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Is Prairie An Angel On 'The OA'? Her Story Seems To Check Out

by Zakiya Jamal

(Warning: this post contains spoilers from The OA Episode 8.) At the start of Netflix's new mystery, The OA, everyone was asking one very important question: who/what is The OA? But now that we've collected eight episodes worth of information, one of the many main questions on my mind is now: what is Prairie? According to Prairie herself, she's the OA, or the Original Angel as some may prefer to call it. However, the season finale left many fans wondering if anything she said about her time while she was missing was actually true or just something she made up in her head. Could Prairie really be an angel on The OA or is she just a normal girl with a big imagination?

In the Season 1 finale, French and Steve went looking for proof that Prairie's story was real after they were all caught in the abandoned house together. However, what French found was more distressing than any proof they uncovered. Under Prairie's bed were books that seemed to indicate she'd made up her whole story about Dr. Hunter Hap, Homer, and the others. She had The Iliad by Homer and two books about near death experiences and angels. It seemed Prairie had read these books and simply got it into her head that the she was an angel. But if she's not really an angel, then how does one explain what happened at the very end of the finale?

Myles Aronowitz/Netflix

After the group of five went their separate ways, they found themselves reunited when a shooter came to the cafeteria of their high school. Using the five movements Prairie taught them, they were able to distract the shooter long enough for him to be tackled, but not before he got a shot off that hit Prairie in the chest. Prairie was taken away in an ambulance and in the final scene of the first season, she was seen waking up in a room of white saying the name, "Homer."

The ending seemed to support the theory that everything Prairie said was true and that the five movements had worked and helped her get back to Homer, perhaps even in another dimension. Plus, if what she claimed wasn't true, then where did she go for those seven years and why does she have those scars on her back? Also, the story about her life and Russia has to be true, or at least have some truth to it, because she really was adopted by Nancy and Abel and did become blind. Not to mention, she had to have gotten her sight back somehow.

So it seems Prairie's claims that she's an angel are true, but that still leaves us with many questions. Was she always an angel or did she just become one after the first time she died? And were all the others in the basement angels too? How about the group of five she befriended when she returned home? It looks like fans will just have to wait until Season 2 to get some more answers. Hopefully.