‘Dickinson’ Season 2 Review: Apple TV+’s Genre-Busting Series Leads With Its Heart

Like the poet Emily Dickinson herself, Apple TV+’s comedy/drama/whatever Dickinson leads with its heart. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the transcendent second season of the series, which premieres on January 8.

Set about a year, year and a half after the end of Season 1, Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) has spent the intervening time since her true love Sue Gilbert (Ella Hunt) married her brother Austin (Adrian Enscoe) writing hundreds, if not thousands of poems, all delivered to Sue’s door. This, as you might expect, is a little too much for Sue. While Emily has been holed up in her room, face and fingers stained with ink, Sue has become the talk of the town. She’s been hosting salons in her new home, called The Evergreens, and welcoming the intellectual glitterati. In essence, she’d become the 1850s equivalent of a social influencer.

Enter Samuel Bowles (a charming Finn Jones, showing how badly he was misused on Iron Fist), the publisher and editor of the Springfield Republican, whose daily newspaper regularly covers Sue’s salons. Thanks to Sue, Sam becomes interested in Emily’s poems, and from there we get an intricate, nuanced look at fame through the eyes of a poet who, in life, only published a handful of poems.

That’s the push and pull of the plot over the course of the season, and it’s fascinating to see how showrunner Alena Smith and staff weave tension out of an inevitability… We know the real Emily Dickinson was only recognized after her death; but how this fictional version of Emily gets there is the journey of the season. It also allows the show to bring in multiple guest stars to help reflect on Emily’s grappling with fame, from a hilarious Timothy Simons as Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmstead, to Nick Kroll as a dead Edgar Allen Poe, still cruising for groupies with Death (Wiz Khalifa).

Those are the flashy, catchy parts of Dickinson, along with the anachronistic humor (a joke in a later episode about proto-podcasts is purposefully blunt to the point of mentioning Blue Apron, for example) and excellently curated modern music. But it’s the quieter parts that make the show truly special.

A scene in the premiere between Sue and Emily, glimpsed briefly in the season’s trailer, is so gorgeously constructed it transcends to the level of art. The lighting, the framing, the precision of performance between Steinfeld and Hunt… Everything about it leads to one of the most sexually and emotionally charged sequences — without the two leads even touching — I’ve seen on screen, ever. A musical sequence between the two in a later episode (to say anything about the setting would be a spoiler) sneaks out of nowhere and is equally thrilling. I, for one, broke out in goosebumps.

Though ‘shippers might want to see physically intimacy between hashtag EmiSue, it’s the widening chasm between the two that helps create these stunning segments, as well as the care from the production team in crafting what appears in the frame; and of course the fierce chemistry between Steinfeld and Hunt. Add in a moment late in the season that made me gasp in surprise, and one that caused tears to fall from these stoney TV reviewer’s eyes in the finale, and you have an emotional rollercoaster that is evocative in the way few other TV shows can hope to reach; but one that is well worth riding.

Emily and Sue aren’t the only stand-out characters this season, which finds every member of the cast struggling with growing up in different ways. Lavinia Dickinson (Anna Baryshinokov), who had her own artistic awakening at the end of Season 1, finds herself stifled by the introduction of the hilariously masculine “Ship” (Pico Alexander). The duo work delightfully together, and Baryshinokov’s spiraling frustration at being forced back into the feminine box of her time period is brilliant to watch. The Dickinson parents, too, have their own maturation now that their kids are grown (though two still live in the house with them, and one lives next door). Emily Norcross (Jane Krakowski) starts to realize that the world is changing around her, and she might need to change with it. Similarly, Edward (Toby Huss) is grappling with both money troubles and the fact that he might not actually be right about everything, after the fall-out from his fight with Emily last season.

The supporting cast, too, gets plenty to work with, essentially acting as a Greek Chorus to the goings on with Emily, Sue and Sam. Sophie Zucker as Abby, Kevin Yee as Toshiaki, and Gus Birney as Jane Humphrey are hilarious every time they pop on screen; though even they get their moments beyond comic relief. And Chinaza Uche as Henry is joined by new cast member Ayo Edebiri as Hattie, whose storyline bubbles up slowly throughout the season, and provides a realistic counterpoint to the high society antics of the rest of the cast, bringing the reality of what’s happening elsewhere in America (look at the year, and I think you’ll figure it out) crashing down.

But it’s Austin (Adrian Enscoe) who gets the most to do this season, beyond Emily and Sue. Mostly framed as a frustrated dummy in Season 1, Austin turns out to have surprising depths that impact everyone else’s emotional journeys, and Enscoe embodies the plot fully. He doesn’t lose that sweet dumbness hiding behind his eyes, but while everyone else plays at being adults, Austin might be the only character truly becoming one. It’s a fantastic performance that ties into some beautiful moments with Emily late in the season, as well as other members of the cast I won’t mention for fear of spoilers.

That all said, I would be remiss not to mention that Dickinson Season 2 is also extremely funny. One episode, Edward falls in a hole he can’t get out of, and Huss’s delivery of the line “I’m in a hole!” made me laugh out loud for a solid minute. In another, the female section of the cast goes for a spa day, and the skewering of wellness culture is spot on: you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Jane Krakowski repeatedly smacked in the face with leaves.

More than anything, though, it is Dickinson‘s heart that elevates it above nearly every other show on TV. While playing fast and loose with history — narration right at the top of the premiere explains that this period of Emily’s life is perhaps the least documented of her life — it still channels the spirit of her poems, which twist and turn and sneak up on you with emotional bite when you least expect it. Certainly, it helps to have the words of one of the greatest poets in human history appear fleeting, like fire burning through paper on the screen. But in the wrong hands, Dickinson could have been a disaster. Instead, Smith and company channel Dickinson’s work perfectly on screen, deploying the real poems to great effect and using it to elevate a story that is both timeless and surprisingly relevant to now.

By season’s end, everything — for Emily, for Sue, for all of the Dickinsons, for America — has changed. But in our world, we at least have these two perfect seasons of television to hold on to.

The first three episodes of Dickinson Season 2 premiere January 8 on Apple TV+, with new episodes premiering every Friday after.

Stream Dickinson on Apple TV+