A Smaller, More Streamlined The Sandman Season 2 Centers Dream’s Journey

For a very long time, most people assumed that DC Comics’ The Sandman was unadaptable. Its story was too weird, too expansive, too complicated. It had too many characters, was comprised of too many competing genres, and had a dense, non-linear narrative structure that was too hard for casual observers to follow. That Netflix even attempted to turn it into a television series was something of a minor miracle. That The Sandman’s first season turned out to be so generally excellent—and so true to the spirit, if not the precise letter of its source material—is a major one. Perhaps we should have known then it was probably too good to be true. 

The Sandman’s second and final season arrives under a dark cloud, in the wake of a series of horrific sexual abuse allegations against the man who is both its original comics creator and former showrunner, as well as the news that the series’ sophomore outing would be its last. Split into three chunks and released over a month, these final volumes attempt to wrap up the story of Dream of the Endless in a satisfying way, even as it breezes past some of the more unique bits that make this fictional universe feel so rich and expansive. But if The Sandman itself has taught us anything, it’s that stories themselves are living, breathing things, capable of endless reinvention. 

Whereas the first season of the series was an adaptation of the first two volumes of the comics, The Sandman Season 2 does a fairly hard swerve, picking its way through bits and pieces of various later volumes and using Dream’s journey as a narrative throughline for the story it’s trying to tell. While Season 2  will likely feel truncated if you know how many volumes and tales its story is skipping over or speeding past, this does work better than many of us (read: me) likely expected. There’s certainly a debate to be had about Netflix’s decision to end the series after just two seasons, particularly when so many were probably hoping for a big,  multi-season adaptation of pretty much every Sandman story in existence. But this move was apparently decided some time ago, long before the dreadful allegations against its former showrunner surfaced, and given how clearly expensive the show is to make, it makes sense. In some ways, it seems remarkable that this conclusion even exists, given everything, let alone that it is as satisfying to watch as it is. 

The Sandman Season 2 skips around within the comics canon in a way its first installment did not, jumping from major events in “Season of Mists” to “Brief Lives,” while weaving in several of the smaller tales from “Fables and Reflections,” including “Thermidor,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “The Song of Orpheus”. But, to its credit, the show manages to shape these disparate pieces into a fairly straightforward, linear story, one that’s probably a bit easier for viewers to follow than parts of its first season might have been. It also still hews remarkably close to its source material when it comes to Dream’s arc, even if many of the sidequests, detours, and straight-up narrative oddities that make the comics run so special don’t make it to the screen here. 

The story initially follows Dream of the Endless (Tom Sturridge) as he returns to Hell on a quest to find his lost love Nada (Umulisa Gahiga), the Queen of the First People, whom he imprisoned there in a fit of anger after she rejected his affection. (She appeared briefly back in Season 1, though she was played by Deborah Oyelade.) Determined to write a centuries-old wrong, he prepares himself for an extended battle and potentially his own destruction, but what he finds in Lucifer’s (Gwendolyn Christie) kingdom is something much more unexpected. This journey ultimately brings him face to face with many famous figures from the various realms of mythology and legend, including Norse gods Odin (Clive Russell), Thor (Laurence O’Fuarain), and Loki (Freddie Fox), a Chaos princess known as Shivering Jemmy (Lyla Quinn), a manifestation of Order called Lord Kilderkin who communicates via printed messages delivered in a cardboard box, and a delegation from the realm of Faerie led by siblings Cluracan (Douglas Booth) and Nuala (Ann Skelly).