Netflix Killed ‘The OA.’ Now Its Creators Are Back With a Show About Tech’s Ubiquity

“So many people watched the show, like it was somehow in the upper range of their mid-range shows, which was a huge number for Netflix,” Marling said. “It used to be that a broadcast show might get canceled if 1 or 2 million people watched it, but you could have a show on Netflix that over 20 million people watched, and somehow when the business model changed there, it just didn’t fit their new economies of scale.

This created what Marling calls a “complicated dissonance” where she could travel the world and meet people “whose devotion to the story runs deep, and then not be able to finish the narrative for them.”

Neither subscriber numbers nor fan momentum changed things – Netflix didn’t change its mind – but the fan base remained. There is always Reddit Subscribers dedicated to the series. The original backup The OA Discord is no longer active, Paris says, but a new one called Angel Neurosis launched this summer where fans are talking about OA, Murder at the end of the worldand the work of Marling and Batmanglij.

Next March, there will be a online conference dedicated to discussing the show as it relates to topics covering the history of Homer Iliad, LGBTQ+ representation, ontology, metaverse and dance. It’s a demonstration that sometimes fan dedication doesn’t show up in viewership, and while that was also true for Firefly, My so called lifeand many other shows canceled, the perception that streamers will only focus on pretty good shows with a decent ROI can impact the loyalty of those same viewers to the streamers themselves.

“In recent years, it feels like Netflix has become an impenetrable fortress in terms of interacting with its audience as a whole and with series fans in particular,” says Marisa Hates, a film scholar at the University of Brighton and one of the organizers of the event. the next OA conference. “We all wonder why wonderfully innovative and popular shows are being canceled.”

These fans may never know why Netflix was removed The OA (the company did not respond to a request for comment on this story), but as the streaming wars continue, all services will need to do more to attract and retain viewers. As Batmanglij and Marling bring their new show to Hulu, it’s likely their most devoted fans will follow them. Maybe. “It’s so stupid, but I’m afraid I won’t like it [A Murder at the End of the World]”, says Paris. “Or rather, I was really scared, and then they finally released a trailer and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s OA-ish.’