Netflix’s The Sandman stays fairly faithful to Neil Gaiman’s comic book series, though showrunner Allan Heinberg changed some of the source material in order to make protagonist Dream of the Endless (Tom Sturridge) more likeable, and to cut down on side plots. In the second half of the second and final season, which launched on July 24, cost-cutting considerations led to a new teamup that turned into a surprising romance.
[Ed. note: This article contains some spoilers for The Sandman season 2, part 2.]
In season 2, Dream sets about righting past wrongs while also protecting his realm, the Dreaming, from misfortune. A big part of that involves choosing a successor. Daniel Hall, the only human baby to be conceived in the Dreaming, is imbued with part of its power, and will become the new Dream if Morpheus falls.
But in spite of his vast potential, Daniel is still a baby, and Dream has powerful enemies. When Daniel is kidnapped, Dream resurrects the eyeball-eating nightmare The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) and orders him to find the child. The Corinthian went rogue and became a serial killer while Dream was captive in season 1, so Morpheus’ allies are understandably worried about setting the nightmare loose on Earth unsupervised. In the comic, Dream’s raven Matthew (voiced by Patton Oswalt in the Netflix series) accompanies The Corinthian to make sure he stays out of trouble, but Heinberg says he consulted Gaiman to find a way to change that plot point to save money on CGI.
“As you can imagine, every moment with Matthew is expensive,” Heinberg told Polygon in a Zoom interview. “As a fan and a reader, that arc was not my favorite, that Matthew was mistrustful of The Corinthian, and The Corinthian actually kind of murders Matthew at a certain point. Dream saves him. We were looking for more places to put [Johanna Constantine actor] Jenna Coleman, and it was Neil who suggested, ‘Why don’t we team up Johanna Constantine present-day with The Corinthian?’ Which I thought was an amazing idea, and we just ran with it.”
In the first half of season 2, Coleman plays Lady Johanna Constantine, who is sent on a mission by Dream in the 18th century and winds up meeting the love of her life. In the second, she plays Johanna’s modern-day descendent (also named Johanna Constantine), an occult detective who Dream asks to help The Corinthian find Daniel. The pair develop a flirty buddy-cop dynamic, with the newborn Corinthian a pure-hearted, sunny counter to the more jaded and wary Constantine.
“In the comic, the new Corinthian is — apart from being a slave to his nature — a more heroic figure, and so it just felt logical to me to have him fall madly in love with [Constantine], and for her to resist because of what he is, but then to realize that Dream has sort of given her this gift, in that she can’t hurt him,” Heinberg said. “They’re perfect for each other in this weird way.”
Even knowing how Dream served as matchmaker to her ancestor, Johanna initially rebuffs The Corinthian’s advances because she’s had such a terrible romantic history. In season one, Johanna’s girlfriend dies after getting addicted to magical sand she steals from Johanna, who blames herself for hurting people she loves. Heinberg said he built their relationship around the line “every man I’ve ever dated has been a nightmare.”
“Boyd really embraced it as well,” Heinberg said. “It was so different from what Boyd was able to do in season 1. […] They really got on and enjoyed each other, and their chemistry was fantastic.”
The Corinthian and Constantine worked so well together that Heinberg wanted to make them the stars of a spin-off series. The Sandman is ending with season 2, but Heinberg also had ideas for a season 3 where Dream’s allies, the fairy Nuala (Ann Skelly) and librarian Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong), raise Daniel. Heinberg also imagined a version of the series that hewed closer to the anthology nature of the comics, and devoted three-episode arcs to Dream’s siblings Desire (Mason Alexander Park) and Despair (Donna Preston).
“I think the viewership numbers would have to be off the charts [to justify a spin-off].” Heinberg said. “It’s a very expensive show. There’s no version of the show that isn’t expensive. But I think part of the beauty of what the comic book is, is that you could spin off almost any of these characters. They’re all very fully realized characters.”
The complete second season of The Sandman, episodes 1-11, are now streaming on Netflix. The bonus episode Death: The High Cost of Living will be released on July 31.
