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Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is back on Netflix, but why is the show ending with this second season? Find out below.
The first season of the screen version of Gaiman’s influential graphic novel debuted on the streaming service in August 2022, with the second season commissioned later that year.
The 12 episodes of season two are being released over the course of July, with the first six landing on Thursday (July 3), another five on July 24 and the final instalment due to arrive on July 31.
The show has been overseen by Gaiman, David S. Goyer and Allan Heinberg and it tells the story of Dream/Morpheus, the titular Sandman, played by Tom Sturridge. Boyd Holbrook, Vivienne Acheampong and Patton Oswalt co-star.
According to Netflix, season two begins a few weeks after the climax of the first season. “After more than a century away from the Dreaming, Dream has been restoring and rebuilding his kingdom,” the synopsis reads. “As he transforms the palace, he vows to leave the past behind and look to the future. The past, of course, has other ideas.”
In a four-star review of season one, NME wrote: “Often falling back on a corny British sense of humour and slightly over-polished to a contemporary sheen, there’s a cheap whiff of Doctor Who to the earlier episodes that will put a lot of people off. Stick with The Sandman through its biggest excesses though and there’s enough imagination to fuel another 30 years of waiting for anything half so original to come along again.”
Why is Netflix’s The Sandman ending after season two?
It had been assumed by many onlookers that the decision to bring The Sandman to a seemingly abrupt end was related to the allegations that emerged against Gaiman last year.
In July 2024, Gaiman was accused of sexual assault by five women, who told Tortoise Media that they had experienced “rough and degrading” sex which they claimed was not always consensual. Gaiman denied the allegations, but subsequently stepped down from the final season of Prime Video’s adaptation of Good Omens.
In January, further details of alleged sexual assault emerged against Gaiman, with four women detailing their experiences with the writer. Gaiman wrote a lengthy post denying the further accusations, insisting that “some of the horrible stories now being told simply never happened.”
However, Goyer has said that the decision to end The Sandman was unrelated to the allegations, and was in fact made two years ago.
He told Variety: “Obviously we love the books, but one of the concerns about some of the story arcs is that Dream isn’t in them very much and so when we were discussing, everyone’s concern was like, are we really going to sort of deviate and do six episodes that Dream’s not in at all, except for the very end?”
“And the other thing was even though the original comic book run, I think, was 75 issues, we just ended up burning through story faster than we thought we would, because the individual issues, a lot of them, when they were first being published, are only 17 pages.”
Whatever the reason, it appears fans of the show will have to make peace with the second season of The Sandman being the last.
The post Why is Netflix’s ‘The Sandman’ ending after season two? appeared first on NME.