Is there an ideal perfect soulmate? That’s the question Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton was left with after working on AMC’s first-ever episodic anthology series.

Created by Brett Goldstein (SuperBob) and William Bridges (Stranger Things), Soulmates is set 15 years in the future when scientists have developed a test that connects people to their soul mate. “The beauty of it being an anthology show meant that we could tell an entirely different relationship story every week from many different angles and even genres,” says Bridges.

One of those angles is loss, which is addressed in the episode “Break On Through”: Heaton plays Kurt, a good-hearted man who takes the test only to discover that his soul mate has died. Heartbroken, Kurt joins a religious cult to cope, and the spiritually cleansing bath he takes as part of his initiation is depicted in the exclusive first look image above. “There’s a lot of pain in this character,” Heaton says. “He’s grieving, and he’s questioning whether he deserves love because this love has been taken away. And is that for a reason? Can you live without the person you’re supposed to be with?”

Queries like that made the show especially interesting for the 26-year-old actor. “That concept is quite universal, looking for love,” he says. “A lot of the things that we do in life are to find connection.”

Check out two more exclusive images from Soulmates below. The first is from an episode featuring Succession's Sarah Snook and The OA's Kingsley Ben-Adir, and the second shows Laia Costa (The Red Band Society).

Image zoom Sarah Snook as Nikki, Kingsley Ben-Adir as Franklin Jorge Alvarino/AMC

Image zoom Laia Costa as Libby Jorge Alvarino/AMC

Soulmates will premiere Summer 2020 on AMC.