The Sandman Season 2: Every Scene a Painting, Every Word a Farewell

Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s epic comic book series The Sandman has finally arrived on Netflix this month in the form of its second and final season. For those who enjoyed Season 1’s successful adaptation of The Sandman’s surrealist sensibilities, the series’ second and final season is a highly satisfying sendoff. Season 2 doubles down on the first season’s anthology format, with various one- and two-episode story arcs interspersed within a more grounded approach that still grounds the story in Dream’s narrative arc.

Netflix confirmed that The Sandman would only receive two seasons back in January. The decision quickly gave rise to some fan theories that the show’s cancellation might have to do with the sexual misconduct allegations brought against Neil Gaiman (who has since denied the claims). On X, showrunner Allan Heinberg assured fans that The Sandman was not canceled because of Gaiman’s rumored misconduct, stating that “from the get-go,” the creative team planned to adapt The Sandman in two seasons, having decided that they had enough material to fill two seasons without stretching themselves thin. On reflection, Heinberg’s words of judgment seem prescient.

Season 1 adapted Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House, with the first two bonus episodes adapting “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope,” two short stories from the graphic novel Dream Country. Season 2’s primary sources include Seasons of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake, as well as certain elements of Fables and Reflections, most notably “The Song of Orpheus” and parts of “Thermidor,” and the 2021 Eisner Award-winning “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from Dream Country. The bonus episode adapts the 1993 standalone Sandman spinoff, Death: The High Cost of Living. Notably missing from the series are A Game of You and certain other short stories, which, unlike the others, do not stray far from Dream’s main arc as the Dream King, and so their absence will likely be little to no cause for alarm.

Season 1 ended with Morpheus having won several battles after escaping imprisonment by Nada and her family, the Celestial, recovering his talismans, the Helmet of Brilliance, the Ruby, and the Cloak of Dreams, killing the rogue Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) and quelling the brief Vortex crisis, with Lucifer (Gwendolyn Christie) dealing with Order and her maker Rot in Hell. As a result of his many triumphs and the heavy tolls that they took, Season 2 opens with Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) in the process of painstakingly rebuilding the Dreaming when he receives an exceptionally rare summoning from his Endless sibling Destiny (Adrian Lester). Destiny’s request to see her and Morpheus’s other Endless siblings—Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Desire (Mason Alexander Park), Despair (Donna Preston), and Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles)—gathers together the Dream King and his family for a tense family summit.

The confrontation gives rise to Destiny’s revelation that their brother, Destruction (Barry Sloane), is missing and Morpheus’s plans to retrieve Nada (Umulisa Gahiga), queen of the First People and his long-abandoned lover, from whom he trapped her in Hell. This leads the Dream King to another reckoning with Lucifer, who is still holding a grudge over her Season 1 defeat. Rather than storming into battle, however, Lucifer shocks Morpheus by surrendering and handing the former Dream King the key to an empty Hell, as she is seemingly done with her job and is allowing him to choose a new and worthy Hell Director from a list of candidates that includes Odin, Order, Chaos, and the demon Azazel.

The extended family of the Endless

The spare presence of Delirium amid the family crisis signals her burgeoning feelings for their long-missing brother, Destruction, who decades before had abandoned his portion of the multiverse. This dark and lonely path will ultimately lead Morpheus to his downfall, earning the wrath of the Kindly Ones for spilling the blood of his family.

Highlights, Missteps, and Bittersweet Goodbyes

The Sandman continues to impress with its attention to detail, top-tier casting, and staggering visual fidelity to the visuals of the graphic novels. Season 2 may be accused of moving a bit too slowly at times by some, but if that’s the case, then it was a case of “proceed no further” as that pacing is quite clearly a deliberate choice that this viewer savored.

Season 2’s low point is “Time and Night,” an episode in which Morpheus visits his parents, Time (Rufus Sewell) and Night (Tanya Moodie), to get their blessing on the journey ahead. While it is fun seeing Time and Night, and canonically speaking these sequences should be on-brand as, after all, the Endless are the literal children of Time and Night, these scenes are undercut by some stilted and awkward dialogue that even Sewell’s charisma cannot overcome to the point that these feel more like a therapy session than a conversation between mythic gods.

Season 2’s memorable moments run the gamut from Lucifer asking Dream to cut off her wings; the goddess Ishtar (Amber Rose Revah) finally casting aside all pretense to dance the truth and let her power run through her in one last dance as the divine female and not a mere approximation of her former glory; Dream explaining to William Shakespeare why he needs to write The Tempest for him in “Circe”; and the reformed Corinthian unexpectedly developing feelings for Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman). These moments are buttressed by some other standout sequences from earlier in the season such as Orpheus singing a mournful dirge in the Underworld to his late bride Eurydice, Dream putting his son out of his misery, and the vengeful Furies rampaging through and destroying Fiddler’s Green (Stephen Fry), Mervyn Pumpkinhead (Mark Hamill), and Abel (Asim Chaudhry) in their house of dreams.