March 2015.

They didn't, but that was part of the strategy from what they are claiming. They only announced it was premiering today on Monday. Brit Marling is saying she wanted to keep it secretive.

As for the series overall, it filmed from like January through May this year in NYC.

Ah, okay. I was surprised. Either way, I still think Netflix dumped it without marketing. I have received an e-mail that offered screeners to all episodes of the first season at the end of November. When that offer came there was still no trailer or release date. The release date was announced just a few days before it was actually released.

I believe they were aiming for a J. J. Abrams-esque blitz release rather than burying it.

Yeah, the show really works if you know as little as possible going in, so I'm sure that's what they were going for.

Plus, if you think about it "Stranger Things" wasn't really released with a ton of fanfare either, that came after.

"Stranger Things" had tons of hype after its 80s-style trailers already.

I just finished. This was good. I thought the finale was solid if somewhat unspectacular, but I am curious where another season would go.

I need to watch this. Loved Another Earth, The East, Sound of My Voice, and I Origins.

I'm 4 episodes in and I kind of like it. But it's really full of random stuff. I'm not sure the storytelling way was the best way to go. At times it feels like it's made up by a sleepy 6 year old kid telling a story to his friends. And there's a sense of disconnect between the drama and the supernatural elements. It's as almost as the show is a bit ashamed of having supernatural elements.

And I can see why they went with just announcing the show. It would be hard to market. The first episode kicks off with a strong mystery element that gets thrown aside by the end of it and the show then becomes a slow memoir of a Russian girl with supernatural powers. And it just gets more over the top from that point on.

Eh. I don't think the ending really works. The ambiguity that's left makes it not a carbon copy of The Usual Suspects, but the twist feels randomly thrown at the very last minute. She's definitely not a reliable storyteller as it has been obvious from the start, so I'm interested how much of it was real and how much of the story was made up.

At the same time I would like to see the second season and I wouldn't. They would definitely have to go for one of the options, but whatever they would chose would certainly take away from the first season.

EDIT: The strongest point of the series were the characters. I liked or loved every one of them. And Hap is definitely one of the best villains I've ever seen. He's so complex and layered. I don't realize why people don't mention it when they were going crazy over JJ's Kilgrave that wasn't a really special or well done villain at all.

The ending was infuriating to me and ruined what otherwise was a decent (B level) series. Interpretive dance moves to stop a school shooter!?!?

Well it just ended up making the guy go "WTF???" for a moment. I'm rather more amused by the healing properties/dimension travel idea.

I was as well, if true. Which is why the ending annoyed me.

Regarding the books, can Prairie even read besides with Braille? She came to America blind, learned to read in Braille, had nothing to read in her cell if she was to learn then (or at least nothing is shown), so if the books under her bed were hers, wouldn't they be in Braille?

In the case of her blindness if the story is fake and there's nothing supernatural that was going on, I believe the clue to that is that the woman that returns her sight tells her: "You never lost your sight to begin with.". It's quite possibly that her blindness was never truly physical, but more psychological. Also she was gone for years and could've easily learned to read. We never do know if she read those books before (in captivity maybe) or she randomly ordered them and made up her story while reading them. I do feel that plot twist with the books is terribly random and put into the story at the very last minute as the whole thing doesn't seem really well thought out.