The Sandman Season 2: When Dreams Must End

Netflix’s superhero-inflected adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s legendary graphic novel series The Sandman has come to an end. Season 2 of The Sandman dropped a few days ago, and fans of Season 1 will be pleased to find it a worthy conclusion to this adaptation of Gaiman’s seminal work. It keeps the excellence and surreal, oneiric quality of the original comics found in the first season.

The series once again juggles the episodic tone of the original comics series while following a grounded, character-driven narrative focusing on Morpheus and his journey in the second season. In January, Netflix announced that Season 2 of The Sandman would be the last. Rumors have surfaced that the move might be connected to sexual assault allegations that Gaiman has previously denied. Showrunner Allan Heinberg, however, took to X to share that the two-season approach had been the plan all along. “It was always intended to be a two-season story. We always felt we had just enough to do that and only that,” Heinberg said. The Netflix adaptation kept this in mind while adapting The Sandman’s expansive lore. Heinberg’s statements seem accurate in retrospect, given the show’s distribution.

Season 1 of The Sandman adapted Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House as its story arcs, with extra episodes following two one-shots from Dream Country: “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope.” Season 2 of The Sandman mainly adapts Seasons of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake with important elements from Fables and Reflections, including “The Song of Orpheus” and a part of “Thermidor.” Also included in the final season was the 1993 standalone spinoff, The Sandman: Death: The High Cost of Living one-shot. The graphic novel’s bonus episode, “Season of Mists,” was adapted from Neil Gaiman’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” one-shot from the Dream Country trade paperback. Overall, Season 2 of The Sandman loses a few select short stories and the events of A Game of You, which fans of the comics will note and remember, but which is for the better, as it does not necessarily deal with the primary arc of the Dream King.

Season 1 of The Sandman left off with Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) having bested a variety of villains. He escaped captivity, retrieved his magical artifacts or talismans, bested the out-of-control living vampire Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), and averted the potential cosmic disaster of the coming of the Vortex, a being of pure energy similar to Eternity from the comics. In the second season, the Dream King is in the process of repairing the Dreaming and restoring his kingdom after the events of the first season. He is disturbed from his work by a rare missive from his younger sister, the stoic goddess of fate and destiny, Destiny (Adrian Lester). The message brings the Endless together for a family summit that quickly grows fraught.

In response to Destiny’s summons, Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) brings along Desire (Mason Alexander Park), Despair (Donna Preston), and Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles). The group is also joined by the titular Dream King himself (Tom Sturridge). The family meeting soon forces Morpheus to launch another quest. The one they put upon him is to save his former lover, Nada (Umulisa Gahiga), queen of the First People. He sentenced her to Hell during the events of Season 1, and they’re as strongly bonded in the Dream as real humans. This also means that he must face Lucifer (Gwendolyn Christie) again for the second time in the Netflix series. Lucifer blames Dream for the loss of her throne and her services to Hell in the previous season. However, she doesn’t immediately rekindle the feud but instead surrenders her position to Dream in Season 2, which stuns him. She hands Dream the key to an empty Hell and leaves the new ruler of it to decide which contender is best for the job. The candidates are many and include Odin, Order, Chaos, and the demon Azazel.

Delirium and her missing brother, Destruction (Barry Sloane), leave the Dream King with no choice. Destruction walked away from his world centuries ago and, consequently, led the eldest sister on the path to her next step. Destinies intertwine as their paths are forced on the Dream King, and Dream must confront the fact that his actions in the first season and throughout his life have earned the family the ire of the Kindly Ones, which sets him up for his final act of his current life.

Standout Moments, Problems, and a Fond Farewell

The second season of The Sandman is a return to form for the series. The visual effects, casting, set design, and art direction all take a bit more time to settle in and find their footing than the first season did, but are otherwise on par with what the viewers saw in Season 1. The way the series depicts the narrative worlds of the graphic novels is reminiscent of the imaginative imagery that Gaiman created in the comic. The pacing of the series has been one of its more contentious aspects, with many viewers feeling that it was a bit slow. This is a deliberate choice by the creative team and one that the majority of the audience should have no problem with.

The low point of the series comes in the form of “Time and Night,” where Morpheus enlists the help of his often-absent parents, Time (Rufus Sewell) and Night (Tanya Moodie). These scenes are as canonically correct as it gets; The Endless are the children of the two. But the writing here is the worst offender by far, with dialogue that even Rufus Sewell (at his best as a character actor) can only do so much to redeem.