How The Sandman Ends with Both Heartbreak and Hope

Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s cult-classic, bone-chilling, funny, and often extremely strange graphic novel series of the same name wrapped its second and final season this past Sunday. If you loved the first, which hits all the right notes from the source material without deviating too far from its moody, fever-dream tone, you’re in for a treat. Season 2 of The Sandman handles the source material with the same deft hand as Season 1. Like the comics, the TV show evokes both an anthology series and a more grounded story. The writers, showrunners, and producers managed to stick closely enough to the grim arc of the overall story of Morpheus, the inscrutable Lord of Dreams, without divorcing themselves from the spirit of the more episodic stories contained within that story arc.

Netflix announced in January that The Sandman was getting a second season and that it would be the show’s last. Some fans speculated that this abrupt decision had something to do with allegations of sexual misconduct made by Gaiman. (Gaiman has since denied the allegations, which have not been independently verified.) Allan Heinberg, showrunner for the series, explained the decision on X. “There was always a plan for it to be a two-season show,” Heinberg wrote. “We felt we had the right amount of material for that and not more. This was part of the pitch from the start.” Heinberg’s comments corroborate Gaiman’s, and it does seem a reasonable hunch that the creative team was just about out of sand when the series was renewed. Season 1 covered Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House, plus two bonus episodes adapted from the story “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and a brief one-off “Calliope” in the Sandman graphic novel collection Dream Country. Season 2 covers a lot more ground, mainly Seasons of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake, but featuring key story elements from Fables and Reflections, especially the story “The Song of Orpheus” and some of “Thermidor,” and the Nebula Award-winning “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from Dream Country. The second bonus episode is an adaptation of the 1993 one-off spinoff, Death: The High Cost of Living. Events of A Game of You and various short stories are absent, but these did not include any essential to the main arc of the story of the Dream King.

Season 1 of The Sandman ended with Morpheus victorious: he escaped his prison, recovered his talismans, dealt with the rogue dream demon Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), and resolved the Vortex crisis. Season 2 of The Sandman begins with Morpheus picking up the pieces of his shattered Dreaming and resuming the task of building a new one, interrupted only by an exceedingly rare summons from his brother Destiny (Adrian Lester), who has brought together Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Desire (Mason Alexander Park), Despair (Donna Preston), and Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles) for a family powwow at the end of the universe.

The family powwow sends Morpheus on a mission to rescue his ex-lover Nada (Umulisa Gahiga), queen of the First People, whom he sentenced to Hell centuries ago, which in turn drags him into another contretemps with Lucifer (Gwendolyn Christie), who has not forgotten or forgiven her defeat in the first season. Instead of another battle royale, Lucifer surprises Morpheus with her resignation and hands him the key to the now-empty Hell, tasking him with finding her replacement out of a host of colorful candidates, including Odin, Order, Chaos, and the foul-mouthed demon Azazel.

Delirium’s grief at the loss of her brother Destruction (Barry Sloane), who decamped from his realm thousands of years ago and never returned, sets Morpheus on a course toward his destiny: spilling family blood and incurring the fury of the Kindly Ones.

Best and Worst Parts, and Finale

Production values are high through Season 2, from the show’s stellar cast to its evocative, dream-like sets and locations that bring the graphic novel to life. Season 2 of The Sandman has some of the same criticisms as Season 1: its pacing is sometimes a little languid, which can make some parts feel slow. But that is a criticism only in the most nitpicky way. For the most part, this pacing is intentional, and it works.

The episode where Morpheus asks his parents, Time (Rufus Sewell) and Night (Tanya Moodie), for help in Season 2 is the weakest point of the season, although I imagine it will also be its most divisive part. These scenes, canonically speaking, are not mistakes: the Endless are their children. But these scenes feature dialogue that seems to be cribbed from a philosophy 101 textbook and come across not as the incantatory magical realism that other conversations in the series possess, but more like a big-budget couples therapy session. Sewell does as well as can be expected, but even he cannot make the scene pop.

Memorable highlights: Lucifer asking Dream to lop off her wings; the goddess Ishtar (Amber Rose Revah) baring all to dance one last time in her divine form; Dream explaining to William Shakespeare (Simon Callow) that he has to write The Tempest; the reformed Corinthian falling in love with Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman). There are also the tragically beautiful song of Orpheus as he tries to lead Eurydice from the Underworld; Dream killing his son by drowning so he would not have to live an eternity of misery in the Dreaming; the furious Furies decimating Fiddler’s Green (Stephen Fry), Mervyn Pumpkinhead (Mark Hamill), and Abel (Asim Chaudhry).