O'Dessa is a new psychedelic, post-apocalyptic rock opera with Sadie Sink in the titular lead role—and the ending features the surprising death of a key character.
Warning - The rest of this article contains spoilers for O'Dessa.
The end of the film sees O'Dessa performing for Murray Bartlett's Plutonovich in an effort to save the life of Kelvin Harrison Jr.'s Euri Dervish—which she basically fails to do (they live, but are horribly disfigured and braindead).
In a final act of rebellion, O'Dessa takes her guitar, sets it aflame, and blows up Plutonovich's entire fortress, seemingly killing everyone inside.
The next shot sees O'Dessa and Euri reunited in what seems to evoke the Elysian Fields, also known as heaven in Greek mythology.
The Direct spoke with O'Dessa director Geremy Jasper, who offered some thoughts on O'Dessa's fate.
Is O'Dessa Really Dead?
"We Could Come Up With Some Loophole."
- The Direct: "Is Odessa gone for good? Did she perish at the end of the movie?"
Geremy Jasper: Oh, you never know. We could come up with some loophole. I would love to make a sequel to this movie. I don't know how exactly we would do it, but, you know, Boba Fett lived, they figured out a way to bring him back. So we'll see what we could do here with O'dessa.
- The Direct: "I was gonna ask about if you had ever even thought about what a number two would look like..."
Geremy Jasper: "I mean, it's a world that I would love to keep writing stories for. But, yeah, make comic books and graphic novels and theme park rides."
- The Direct: "When you approached this [first] movie, what was your mission statement when crafting the whole thing?What was kind of your guiding star?"
Geremy Jasper: I wanted to make something expansive that used music in an operatic way. I wanted it to be expressive, abstract, surreal, emotional, and just like grand and psychedelic. I guess that was the mission statement. It has a lot of different parts, but that was kind of the goal.
At the very least, if a second movie were to happen, the story would certainly at least introduce audiences to the journey of O'Dessa and Euri's daughter, who is introduced in O'Dessa's final moments.
However, it'll undoubtedly be extremely difficult for Geremy Jasper not to bring back Sadie Sink as O'Dessa (who The Direct talked to on the red carpet at SXSW) in another installment, given how incredible she was in this first one.
Either way, there are certainly plenty of stories that could come from the colorful, zany world of O'Dessa, and hopefully, they come to fruition one day.
Why Sadie Sink Was Perfect for O'Dessa
"There Were So Many Reasons..."
- The Direct: "Sadie Sink can sing. She's got Star Power, and so just in your own words, why was Sadie Sink so perfect for this role?"
Geremy Jasper: I mean, there were so many reasons, like the light in her eyes, her body language, her stature, her power, her fearlessness, the voice that she has, the way that she can sing, her depth, her just like, overall power [that] just lined up perfectly with what I was looking for, for Odessa.
Like, it's hard to find a young woman that is that radiant but also can transform themselves into a bit of a runt at first and then be like, a world conqueror.
So, she has that shape-shifting ability that you're looking for, and then, once I heard her sing, I was like, I was floored, like the hairs on my arm were standing up, you know, and I'm old and jaded, and that doesn't happen very often, so she cut through.
The Inspiration Behind Murray Bartlett's Plutonovich
"[Plutonovich] Was a Child Star Who Was Never Quite Matured Enough..."
- The Direct: "Now she's going up against Murray Bartlett's Plutonovich. Can you talk about some of your inspirations in crafting that character?"
Geremy Jasper: They're all over the map from like Jordan Whowski's 'Holy Mountain.' I don't know if you've ever seen that one, but there's a lot that we pulled from that. There are some current politicians that always kind of can't get rid of.
There's 'The Running Man.' I don't know if you've seen that movie from the 80s, but that was a big inspiration. I know Murray brought a lot to it. He had certain talk show hosts that I won't name as references for the character, that I thought were hilarious.
He built this whole backstory for the character, that Plutonovich, who was a child star who was never quite matured enough, and had a lot of demons, and needed a lot of attention from a very dysfunctional childhood. So yeah, those, those were some of the influences.
The full interview can be seen here:
O'Dessa is now streaming on Hulu.
