The Sandman Season 2: An Ending Only Gaiman Could Imagine

The Sandman, the Netflix show based on Neil Gaiman’s legendary graphic novel of the same name, has concluded with its second and final season. Season 2 has all the qualities that made Season 1 one of the best comic book shows of 2022: It re-creates the surrealist, often psychedelic feeling of Gaiman’s original work while grounding the overall series in Morpheus’ overarching arc. It’s a deft way to adapt comics that are often an anthology series by nature.

Netflix announced in January that The Sandman would conclude with Season 2, leading to speculation that the streaming service might be bowing out after reports of sexual misconduct allegations against Gaiman (he has denied the claims). Showrunner Allan Heinberg set the record straight on X (formerly Twitter), noting that The Sandman was “always intended to be two seasons.” Heinberg said his team believed the first season’s first half had enough material for two seasons; with the series done, it seems that estimate was pretty much on the mark.

Season 1 adapted Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House (plus bonus episodes based on the “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope” one-shots from the anthology collection Dream Country). Season 2’s main story is adapted from Seasons of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake, with key elements from Fables and Reflections (specifically “The Song of Orpheus” and large chunks of “Thermidor”) and the award-winning “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from Dream Country. The bonus episode, as before, adapts the 1993 one-shot spinoff Death: The High Cost of Living. The other omissions are the events of A Game of You and some standalone short stories; for a one-season adaptation of the overarching Dream King storyline, those elisions don’t feel too heavy.

Season 1 ended with Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) having won a war and achieved a shaky peace. He escaped imprisonment, regained his talismans, exacted retribution on the rogue Dream-eater Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), and defused a Vortex crisis. Season 2 begins with Dream reconstructing his realm from the ashes; it’s a thankless task, but one he can concentrate on until one of his siblings, the infallible Destiny (Adrian Lester), interrupts him with a rare request for a family summit. Destiny has convened Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Desire (Mason Alexander Park), Despair (Donna Preston), and Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles) to express his dissatisfaction.

Dream’s summit earns him another quest, this one to rescue Nada (Umulisa Gahiga), a queen of the First People and Dream’s former lover, from Hell, where he had sentenced her for abetting the first man in disobeying a dream he sent. The trip also pits him against Lucifer (Gwendolyn Christie) again; like all the deities in Gaiman’s stories, Lucifer never forgets a loss of face, and her Season 1 defeat at Dream’s hands still rankles. The twist is Lucifer didn’t want another fight; instead, she gave Dream the key to an empty Hell and told him to find a new manager from the many candidates she’s received over the millennia, including the Norse gods Odin, Order, and Chaos, the alien Elders, the British Royal Family, and the demon Azazel.

Despairing of finding Destruction, his long-lost brother who vanished from his domain centuries ago, Delirium sets Dream on a path that will end in the Dream King’s death, spilling his blood and incurring the wrath of the Kindly Ones.

Highlights, Lowlights, and Final Thoughts

Season 2’s production values remain top-notch, from the continued solid casting choices to the often-gorgeous visuals that translate some of the most iconic panels of Gaiman’s run into live-action images. And while some have aimed at the second season’s pacing as being “slow” for emphasis, the real target here is the anonymous Netflix viewer who prefers everything to be fast and furious; the slower pace is intentional and allows viewers to take in all the details.

Season 2 has a single real lull, and it’s in the episode “Time and Night.” Dream takes a jaunt to visit his parents Time (Rufus Sewell) and Night (Tanya Moodie) to seek their counsel; while canonically not an issue (after all, the Endless are Time and Night’s children, a point the episode makes abundantly clear), these sections read more like a group therapy session, with no dialogue sharper than the verbal diarrhea coming out of Morpheus’ mouth. Sewell, a fine actor in general and a great one in other projects, has to do some heavy lifting here and comes up a little short.

On the highlights side, standout moments include Lucifer offering to have Dream cut off her wings; the goddess Ishtar (Amber Rose Revah) discarding all her trappings to dance as a goddess for one last time; Dream taking William Shakespeare aside to explain to the Bard why he can’t let him write The Tempest; and the reformed Corinthian realizing he’s fallen in love with Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman). Other vivid sequences include the mournful dirge Orpheus sings to the Underworld to rescue Eurydice, Dream killing his son and having to explain his mercy killing to the Furies, and the gods Odin and Thor visiting Dream and his siblings as they grieve Morpheus. Hell, after Lucifer’s retirement, has a breathtaking inventory of ousted rulers and bogglingly advanced torture chambers. And while Delirium’s arc in both seasons is more interesting as a thought exercise, it’s hard to watch a live-action version of Eternity’s most unstable sibling and not be affected.

Dream’s departure is a stunner, at least in how it’s portrayed. He dies holding Death’s hand one last time, and the new Dream is Daniel Hall (Jacob Anderson), the first human ever born and raised in the Dreaming. Daniel is naturally disoriented at first, but is prepared for a future of ruling by his new Endless siblings as they grieve Morpheus and usher in the new Dream.