10 TV Shows Cancelled Before Their Time

Coming in as a whopping fifth Netflix series showcased on this list, The OA deserved not only more airtime, but a better description than we can provide it.

Merging elements of sci-fi, fantasy, and the supernatural with a Twin Peaks-esque overarching mystery, the show follows Brit Marling’s Prairie, aka ‘The OA’, a formerly-blind young woman who suddenly reappears from a seven year disappearance with restored eyesight and untold secrets. The series tackles themes of identity, alternate dimensions, human connection, the morality of science, and the afterlife, in an often deliberately inaccessible narrative that polarised viewers, but generally garnered a positive response.

After an expansive second season that raised ever more questions, Netflix decided to cancel the show, despite a planned five-season arc and a major cliffhanger - with the two main characters travelling to an alternate dimension where The OA is a TV show, and the real-life lead actors play fictionalised versions of themselves as their characters. This triggered an immense fan response, with not only social media campaigns and an official petition springing up to save the show, but one passionate fan actually going on hunger strike!

Some speculated that the show’s cancellation might be an elaborate publicity stunt, considering that the show appeared to have merged with reality within the narrative, but these hopes were quickly proven false to the audience’s dismay.

The OA is one of few shows where we truly cannot predict in any way where the plot would have taken us had it been allowed to continue; all we know is the dismay felt from the loss of such an important and revolutionary show. Maybe it really did survive in another dimension. We hope so.