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Episode 307: The Future never spoke
This episode of Dickinson is called ‘The Future never spoke’ after a particularly evocative poem of Emily Dickinson’s:
The Future never spoke –
Nor will he like the Dumb
Reveal by sign – a Syllable
Of His Profound To Come –
But when the News be ripe
Presents it in the Act –
Forestalling Preparation –
Escape – or Substitute –
Indifferent to him –
The Dower – as the Doom –
His Office but to execute
Fate’s Telegram – to Him –
This poem is mostly interpreted to be a commentary on the nature of how the future is unknowable until the moment it becomes the present. As a theme, this is explicitly utilized in this episode in more ways than one, including the show’s biggest flex of its flexible reality yet. The show continues essentially with nearly every storyline we’ve seen so far in a fairly packed episode.
On the blink and you’ll miss it scene, Austin considers an option to avoid the draft by paying a substitute to go for the low price of $500 in 1862. In the real world, the substitution fee was entirely legal and Austin actually did pay it, but here it’s presented more shady, in the ‘first law of America’ is that ‘rich people can do whatever they want’. Lincoln actually paid the fee himself as a legal ‘point’. But what’s interesting about this little moment is how it links to other plotlines.
For one, Sue uses the draft notice as an idea for Emily to move in with her, but that seems like an inappropriate time to bring it up when her brother (estranged but still) might be sent off to die. In other ‘avoid the law’ moments, after Henry rakes theoretical white ally Colonel Higginson over the coals over his lack of forward movement, Colonel basically explicitly gives Henry and the freed slaves a way to intercept and get their own guns.
In the real world, Higginson actually illegally smuggled guns to famed failed radical abolitionist John Brown so the idea of this eliding the law actually does make sense. And it gives Henry a real moment of triumph into the future by changing the present for the better — and back home with his wife Betty, she struggles with her feelings of wanting him back while also feeling quite lonely.
Her new theoretical beau, the local mailman, is more broadly comedic, making a lot of cute mail carrier references while Sojourner Truth practically shouts out reworked versions of some of her famous quotes. And in the most ridiculous of the ‘future meets present’ intersecting with the breaking the rules motif, Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson simply have an extended marijuana trip of a sort, going through all of the clichés but ending in sort of a sweet way.
But of course, the most impactful and bizarre storyline is the mysterious trip to the actual future, where we see Emily and Vinnie magically find themselves in Amherst, 1955, nearly a hundred years into the future. They understandably do freak out a bit at the future shock bit, although it gets more surreal when they run into a young Sylvia Plath (a pitch-perfect Chloe Fineman).
Obviously there are a lot of parallels between the two of them in the ‘morbid young woman poet’ space, but the conversation between her and the Dickinsons goes through some very interesting places. Emily starts the episode by talking about being born in the wrong century, but by the episode’s end she understands (thanks to Vinnie’s advice) that she has everything she needs in the present.
I particularly liked how Vinnie was joyfully freaking out at the mention of Emily as a great American poet, although Sylvia makes things more depressing by quoting her poem ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’ and telling the two sisters that the future never comes for women. Yet there are also useful notes here, as Emily finally admits to Vinnie about her love of Sue — and Vinnie seems to accept it.
Although once she’s back in the past, Vinnie now tells her that Emily simply spaced out for a minute. But naturally with this show, both things are true, as Emily certainly had no way of knowing who Sylvia Plath is nor guessing about what a 1950’s airplane would look like. So once again, the magical realism serves as a method in the madness to help Emily realize that she needs to stop looking toward what might happen and acknowledge what she already has.
And the episodes ends with the reveal that Frazer Stearns died in the field and Emily considers that she may have superpowers after all. The credits roll with the dream pop song ‘Cuckoo’ by Still Corners as one of the most dreamlike episodes to date sinks in. It certainly was an affecting episode, getting weird in the best sort of ways, a fascinating break in reality that definitely worked for me.
Episode 308: My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun
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The latest episode of Dickinson is called ‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’ after one of Emily’s longer poems, one that’s often considered a long metaphor for rage:
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –
In Corners – till a Day
The Own
And carried Me away –
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods –
And now We hunt the Doe –
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply –
And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow –
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through –
And when at Night – Our good Day done –
I guard My Master’s Head –
’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
Deep Pillow – to have shared –
To foe of His – I’m deadly foe –
None stir the second time –
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye –
Or an emphatic Thumb –
Though I than He – may longer live
He longer must – than I –
For I have but the power to kill,
Without – the power to die –
Rage is something underlying everything this episode, one way or another, but it’s also about the season-long theme of hope — whether there is hope or whether everything is hopeless. Certainly the time of the Civil War must’ve seemed hopeless in many ways, but there are always connections to the modern era throughout the show in ways sometimes subtle and sometimes entirely not.
