The Sandman Season 2: Love, Loss, and the Price of Change

Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s landmark comic-book saga The Sandman has now concluded with the debut of its second and final season. Season 1 was generally well-received by critics and fans for nailing the surreal and psychedelic atmosphere of Gaiman’s source material, while weaving together an anthology structure that was true to the comics with a more grounded story that focused on the arc of the primary protagonist, Morpheus, aka the Dream King, aka the Lord of the Dreaming.

When Netflix announced in January that Season 2 would be the last, many believed that the early cancellation was due to ongoing sexual misconduct allegations against Gaiman, which he has denied. But on X, showrunner Allan Heinberg explained that from the start it was always just two seasons of The Sandman: “We just felt that we had the makings of two seasons,” he wrote, “We never got to do three because it just felt like that was all the time we had.” In retrospect, Heinberg is probably right: at the end of Season 2, it’s hard to imagine another nine episodes not extending past the story they wanted to tell, and what could’ve been adapted from the comic books.

Season 1 primarily adapted Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House, along with two bonus episodes of “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope” from Dream Country. Season 2 is more heavily focused on Seasons of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake, but also includes essential elements from Fables and Reflections (primarily “The Song of Orpheus” and portions of “Thermidor”) as well as the Pulitzer-winning “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from Dream Country. The one-off bonus episode of the season adapts the 1993 standalone spinoff, Death: The High Cost of Living. Curiously missing are both the events of A Game of Yo, as well as a large chunk of the series’ shorter stories. Neither absence hurts the larger arc of the Dream King, though, which is good, because neither seemed all that critical to his character, either.

Season 1 saw Dream achieve a hard-fought series of victories, breaking out of captivity, reclaiming his stolen talismans, taking on the rogue Etruscan (aka the Corinthian) (Boyd Holbrook) who had haunted him, and quelling the Vortex crisis ,which threatened to destroy his world. Season 2 opens with Dream (Tom Sturridge) hard at work on repairing the ravaged Dreaming, but soon receives an invitation from his sister Destiny (Adrian Lester) for a rare family meeting. Bringing together Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Desire (Mason Alexander Park), Despair (Donna Preston), and Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles), Morpheus soon finds himself at another crossroads.

Sent on a mission to rescue Nada (Umulisa Gahiga), the queen of the First People, and his former lover that he banished to Hell at the end of Season 1, Dream is soon at odds with Lucifer (Gwendolyn Christie) once again, who is still nursing a grudge after her Season 1 defeat at Dream’s hands. Instead of another head-to-head battle, Lucifer surprises the Dream King when she informs him that she has resigned and is vacating Hell, leaving the gate unlocked and with the key in his hand. She is not sad to see him go, Lucifer informs him, but rather is leaving the choice of its next ruler up to him, suggesting a wide range of potential applicants from Odin, Order, and Chaos, to the demon Azazel. Morpheus can either fight to take the reins of Hell for himself or select one of its new rulers as he sees fit.

Added to that is Delirium’s yearning to find their lost brother, Destruction (Barry Sloane), who abandoned his realm and has not been seen for nearly a millennium. Morpheus’ musings in seeking his end—spilling blood of his own family and waking the wrath of the Kindly Ones—wind their way towards his fate.

Highlights, Lowlights, and an Appropriate Goodbye

Season 2 is, like its predecessor, beautifully produced with a high caliber of acting and visual panache that bring to life all the splendor of Gaiman’s original artwork. The pacing has been a minor point of contention for some, with a tendency towards slow and lingering, but that pace was always deliberate and by design, not slothful.

The single lowlight is in the episode “Time and Night” where Dream turns to his parents, Time (Rufus Sewell) and Night (Tanya Moodie), for assistance. As a presentation of canon, it is not incorrect: the Endless are indeed their children, despite the seeming continuity error with Dream’s conception. But dialogue is clunky and wooden even for Sewell’s attempted salvaging, so much so that the exchanges almost feel more like a group therapy session than mythic conflict.

The one-off bonus episode serves as a sweet and simple coda for the series. As Death, every century, she is given one day where she can live as a human. The one downside is that, at the end of that one day, she always dies. “It just goes so fast,” she laments to a forlorn, hospitalized teen at the end. “You want to hang onto every second. And you’d give anything for just one more.” It’s an episode that nods to one of the more recent arcs from the comics, in which Death spends one day of life for every century of death, serving as a lovely eulogy for the series itself: not sad or dour, but with a persistent melancholy that undercuts just how beautiful the time is.

Season 2 of The Sandman ends as it began: as a triumphant vision of artistry, pathos, and fidelity. Too often,a daptations of such classic source material end up falling short, but The Sandman is one that is true to its heart and its medium, giving the reader something of an ending, but also allowing for more to come for those who will still journey into the Dreaming.