The OA Season 2: What Does The Ending Really Mean?
2. Karim Returns Michelle To Her Body
During Season 2’s opening, we learn that Karim is a private investigator in dimension two hired by Michelle’s grandmother to find her. Michelle is technically Buck. In dimension one, Buck’s given name was Michelle as he is transgender. In dimension two, Michelle isn’t trans here, but they’re still each other’s counterpart.
Karim discovers that Michelle has been playing a game called Q Symphony, an app that uses augmented reality to build a series of puzzles that the players have to solve. The game also pays out big money upon completion of each of its five levels, with the final level paying out one million dollars. Many of the players squat at Nina’s House, which is what brings Karim to Prairie.
Eventually, Karim and Prairie find a video of Michelle in the attic of the House. She opens the rose window and collapses onto the floor. Karim is looking for her body, but Prairie says that’s probably not what he should be looking for. True enough, Ruskin takes Karim to Michelle’s grandmother and Michelle, who is lying unconscious but alive in bed. The grandmother reveals that Michelle is still somewhere in the House.
Karim goes back to the House when he finds out he’s the fourth recurring image from the shared dream study. Looking through the same rose window, he sees Prairie jump into our dimension.
Karim recognises Ian Alexander, aka the actor who plays Buck/Michelle as Michelle and calls out to them. Although Alexander can’t see Karim as he’s still in dimension two, he is drawn to the window and climbs up which pulls them back into Michelle’s body, causing her to wake up.
This means when Michelle opened the window, she travelled into dimension three, and her body in dimension two dropped to the floor unconscious. It seems that Karim helped to restore her consciousness to the correct body (and perhaps when you jump, your body doesn’t necessarily die after all).
It’s unclear whether Karim has a bigger part in all of this or if the purpose of him being the fourth image from the dreams was to save Michelle – and maybe OA.