The Gilded Age Season 2 opens on a montage of elaborate Easter bonnets, each handcrafted and decorated to decadent degree, being taken out of fabulous hat boxes by maids who then crown them on their wealthy mistresses. It’s a promise made to fans of the HBO series that The Gilded Age Season 2 knows what it’s good at and that’s obscene luxury and petty drama. Throughout The Gilded Age Season 2’s eight episode run, creator and showrunner Julian Fellowes crafts a soap opera full of tawdry twists, campy moments, historic name-dropping, and sumptuous romance. The Gilded Age might not have the depth of other HBO Sunday night dramas, but it’s a series that fully owns the fact that its style is its substance, making The Gilded Age Season 2 welcome escapist fare.
The Gilded Age is Downton Abbey creator and Gosford Park screenwriter Julian Fellowes’s ode to the most opulent era in American history, the titular Gilded Age. Between 1877 and 1900, the American economy was ruled by titans of industry and robber barons, who built their empires on the backs of underpaid labor, technological innovations, and speculating on the stock market. While we remember them now through the various institutions they erected for the “public good,” be it Carnegie Hall or Rockefeller Center, what’s been lost is the petty, juicy human drama that occupied their families’ personal lives. HBO’s The Gilded Age mines that drama with glee.
Set in 1883, The Gilded Age Season 2 focuses on the “Opera Wars,” that pitted the old money elite against the ambitions of the “new money” in New York City. The ever-ambitious Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) — a character obviously based on Alva Vanderbilt — might have fought her way into society’s upper echelons, but she can’t seem to get a box at the Academy of Music opera house. Mrs. Russell decides to put her influence behind a new rival theater, the Metropolitan Opera, setting off a season of scheming that crescendoes with the opening of the original Met. Meanwhile, Bertha’s husband George Russell (Morgan Spector) finds himself in a far more serious war as labor unions threaten to get in the way of his business. The timely storyline only illuminates the similarities between our present day and the Gilded Age.
Across the street from the Russells, the van Rhijn/Brook household finds itself collectively more focused on romance. After being jilted by her first love, Mr. Raikes (Thomas Cocquerel), Marion Brook (Louisa Jacobson) throws herself into teaching watercolors to proper young girls at a private school. It’s a hobby that ironically puts her in the path of her aunts’ dashing widower nephew Dashiell Montgomery (David Furr), whose daughter Frances (Matilda Lawler) is one of Marion’s keenest students. Marion’s closeted cousin Oscar (Blake Ritson) continues in his quest to find a suitable (wealthy) bride, while a surprising suitor enters sweet spinster Aunt Ada’s (Cynthia Nixon) life: a kindly reverend played by Robert Sean Leonard.
The Gilded Age Season 2 casts its narrative net even wider than it did in the first season, following Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) and T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones) on a press trip to Tuskegee, Alabama, where they meet Booker T. Washington (Michael Braugher) and encounter the horrific racism of the Reconstruction era South. There’s a subplot about the secret architect of the Brooklyn Bridge, the arrival of an English Duke, and even a close up look at life for the impoverished factory workers of this era. And, of course, because this is a Julian Fellowes show, the return of sentimental storylines about the staff who work for our rich protagonists.
By and large, The Gilded Age understands what viewers liked about Season 1. The sets are still staggering to behold. The costumes are still over-the-top couture. The ever-growing, still huge ensemble cast is still a who’s who of New York’s most beloved Broadway talent. Aunt Agnes (Christine Baranski) once again steals every scene she’s in with a mixture of regal baring and no-nonsense quips. George and Bertha Russell’s chemistry is still nuclear. Marion Brook remains a very pretty person who has no idea how lucky she is to have a wealthy aunt bankroll her baffling life choices.
The best part of The Gilded Age Season 2, though, is a plot development that is so incredibly juicy that I’m not allowed to spoil it, nor would I want to. It honestly might be Julian Fellowes’s most incredible decision as a TV writer since Theo James’s Mr. Pamuk died in Lady Mary’s bed on Downton Abbey Season 1. Just…wait for it. It’s a reveal that shakes up the show and opens the door for drama, intrigue, and some incredibly campy lines of dialogue.
The Gilded Age Season 2 is a fine, fizzy treat. Julian Fellowes has once again crafted a perfectly elevated soap opera for the masses. Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector continue to put on a masterclass in chemistry, Cynthia Nixon gets to plumb new emotional depths for Ada, and Denée Benton gets to shine as Peggy Scott. The Gilded Age would be worth tuning in to for the gobsmacking set design and costumes alone, but in Season 2, Fellowes has found cunning ways to keep his characters on their toes and the audience second-guessing what might happen next…
The Gilded Age Season 2 premieres on HBO and Max on Sunday, October 29.