Dickinson Season Finale Review: You cannot put a Fire out (Season 2 Episode 10)

I want so badly to tell you that after a uniformly strong season that Dickinson nailed the landing with its finale, Dickinson Season 2 Episode 10 “You cannot put a Fire out.” However, I am a shrewd Yankee witch and I simply refuse to tell lies.

Part of this letdown is to be expected. The show peaked midseason with Dickinson Season 2 Episode 6, “Split the lark.” Sublime on every level, “Split the lark” is one of my favorite episodes of any show in recent memory but its existence admittedly complicates Dickinson.

Based on that episode and a string of others this season, I know Dickinson is capable of greatness, but somewhere in the last quarter of this season, it has stumbled. Its tone, its plotting, its pacing: all of it has dipped in comparison to the strong first half of the season.

With that said, I’ll give credit where credit is due: even taking that into consideration, Dickinson‘s sophomore season has been stronger than its first, a rare feat, but it doesn’t change the reality that the season wrap-up is only so-so.

There are plenty of moments that I’m sure are supposed to make me cheer or gasp, but only one plot really works. 

Since he was introduced, Sam Bowles (Finn Jones) has been a frustrating figure, and it’s been clear since Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) gave him her poems that this face-off was going to happen. 

What I didn’t necessarily expect was how much the confrontation would hit home.

The gaslighting, the insistence that he’s a feminist (yeah, sure, dude), the emphatic belief that even though she’s the one with the talent, he’s the one with the greater power in the dynamic, it’s all disgusting and patronizing yet it feels honest too, in a way that I’ve rarely seen on television.

It’s also a spectacular showcase for Jones who seems overjoyed to sneer and stomp his way through the scene.

The episode puts forth a number of different theories for why Emily ultimately decided not to release her poems for greater public consumption.

Whether you take Sam literally — as the uber publishing jerk of the century — or as a metaphor for Fame itself,  after seeing the heartlessness at the root of the publishing world, why would she bother going that route again?

While the Nobody (Will Pullen) storyline was steeped in intrigue, the conclusion of this story has felt clumsy and convoluted. I still don’t understand how Emily can see into the future and sense his death nor do I understand why specifically it’s Austin’s friend in particular that she sees.

Much like Death (Wiz Kalifa), it’s a character and symbolism that feels underbaked and overused.

Given Nobody’s true identity and his comments that he went to war looking for fame and glory, the Nobody device ends up feeling shaky at best (what, other than this line of dialogue, suggests that Fraser was in search of renown rather than trying to fight for honor or a belief that slavery was wrong?) 

I do, however, think that his advice to Emily that she must store up her energies because she has other wars — the internal kind — to fight is important and likely the thread we’ll be following next season. 

And, as I have so many times, I have to end this review by discussing Sue (Ella Hunt). Sue, Sue, always Sue.

I’ll admit, I loved Sue and Emily in Dickinson Season 1. I have yet to meet a friends-to-lovers partnership I don’t like and I cheered on an endearing queer relationship (we still don’t have enough of these on television).

Plus, have you ever heard the saying, “love is friendship caught fire?” That made sense to me in the context of Sue and Emily. I was happily aboard the ship.

However, their relationship and their chemistry hasn’t felt right this season and the trajectory of Sue’s character hasn’t made much sense either.

Their impassioned reconciliation at the end is supposed to have me jumping for joy but I’m finding it hard to root for this iteration of Emily and Sue or even understand all the motivations at play (though in theory, hurray, Sue finally vocalized her feelings for Emily; they’ve always been lopsided in that regard).

First, there’s the matter of Emily’s deepening relationship with Austin (Adrian Enscoe). Season 1 Austin was suitably douchey, but he’s evolved and he and Emily are advocates for each other in a way they never were in the show’s first season.

While it might have made sense earlier in the timeline for Emily to have no qualms with sleeping with her brother’s wife, I don’t believe that she’d go through with this now. After all, she was devastated to reveal Sue’s infidelity to him on the last episode. Would she really twist the knife even further herself?

I also take issue with most of the dialogue and choices in Emily and Sue’s scenes.

While Emily’s assertion that Sue is “exquisitely empty” might be one of the most deliciously awful insults I’ve heard in awhile, it’s hard to imagine how a relationship bounces back from that kind of pointed vitriol.

The back and forth about how Sue needed to not be the only vessel for Emily’s writing and how she couldn’t handle how the poems made her feel is retread of previous dialogue, but somehow treated as revelation, and taking that into consideration, Sue’s dalliance with Sam is even more confusing. Her choices simply don’t make sense, and Emily’s quick acceptance of them doesn’t seem plausible.

Emily isn’t stupid, and this attempt at making things sunny between Sue and Emily is unearned.

It also doesn’t help matters that Steinfeld and Hunt’s chemistry hasn’t bounced back to its prior glory and Hunt, in particular, seems in over her head. I don’t know if it’s her performance or very awkward writing, but at one point, she compares Emily’s poems to serpents and the whole exchange is ludicrous.

It doesn’t feel like a natural utterance or confession between friends; it feels like poetic dialogue written by someone else and performed (poorly).

I don’t love saying this.

I want to fall back in love with these two. I want them to be in love with each other (even if it makes me feel guilty about Austin), but the show rushed this reunion. After having been on divergent paths all season, it should have taken a lot more than a shouting match  to get them seeing eye to eye again. 

Even if the show posits that Emily’s reasons for keeping her poems private is tied to Sue, there are different ways the show could have built to this, especially knowing that it was already renewed for a third season. These two still have a lot of differences to work through that can’t — and shouldn’t — be brushed over.

Reflecting on the season, there’s still plenty to applaud. Steinfeld did some of her most exciting work to date, even while Dickinson enriched and expanded its world beyond its leading lady.

While the conclusion of its fame storyline is less than satisfying, the overarching theme gave the show clarity it often lacked in Season 1,  and it will enter Season 3 with a more mature heroine and promising seeds for a Civil War-centric story.

Given that, I’ll forgive some of its finale missteps, and I’m hopeful the Emily-Sue relationship can be better redeemed writing-wise next season as the show will almost certainly have to explore how they live their lives together but in secret, all while contending with the shifting boundaries and priorities of the Austin-Sue marriage.

Until then, I’ll dwell in Possibility.

Stray observations:

• Maggie’s (Darlene Hunt) savvy retrieval of Emily’s poems is a little too convenient, but since Emily had to get them back somehow, might as well have it be Maggie’s slight of hand that does the trick. Plus, this all ties nicely to a line of Maggie’s from the first episode of the season.
• When, oh when, is this show going to give Anna Baryshnikov a real storyline rather than making her feel like a footnote? 
• The church burning on the same episode where we’re discussing the “fire within” is too on-the-nose. And it makes for one of the  more useless stories of the season. 
• Not enough Ayo Edebiri. 
• What’s the significance of Mr. Dickinson admitting he also has premonitions? 

What did you think of the season finale of Dickinson? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Dickinson is available to stream on Apple TV+. Both its first and second seasons are available now.

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