The episode starts with Emily trying to get Austin to come to Frazar’s funeral, but he refuses and derides Emily for no longer being as unconventional as she used to be. Instead it’s only Emily and Edward at the funeral, and the first real hit against Emily’s loyalty comes from her vision of Nobody or Frazar, who talks about how war is the ugliest truth that forces you to face yourself. This concept comes back later in the final scenes of the episode, but at this point he simply considers Edward’s speech to be pretty bad and retorts that Emily’s hope rings false. This is both a hit to Edward and hope, but Emily holds fast … at least for now.
There’s a mysterious moment where Sue submits an anonymous letter to the well-known Drum Beat newspaper, but this episode never reveals what that’s about so it’s something that remains to be seen. The beginning of the fall starts at a tragic irony, when Edward asks Emily to be the executor of his will and she play-acts at being his son as Austin cannot be the executor.
While we juxtapose this last will and testament, we cut to the same with Colonel Higginson, who is entirely alone — and more than that, alone as all of the black soldiers have disappeared. We find out later what happened, with their plans to ambush some Confederates before they get overwhelmed, but for now, the real ambush is in the room with Emily.
Right after Emily offers the great idea for Edward to leave money to a scholarship, they say out loud that ‘Nothing will ever divide us’ which is of course, the obvious note that means they will soon be divided. But it barely takes a few minutes, as then Edward reveals that he’s leaving everything else, including the house, to Austin, and after that, Austin’s newborn son — entirely ignoring any of the women in his family.
After his overtly sexist remarks, this is too much for Emily, who has already hurt herself in so many ways to try and protect the family. In a furious, crying, rage where Hailee Steinfeld reveals that the Emmys have missed giving her multiple awards, she calls her father a scared sheep with no imagination. This is juxtaposed seeing Henry load and handle his rifle, so they are both wielding their own sorts of weapons.
The next blow to hope is when Emily tries to reassure Betty, but the seamstress isn’t having it or any more Dickinson drama or dysfunction when she has far worse problems. Indeed, she tells Emily that hope is a lie, so the next mirrored action happens while Emily runs into the woods while Henry and the other soldiers run into literal battle.
In the most ‘mixed reality’ moment of the episode, Emily runs into Nobody/Frazar in front of a pit with a headstone that has the words ‘Lasciate Ogne Speranza’ which means ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter’ as a direct reference to Dante’s Inferno, which has had a few shout outs this season, including this episode at the funeral.
So Emily goes through her own personal Inferno, facing herself and her guilt and fear as they manifest before her. Vinnie burns her poems because she blames Emily for never finding a happy married life. Austin commits her to an asylum because his marriage could never be happy due to Emily’s love of Sue — except that he also claims that it’s really the love of poems about Sue, which is something Sue has also accused Emily of really caring about.
Then we see Mama Dickinson as a creepy baby demanding to be treated no longer as the provider and then Edward collapsing and clearly dying in his study. As Emily grieves over her father that again, she feels she directly caused to die, Sue appears in a male-coded outfit and hairstyle to pull Em away.
But despite a lovely dance, Sue instead gets annoyed and tells Em that there was never any hope for them — it almost seems a fatal blow to hope. Until the next scene, where we’re back where the season started, Emily in Union uniform as she watches a battle rage — and Death’s carriage is crashed into a tree with the ghostly horses running wild, to really drive the metaphor’s point home.
As she sees Henry fight to protect himself and his fellow soldiers, he is nearly killed — Emily shouts out that he can’t give up hope, and if it makes a difference or he saves himself — we can really never know. This action, seeing or trying to save a life worth saving while fighting against evil, that is a true source of hope. And thus we end with Emily seeing the bird again, the thing with feathers after all.
A very dense, engaging episode, with a few moments of real heartbreak and power, and some really great metaphorical reality as we’ve come to expect from this show. It’s almost a shame that it’s ending in only two episodes. Music drops of note are the cover of ‘Come Softly to Me’ by Glüme while Em and Sue danced, the epic ‘Discovery’ by Anna Von Hausswolff while Henry was triumphing, and the synthy (and apropos) ‘In Nightmares’ by PINS during the credits.
What did you think of these episodes? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
New episodes of Dickinson stream Friday on Apple TV+.
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