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The Language of the Night: of dreaming and Sandman [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-09-01

After the (justified) implosion of Neil Gaiman’s career and cancellation of his many projects, Netflix decided to continue filming The Sandman and conclude the story, mashing multiple seasons into one final 11-episode series. For all that I, for one, anticipated season one of Sandman, the film adaptation of Gaiman’s giant multi-volume epic (and I anticipated by circling the date on the calendar and fangirling through the countdown, this time I paid no attention.

The difference one awful scandal (justifiably) makes! The creators of season 2 insist they were always going to end with the second season, but I don’t believe it at all, for reasons I’ll get to. But I’m being self-absorbed for the moment.

It was easy to miss the season premiere: there was almost no social media. I saw a couple of promo clips on Netflix while watching other things (and allow me to recommend Spike Lee’s Katrina: Come Hell or High Water as both riveting television and a reminder of how memory softens everything, including the horrors that New Orleans suffered and the magnitude of official mismanagement — GWB was a worse President than we tend to remember). Anyway, somewhere along the line, The Sandman Season 2 popped up and, when we were down to repeat movies and WWII historical videos, we flipped it on.

And, oh!, I wish The Sandman were less masterful, less artful, less emotional! Right now I hate that I really love that book. In many ways, the second season of the series is better. If you’re like me, you’ll watch season 2 with great appreciation of the art and love that was expended in the making, the reshaping, of the source material.

By comparison, season 1 is leisurely and faithful to the text, even presenting an animated “The Dream of a Thousand Cats.” The source text traces, through its many characters and eons of time, Morpheus’ pride and inflexibility, as well as his difficulty dealing with a changed world, his resistance to the changes his experience have wrought in him, and his inability to accept them. In fact, at his wake, when Matthew asks, “Why did it happen? Why did he let it happen?” Lucien, Dream’s librarian, answers, “Let it, Matthew? I think he did a little more than let it happen. Charitably, I think….sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.” (The Absolute Sandman, Volume IV, p. 390)

If that’s true of Gaiman’s Sandman, the reverse happens in the Netflix version, helmed by showrunner Allan Heinberg. From the first moments of the first episode, “Season of Mists,” the story moves with a singular urgency. Characters from the graphic novels are cut and combined, entire subplots are gone, the remaining plotlines are tightened and rejiggered, and Gaiman’s discursive, allusive, meandering tragedy is trimmed down to the size, scope, and inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Instead of the universe acting on Morpheus, the Dream king, recognizing his past injustices, sets out to make them right and, in the doing so, learns for himself the lessons of fatherhood, the responsibilities owed by and the gratitude owed to, each generation.

Two major characters reject their roles and walk away from their responsibilities: Destruction, who knows that each civilization will commit his function without his help, and Lucifer who, although planning to destroy Morpheus, realizes that it’s just not worth the effort and it’s time to sit on a beach and trust that someone will take over hell. Someone does.

Even though he has their examples to draw from, Morpheus knows he doesn’t have the luxury of walking away and trusting that everything will take care of itself; he knows what happened to the Dreaming during his exile trapped in Roderick Burgess’ glass sphere. No, someone will have to take over and, although he doesn’t intend it to happen quite so quickly, because of Loki, Daniel now exists only in the Dreaming, and will be the next Dream king.

Instead of being acted upon, this Morpheus chooses to act, and in acting, he does so out of love. This is not Gaiman’s Morpheus; this is Netflix’s creation.

In all, season two is a lovely metamorphosis of the series, a paring down to essentials what makes the graphic epic great, and a refocus away from Dream being trapped by his weaknesses to Dream claiming agency and acting out of love for his son, despite the fact that he knows that his decisions will end in his death. I did not want to like it, but I really did like it.

There are nits, of course. Tom Sturridge as Morpheus is mopey, but his dourness is a great foil for the other characters. Jack Gleeson, who was Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones is pure delight as Puck. Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death is a warm hug and, well, there are very few off-notes in the cast. And Morpheus’ mopery slowly gives way to empathy and grief in a subtle and sustained transformation. A few of the crosscut action scenes, especially toward the end, are … oddly chosen, but they’re few. The secondary cast is damn near perfect, and the photography is lavish, opulent, disturbing, gorgeous, and spot-on. If you remember the graphic novel you’ll recognize a number of essential scenes that are lifted directly from the book.

The folks at Netflix insist that they always meant for the show to run only two seasons. Yeah, right. That’s why season one is leisurely and the tone of season two is entirely different. Better.

I just wish this book wasn’t great. And I wish that the abuse some of the characters suffer didn’t rhyme so closely and unsettlingly with the accusations against Gaiman. If we can divorce the art from the creator, though, and keep in mind that the source material has been restructured and reshaped without Gaiman’s involvement, I think we could perhaps let it stand on its own.

I’m not saying that we should ignore the accusations against Gaiman, but I hope that maybe we can give the series a chance on its own terms. If you can do that, you’ll find it different from, and better than, your expectations.

The Sandman Season 2 is currently, and gorgeously, on Netflix.

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