The OA refuses to tell the FBI and her adoptive parents where she has been and how her eyesight was restored, and instead quickly assembles a team of five locals (four high school students and a teacher) to whom she reveals that information, also explaining her life story.

[12] The second season follows the OA as she traverses to another dimension and ends up in San Francisco to continue her search for her former captor, Hap, and her fellow captives.

Prairie crosses paths with private eye Karim Washington and assists in his investigation of the surreal disappearance of a missing girl that involves an abandoned house with a supernatural history and an online puzzle game.

Marling and Batmanglij then began to tell the story from beginning to end,[27] playing all the characters and acting out the big moments through many hours.

[25] Following a multiple-network bidding war, the series was first announced on March 5, 2015, when Netflix ordered eight one-hour long episodes with Plan B and Anonymous Content also on board.

One fan went on a hunger strike outside Netflix's Los Angeles Headquarters to protest for the show's return; Marling and Batmanglij visited her and offered her food and water.

[39][40] Prominent creators of other television series also expressed their love for The OA, including Shonda Rhimes,[41] Sam Esmail[42] and Alex Kurtzman.

John Doyle of The Globe and Mail wrote, "The OA is Netflix's strongest and strangest original production since Stranger Things.

"[59] Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter gave a negative review, stating that the series was "a failed, but not wholly worthless, experiment in TV auteurism".

[61] A few days later, on the other hand, the magazine's chief film critic Peter Debruge wrote an extremely positive column with the headline "Why The OA is One of the Year's Most Important Films", stating that the show's first season had "the most effective ending [he had] ever seen in a TV series", and that its "final twist [...] left [him] crying uncontrollably for nearly half an hour".

The website's critical consensus reads, "The OA's second season provides satisfying answers to its predecessors' most maddening enigmas, all while maintaining the singular ambience that fans have come to crave.

[65] The Playlist stated in their review that: "The OA: Part II packs each frame so dense with detail, that not one second of the new season's more-than-eight-hour runtime seems wasted, expositional, cheap, or unearned.

"[66] Jesse Scheden of IGN gave The OA: Part II a score of 8.8 out of 10, saying the season is "bigger, more ambitious and much weirder than its predecessor".

"[68] Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "The only thing I'm sure of when it comes to The OA is that the process of watching and experiencing an episode is unlike the viewing of any other show on TV and, good or bad, there's value in that."

[70] Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph, gave it 4 out of 5 stars, and wrote that the show "truly comes into its own when you stop attempting to piece together the storyline and instead submit to Marling and Batmanglij's vision.

"[71] Emily VanDerWerff of Vox, initially critical of the first season, wrote of the series: "over time, I kept thinking about it ... until I convinced myself that The OA is kind of genius, while simultaneously being incredibly silly".

[72] Haleigh Foutch of Collider said, "Netflix has carved out a space for itself as a home for innovative genre storytelling, and The OA might just be their crowning achievement in that regard.