Preview

This series starts off a few weeks after the ending of the first season. It's mandatory to watch the first season or this review will spoil it.

As Emma is now living away from London with a new master, Dorothea; Jones and Eleonor start off their own romance, leading to a engagement. However, destiny won't let Emma and Jones far for too long. Will Emma and Jones resist the temptation and society discrimination or forget each other?

Pacing

With a similar pacing as of the first season, Victorian Romance Emma ~ second act ~ pours a little more twists, but nothing really new, and quickly falls into routine repetition from the same old romance. To add a little less value, viewers that like Eleonor or the new character Hans, a servant infatuated with Emma, will find themselves again rooting for lost causes.

While achieving an impressive European atmosphere with memorable historic depictions of the daily-life of the time, "Emma" 2 comes only as a drag compared to a settled plot from the first season, and while this time the closure might please a different audience, as well give a lot more closure to each character, this could very much have been done at the first season.

Conclusion

Aside from the fact the second season looks and feel as an unnecessary continuation for the first season, it still has a lot of value especially at the characters of Dorothea, Aurelia and even old characters that shine more and more. However, the melancholic feeling overshadows too much the romance, and the series is a lot more strong and heavy than it could be. The eventual romance lover might get disappointed on too much sadness and loneliness the characters feel in contrast to an expected love twist.

Beauty on it's own merits and even inside it's own failures, Emma ~ second act ~ is a must-see follow up from the first season, even for those who didn't like the original series that much. Watch with little expectations and you will probably enjoy this, perhaps even more than the first season.

The ending, however, is rushed and makes all the dragged series seam a lot more pointless, especially because it almost trashes most secondary characters while putting only Emma in the final spotlight. If you like the secondary characters more than Emma, you are on for a big disappointment, in a similar way the first season also left a big void on most character's futures.