Is Steve The Brother On The OA? Let's Weigh The Clues

There are a lot of new mysteries and questions raised by The OA Season 2, but none are more puzzling than the tidbit of information that the OA has a brother. Old Night — you know, the giant octopus at the underground Russian speakeasy — drops this information mid-way through the season and it’s an incredibly new twist that isn’t really expanded on throughout the rest of the episodes. Or maybe it is.

Depending on how you read this information about OA’s “brother,” and the events of Season 2, we maybe knew OA’s brother all along. He was maybe right in front of our faces. Prairie first learns about OA’s brother in Episode 4 when Old Night offers to give her some important information, and in order to do this, he’s going to kill her for 37 seconds. While Prairie is in this near-death hallucination, we see her crawl through an airplane bathroom and walk down the plane’s aisle towards someone. Their back is too us, but it appears that they’ve got bright blonde short hair, and are wearing some sort of green, flora-print jacket. More than likely, this is Prairie’s brother, however we never see their face. Just as this person is about to turn around, in the waking world Karim kills Old Night, snapping Prairie out of this dream and robbing her from the last few seconds of this message.

That’s all the information we receive about OA’s brother. According to Old Night, OA’s brother is the one who’s going to determine her fate.

With information like this, obviously a few candidates spring to mind. Hap could be OA’s brother, in the most twisted sibling love/rivalry since Jaime and Cersei on Game of Thrones. Karim could be her brother, since now these two are clearly intertwined in the greater The OA mystery now. Maybe Riz Ahmed’s Elias Rahim is OA’s brother, since he shows up at a super convenient time and explains that he’s here to help “her” because “she’s going to need it.” These are all super convincing candidates. But OA’s brother is probably Steve.

Going all the way back to Season 1, Steve and Prairie have a strong connection; he’s even the first one to really help her out once she’s returned home. During Season 2, they’re completely separated through dimensions, but that’s not going to stop Steve from trying to help her no matter what. There’s also a lot of evidence to support a connection between Steve and Prairie: He rallies the rest of the kids to jump to a new dimension; he refuses to stop the movements after Jesse has died; he shaves his head (hey, maybe that helps?); and it’s also BBA who’s dreaming about him, not her deceased brother; out of everyone in Hap’s waterbed of flower people, Prairie pulls Steve out. Taking one-by-one, these things don’t mean much. But add them all together, and clearly Steve and other forces are trying to get him back to OA.

At the end of the season, he even manages to jump dimensions himself and ends up back with Prairie. Prairie (or is it now Brit?) is injured in the new third dimension, and as she’s being driven away in the ambulance, Steve runs as fast as he possibly can to catch up to it and join her inside, much to Hap’s displeasure. Remember, Hap and Steve have never met. Yet, as soon as they lock eyes it’s as if Hap knows who this is, and knows what’s going to happen next.

Steve’s also (as far as we know) the only person from the first dimension to make the jump to the third. That’s clearly some cosmic power he’s got on his side, once again implying that he and Prairie/OA might be more connected than we think. They’re probably not biologically related as siblings ( honestly, who knows), but considering what Elodie tells Prairie about there being “cosmic families,” that’s a possible route for them. Sure, Elodie never alluded to Prairie having a brother during their talk about dimensions and echos, but that doesn’t mean he’s not out there.

Season 2 is full of so much talk about “Homer, Homer, Homer,” it’s more than likely a misdirection in some way. Really, we should have been talking more about Steve. It’ll be interesting to see how the brother plays out going into Season 3, and who this protector ends up being for OA.