‘Dickinson’ Uses the Civil War to Explore Modern Divisions

The creator Alena Smith had planned to set the final season during the conflict. “What we did not know was that there would be a pandemic, and that it would have echoes of the Civil War,” she said.

“Dickinson,” the trippy, playful and deeply passionate Apple TV+ series about the poet Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld), has always been about far more than Dickinson herself. Women and creativity, sexuality, fame, privilege, race, art as a bulwark against despair — the show touches on all of those.

“From the beginning, it’s been about using events from the 19th century to hold an unexpected mirror up to where we are today,” Alena Smith, the creator and showrunner, said recently.

The third and final season, which began last week and will conclude on Dec. 24, begins in the lead-up to the Civil War. This period was an extraordinarily productive time for the poet, though she remained, as always, at home in Amherst, Mass. It also marked the beginning of her correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an abolitionist writer and activist, whose position as colonel of the first authorized Union Army regiment of former slaves gave Smith a historical underpinning for a modern discussion about race relations.