This is a spoiler free review of The OA. Though it does contain spoilers for Season 1 and some plot details already included in Netflix’s trailers for the season.

When it landed on Netflix in 2016, The OA was a bit of a revelation. A strange, gorgeous, sprawling sci-fi yarn about love, death, faith and humanity, packed with indelible images and unfolding revelations. It was a highly emotional, grown-up drama that also weaved in Stranger Things vibes from the four youngsters and their teacher enlisted to hear and participate in Prairie’s (Brit Marling) weird, mesmerising tale. The ending was shocking and bizarre, so for fans of the show, Part II couldn’t come soon enough. It’s been three years and it feels like The OA has been O-A for ages.

Picking up right after the school shooting which closed the first part, The OA Season 2 (styled as “Part II”) is set in 2016, though exactly which version of 2016 is another story. Nina, a woman who looks just like Prairie but speaks with a Russian accent, collapses on a ferry claiming to have been shot in the chest. But when she wakes up in hospital, her accent has gone, she doesn’t know where she is and she says her name is Prairie.

Turns out the dance was a success then, and Prairie has lept dimensions on her mission to find Homer (Emory Cohen) and the others and learn what happened to them after she was able to escape Doctor Hap’s (Jason Isaacs) prison. But when she’s finally reunited with Homer, there’s a problem…