Season 1 - 11 episodes (2022)
Season 2 - 12 episodes (2025)
Watch The Sandman on Netflix
Created by: Neil Gaiman, David S. Goyer, Allan Heinberg
Based on: The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg
Starring: Tom Sturridge, Boyd Holbrook, Vivienne Acheampong, Patton Oswalt, Jenna Coleman, David Thewlis, Gwendoline Christie, Stephen Fry, Kirby Howell-Baptiste
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the Season 1 trailer
Watch the Season 2 trailer
Plot
Upon escaping after decades of imprisonment by a mortal wizard, Dream, the personification of dreams, sets about to reclaim his lost equipment.
Verdict
Inventive and creative, it's a mythological tale about dreams, desires, death, and more. The concept alone carries this very far, giving agency to Dream who must escape imprisonment, regain his tools, and restore the barrier between the waking and dream worlds. It remains creative from start to finish and this gives voice and body to abstract concepts while introducing many unique characters. It's easy to get lost in this world that seems so much bigger than what we see on screen. Humans are pushed and pulled by endless creatures, personifications. While the concept intrigues, the story also delivers. The first season is great, the second season suffers from trying to fit several more issues into the same number of episodes, making it feel disjointed and aimless. The first season is worth watching. I felt pulled into the second season, but it's not as engrossing.
Watch It.
Review
Based on the 1989–1996 comic book written by Neil Gaiman, the first season covers the first sixteen issues while the second season covers issues twenty-two through seventy-five, completing the arch though a lot of material is omitted.
In season one Dream (Tom Sturridge) leaves his realm to search for a rogue dream, Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) in the waking world. That proved to be his downfall. Grief, in this case a feeling and not a character, leads a man to the goal of reversing death to bring back his son. He plans to summon and imprison Death, instead he gets Dream.
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| S1: Tom Sturridge plays Dream |
While Dream finally escapes after a century of imprisonment, his realm has deteriorated and he's lost his tools and thus his power. He must reclaim his helm, sand, and ruby. He consults the three fates for cryptic clues about where his tools have gone. Even with leads, his tools have been passed around for centuries.
What makes this fun is the mythology. It's a modern day legend about dreams, death, and many other immortals, making concepts anthropomorphic. It's intriguing intellectually and visually with a dark and macabre comic styling. We watch Dream descend to Hell and face off against Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie). It's a verbal battle as their words transform to images and fight.
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| S1: Tom Sturridge, Gwendoline Christie play Dream, Lucifer |
The only episode in the first season that felt like filler was episode five. It drags for too long and unravels too slowly. The person that has Dream's ruby creates an experiment about truth. It's clear to see where it's going long before we get there.
Death's (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) introduction is more touching than I expected. We see her walking around the city, gently greeting those whose time has come. The second part is Death granting a man's wish to not die. Dream tells the man he'll beg for Death soon enough, and they agree to meet in one hundred years. They continue to meet every hundred years with the man defying Dream's expectations despite his ever changing circumstances. While I often criticize shows for a diversion episode that's divorced from the series, this episode provides insight into dream, his pessimism and how he views humans.
After regaining his tools, Dream returns to his original mission, finding Corinthian. Dream finds Rose, a human that's a dream vortex. He wants to use her to find Corinthian, his original mission. One of Dream's siblings, Desire wants to use Rose against Dream. All of the characters converge at a convention, and the subject of that convention is wild. It's a dark side of this season's plot.
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| S1: Boyd Holbrook plays Corinthian |
This season is so inventive and creative. It's a modern day myth that avoids a lot of common tropes and generic plot lines.
The eleventh episode is a bonus episode, not directly tied to the plot. Part of it is an animated short about cats. Even animals dream of more. The other story is about a muse and an author that seeks inspiration.
Season two kicks off with a meeting of the family as Dream joins Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. One is missing and that turns out to be Destruction, though it's not revealed until later in the season. Destiny relays a cryptic message about a a battle while Dream recalls a mortal woman, Nada, he loved who was condemned to Hell. He resolves to save her. This is a result of season one. Dream is different after his tribulations in season one, more caring even if he wouldn't admit it.
Lucifer has abdicated the rule of hell. The revenge is tricking dream into taking the key to Hell and thus having to choose a new ruler. Many want the key, but the series goes on a tangent about how Dream connected the dream and fairy world.
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| S2: Tom Sturridge plays Dream |
Dream agrees to help Delirium search for Destruction in the waking world, but it's likely an excuse to seek Nada. While the driving force of the season is looking for Destruction, there are several digressions along the way delving into Dream's past. While we get information about Dream, this season doesn't feel like it has a true goal. Finding Destruction is just an excuse, a cover for Dream. I do like how this incorporates the legend of Orpheus into the narrative, but it also feels like another digression.That doesn't bring dream closer to Destruction or Nada. This season expands the lore. All mythologies and fables of various cultures are linked because they are all based on Dream and his siblings. Every civilization just interpreted them in different ways.
This season is the Dream redemption tour as we revisit his past mistakes that he now intends to fix. He breaks the rule of spilling family blood in a bid to fix the past. Initially we don't know what the consequences for breaking this rule are. In this show nothing is ever really set. The justice for breaking the rule isn't set. He's given time to say goodbyes and search for the dream baby that will take over for him. Dream recreates another version of the Corinthian. Holbrook makes the character a lot of fun. While everyone knows Corinthian as the psychopath from last season, he's different now; a rule follower.
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| S2: Tom Sturridge plays Dream |
This season culminates in an attack on the dream world, and we finally see the consequences for Dream's transgression. A new Dream emerges, one that represents the lessons the original Dream learned throughout the series. This ends well, hopeful that Dream's second time around might be better.
The problem with this season is that incorporates many more books into just one season. That would explain why this season seems disjointed. While I enjoyed season one both the lore and the plot arc, this season is scattered. I appreciate how it expands the mythology and how Dream and his siblings are the origins of all myths, legends, and fables, but it never seemed coherent. That's the problem with condensing so much information into so few episodes. That's what brings this season down.
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