returns January 8 in more assured form but with the same irreverence and inspired anachronistic touches as before. Season one ended with heartbreak for a young Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld), who was not even allowed to attend the wedding of her brother, Austin (Adrian Enscoe), to her best friend and soulmate, Sue Gilbert (Ella Grant). When season two begins, though, that rift seems to have been mended, as Emily feverishly writes to Sue, awaiting feedback on her latest poem.
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But Sue is not interested in (or prepared for) being Emily’s only reader—from her own vaunted place in Amherst society, she nudges her friend into the spotlight, creating a new divide that is just one of several in season two. Series creator-writer Alena Smith mines these personal and political divisions to deliver incredibly moving, ever more topical storytelling. The Dickinson enclave in 1850s Amherst is intruded upon by presences both welcome—Finn Jones as a rakish editor and wannabe disruptor—and undeniable, as the U.S. tips ever closer to civil war. Ahead of the season two premiere,