Dickinson: The Lesbian Period Drama That Finally Gave Emily Her Girlfriend
Okay, let’s be real: before Hailee Steinfeld slipped into those white dresses and started making out with Sue Gilbert on screen, most of us only knew Emily Dickinson as “that weird recluse poet who wrote about death and baked a lot.” The Apple TV+ series Dickinson (2019–2021) came in like a queer wrecking ball and said, “Nah, she was a passionate, horny, brilliant lesbian (or at the very least, very very bi) who was madly in love with her sister-in-law.” And honestly? We stan.
If you somehow slept on this show, here’s the tea: Dickinson is a three-season fever dream that mixes 19th-century Massachusetts with modern music, anachronistic slang (“lit,” “fam,” death riding in on a Molly beat), and some of the steamiest lesbian scenes ever put on television. It’s like if Sofia Coppola directed a sapphic TikTok edit of Little Women.
At the heart of everything is Emily and Sue.
From literally the first episode, the show makes it crystal clear: these two aren’t just “close childhood friends.” They’re sneaking into bedrooms at night, writing each other erotic letters, slow-dancing while Death (played by Wiz Khalifa, yes really) DJs in the background. The tension is insane. The chemistry? Nuclear. When they finally kiss in season 1, episode 4 (“Alone, I cannot be”), the internet collectively lost its mind. Rightfully so.
What makes the lesbian representation so good isn’t just the sex scenes (though they are tasteful, gorgeous, and very gay). It’s how the show refuses to water down Emily’s desire. In real life, Emily Dickinson wrote hundreds of poems and letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson that scholars still argue over. Were they romantic? Platonic? The show looks at the evidence and says: girl, please. She was in love. She called Sue “my lovely Salem” and “sweetest name.” She wrote “Sue, forevermore!” on scraps of paper. The series takes that historical ambiguity and runs with it in the gayest direction possible, and I am here for every second.
Ella Hunt as Sue Gilbert is devastatingly hot in that repressed-Victorian-way that makes you want to time-travel just to comfort her. Hailee Steinfeld’s Emily is chaotic, witty, horny on main, and completely unapologetic about wanting Sue even when society says it’s “improper.” Their relationship goes through breakups, secret affairs, a whole damn marriage (Sue marries Emily’s brother Austin, which… complicated), jealousy, and some of the most heartbreaking love declarations you’ll ever hear. Season 2’s “Forbidden” and Season 3’s “This is my letter to the World” episodes will leave you crying into your lavender latte.
And it’s not just Emily/Sue. The show sprinkles queer energy everywhere. Emily has a flirtation with a seamstress, there’s a non-binary soldier in the Civil War episodes, and even the way the female characters talk about art and ambition feels deeply sapphic. It’s a world where women loving women isn’t a footnote; it’s the main damn plot.
Look, we’ve had queer period dramas before (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Handmaiden, Gentleman Jack), but Dickinson does something different: it’s funny, it’s weird, it’s Gen-Z as hell, and it never makes the lesbian relationship tragic just for the sake of tragedy. Yes, there’s pain (it’s still the 1800s), but there’s also joy, lust, inside jokes, and two women who keep choosing each other no matter what.
Three seasons wasn’t enough. I need a season 4 where Emily and Sue run away to Paris or something. Until then, I’ll be rewatching the carriage scene with Death, the opium dream sequence, and every single moment these two touch each other like the world is ending.
If you’re a lesbian who loves poetry, historical fiction, or just really good slow-burn enemies-to-lovers-to-exes-to-lovers-again energy, Dickinson is mandatory viewing. It turned one of America’s most misunderstood poets into a full-blown lesbian icon, and for that alone it deserves every award it never got.
Go stream it. Thank me later.
(And yes, I will be thinking about Sue in that red dress until the day I die.)
What was your favorite Emily/Sue moment? Drop it in the comments, I need to cry with someone.
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