A Fantasy Show with an 84% RT Score and a Passionate Following

The OA isn’t the kind of fantasy show you can put on in the background. From the moment Prairie Johnson reappears after seven years with her sight restored, it demands your attention. The series debuted in 2016 and landed at 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, a number that signals both quality and the kind of experiment that rarely gets this much critical respect.

Created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the show unfolded like a spiritual odyssey. It mixed near-death visions, inter-dimensional travel, and raw personal drama into something that didn’t look or feel like anything else on TV. Across two seasons and 16 episodes, it swung for the fences every time.

When Netflix cancelled The OA in 2019 due to high costs and low viewership, the reaction was immediate. Fans staged “movements” in public spaces, funded a billboard in Times Square, and even organized hunger strikes. For its community, The OA was a story worth fighting for, and even Marling responded with gratitude to The OA fan campaigns.

The OA Is A Fantasy Show That Built A Devoted Following

What made The OA unforgettable was its total commitment to strangeness. The show treated its most out-there ideas, like interpretive dances used to cross dimensions, with straight-faced sincerity. That kind of choice can be polarizing, but for the people who connected with it, it expanded what fantasy television could be.

The audience grew slowly but fiercely. Word of mouth carried it, as fans shared theories, dissected symbols, and wrestled with The OA‘s unanswered questions about faith, trauma, and the possibility of unseen worlds. It became the series people pressed on friends with a warning: stick with it, it’ll change you.

Netflix’s decision to end it didn’t quiet the enthusiasm. More than 100,000 people signed a petition to save it. Flash mobs performed the movements in major cities, and fans even demonstrated a hunger strike outside of Netflix headquarters. That kind of response comes only when a show hits something deeply personal.

Why The OA’s 84% RT Score Still Matters Years Later

On paper, an 84% Rotten Tomatoes score might look like just another solid critical rating. But for The OA, it means more. Season 1 drew 76%, while Season 2 jumped to 92%, a clear sign the series was only getting stronger. It was a show doubling down on its ambition and sharpening its storytelling as it went.

Critics praised its boldness, and outlets like Empire ranked The OA in ninth place on their list of the best TV shows of all time. That recognition helped shift it from cult oddity to landmark experiment, the kind of project other creators point to when arguing audiences can handle stranger, riskier stories.

Today, that score still serves as a reminder. In Netflix’s list of original shows that didn’t deserve to be cancelled, it marks The OA as a critically respected work that continues to reward discovery.

Fans Still Can’t Let Go Of The OA’s Unanswered Mystery

Season 2 ended on a cliffhanger that broke the frame entirely. Prairie wakes in a dimension more meta than She-Hulk‘s ending, collapsing the distance between fiction and reality. It was a promise of an even stranger road ahead that we never got closure to.

That unfinished turn is part of why the show hasn’t faded. Fans still trade theories online, digging into codes, hidden references, and the possibility that even the cancellation itself was woven into the story. Unlike many frustrating TV show cliffhangers, the lack of resolution actually kept it alive.

Most shows vanish after cancellation, but The OA endures. Its unresolved ending became fuel, ensuring it continues to live in fan conversations, critical essays, and the imaginations of everyone willing to step inside its strange, beautiful universe.

Source: IndieWire, Empire