Among the first handful of so-so shows that Apple TV+ started streaming with, Dickinson was widely perceived by audiences and critics as the best. It was the first to receive a second season greenlight by the company.
Dickinson is a recreation of the life of 19th Century American Poet Emily Dickinson, played by Hailee Steinfeld. Season 1 focused on a young Dickinson that first develops a love interest with her best friend, Sue (played by Ella Hunt) but then has a romantic attraction for Ben Newton (played by Matt Lauria), one of her dad’s law assistants. The two bond with ease and Ben supports her poetry. They vow not to marry but to love each other, and a little while later, Ben dies of tuberculosis.
That’s pretty much where Season 1 leaves us. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Alena Smith revealed more of what we can expect from Dickinson’s Season 2.
“Emily’s coming of age story is in part about a maturing relationship to death,” Smith told THR. “In the beginning of the season, she sort of glamorizes death, and it’s also part of why she glamorizes Sue, because Sue has had so much loss and death but Emily really hasn’t, and she’s been sort of protected from that. It’s only when she loses Ben that for the first time she experiences what it means to lose someone who’s really important to you, and I think that something about that both shifts her perspective on death and also allows her to come to terms with the maturing relationship with Sue. At least for the period of time of Sue’s marriage, Emily thinks that perhaps she can accept Sue into her life as a sister.”
Smith said Season 2 won’t take us yet to the times of the Civil War, but it’s heading that way. “We get a bit closer to the Civil War [in season two]. We get right up to the brink of it,” she says. “The season kind of builds up to the event of Harpers Ferry, of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, which we are kind of figuring in our show as kind of a 9/11 moment or a moment when war becomes inevitable and the society that has held itself together so far knows that it’s not going to work anymore. If and when we have a season three, that would be when we were in a Civil War.”
It seems like Smith has long-term plans for ‘Dickinson’ and that Apple TV+ is backing her. You can read the whole interview here