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Did Netflix Do Right by These Three Major Characters?

For the third and final installment of our breakdown of the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman, we’re talking about three of the most important characters in the entire saga: Lyta Hall, Rose Walker, and the Sandman himself, Dream of the Endless. How were these characters altered when they crossed from comics to live action, and what does it mean for future stories?

Lyta Hall

The Comic: Hippolyta “Lyta” Hall and her husband Hector Hall are former superheroes who, in the wake of Hector’s death from all that superheroing, have taken up residence inside the false Dreaming created by Brute and Glob inside Jed Walker’s mind. The pregnant, lonely Lyta loses track of reality within this false dream-world, some part of her aware that her husband is dead and that she really should have had the baby by now. But she clings to the false reality until Morpheus arrives on the scene. The Dream King banishes Brute and Glob to the Darkness, sends Hector back to the land of the dead, and boots Lyta out into the waking world. Before he goes, Dream casually informs Lyta that since her baby spent so much time gestating in the dream-realm, it now belongs to him and he will one day arrive to take possession of it. A furious, grieving Lyta vows to keep that from ever happening.

The Change: The Sandman show goes out of its way to give the female characters (including those gender-swapped from male characters in the comics) just a bit more agency than they originally had, letting them be a bit more assertive and in control of their own fate.

Except for Lyta (Razane Jammal).

The show ignores all the superhero backstory from the comics and instead, Lyta is now just a nice, normal woman who is friends with Rose Walker and is grieving the recent loss of her beloved husband Hector (Lloyd Everitt). When Rose begins unwittingly manifesting as the new dream vortex, she inadvertently brings Lyta’s dream-memory of Hector back to life within the Dreaming. In the comic, Gaiman suggested that Lyta was fully aware of how unnatural her arrangement with the deceased Hector was, but she carried on out of willful delusion. Lyta on the show, however, is truly blameless for the situation she finds herself embroiled in and the magically-accelerated pregnancy that follows.

But Hector’s presence as a restored soul causes rampant chaos within the Dreaming, and so, as in the comics, Dream destroys the resurrected Hector and casts Lyta out. Later, Lyta encourages Rose to use her abilities as the dream vortex to displace and destroy Morpheus, demonstrating a cold-blooded ruthlessness that visibly surprises Rose.

What It Means Going Forward: For my money, Lyta Hall has always been one of the least successful elements of The Sandman. The living arrangement we see in “The Doll’s House” is so transparently gross and miserable that Lyta’s ongoing hatred towards Dream for knocking it down never has the appropriate dramatic weight. Admittedly, Morpheus did announce he was going to steal her baby some day and, look, I think we can all agree that baby-thieving is not a productive use of anyone’s time. But it’s hard to actually take Lyta’s side or view her as the wronged party in this particular feud. And Dream has a lot of feuds in which you’re sorta rooting for the other side, so it speaks to how weak a claim Lyta’s grudge is built on.

The show’s alterations to this story neatly solves that problem. Show-Lyta is a tremendously sympathetic creation, and this in turn makes Morpheus seem so much more heartless and cruel when he dissolves Hector and stakes his claim on the unborn child. If the show does make it as far as “The Kindly Ones,” Lyta’s wrath will be all the more terrifying because of how much more justified she is in her fury against this man and all that he has stolen from her.

There’s another major leap that the show makes involving Lyta, but it has less to do with her specifically than it does with…

Rose Walker

The Comic: An aimless twenty-something American girl searching for her missing brother, Rose is entirely oblivious to the supernatural goings on around her until the final moments of “The Doll’s House,” when she begins to manifest as the Dream Vortex. Rose has only a brief interaction with Morpheus, in which he apologizes for being obligated to murder her. But Rose survives that encounter, waking up with only vague memories of what happened in her dream. She retains enough, and is disturbed enough by it, that she enters into a period of agoraphobic depression when she gets home. Rose eventually decides to dismiss her dream as just a dream and begins to emerge back into her life.

The Change: Like many (but not all) of Neil Gaiman’s protagonists, Rose spends most of her story as a passive observer moving around and amongst more captivating, colorful supporting characters, only becoming an active player in the final moments of the story. Show-Rose is, right from the jump, more assertive and proactive than she was in the comic, and as such, she meets and engages with Morpheus (and the other dream folk) much earlier than previously scheduled. Whereas the Rose of the comics ultimately dismisses her dream as being just a dream, show-Rose retains all memory of what happened to her, even writing an entire book about it.

But the biggest, most potentially seismic change to Rose is her relationship with Lyta. In the comics, Rose and Lyta do eventually meet and have an amiable enough relationship, but they are nowhere near as close as they are in the show, with Rose going so far as to say that Lyta informally adopted her after her mother passed (which never happened in any form in the comics, as Rose’s mother was very much alive). Rose is now present when Morpheus disintegrates Hector and stakes a claim on Lyta’s unborn child, a proclamation that a horrified Rose vows to oppose.

What It Means Going Forward: After being spared her ordained death as the Dream Vortex, Rose never again plays a major narrative role in the life of The Sandman. That being said, as Dream’s niece (kind of) and a former vortex, she does have a knack for being close to hand whenever wonky Dreaming shit starts impacting the waking world. Rose’s slow journey towards maturity and finding an adult identity for herself mirrors and parallels the similar growing pains that Morpheus experiences over the life of the series, though these connections are more thematic than practical.

The show seems to have very different things in store for Rose, especially if she makes good on her promise to be “Auntie Rose” to a child that comic readers know will eventually be named Daniel. Having Rose on hand with knowledge of the cosmic stakes of this world, and also with a personal stake in the lives of her friend and her friend’s child—that’s a juicy piece of drama that could pay off major dividends further down the road.

Until then, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which Rose remains our point-of-view character through the earthbound portions of Sandman, the eyes and ears through which we experience the various consequences to the games that Morpheus and his peers and rivals play against each other. Her deceased, deadbeat father could be one of the evacuees of Hell in “Season of Mist,” or she could be one of the ladies who ventures into the battle against the Cuckoo in “Game of You,” or her connection to both the Endless and the human-world could prove useful during Dream’s quest in “Brief Lives.”

When Rose runs off at the end of the “Doll’s House” volume, the character’s story feels fully told. But as with Johanna Constantine, the show’s version of Rose feels incomplete, with so many dangling possibilities left to explore that it would be a shame for her to be sidelined the way she was on the page.

Dream

The Comic: One of the best, most complex, least-likable protagonists in all of comics, Dream of the Endless has more names than anyone could ever list and a new face for everyone who encounters him. Though he is generally depicted as a tall, thin young man with chalk-white skin and infinite pools of inky shadow instead of eyes, Dream’s appearance is subject to change depending on who’s looking on him. The same is true of his personality, depending on what story is being told and who’s doing the telling. By turns, Dream can be a beatific font of wisdom or a petulant child; a being of infinite patience and mercy or a temperamental, impulsive brat; an upright and caring monarch, or a sullen, capricious god. He is totally alien, yet somehow simultaneously achingly human. While his is the most nebulous and impermanent of domains, Dream himself is utterly rigid in his behaviors and duties, consumed by his responsibilities to a degree that even his siblings find off-putting. Dream’s relationship with humanity is equally complex: sometimes he delights in our follies and imaginings, while other times he seems to regard individual human lives as scum he might pick from between his toes.

By the conclusion of the first two volumes of The Sandman, Dream has recovered enough from his long captivity and the resultant destruction of his realm that he thinks it possible to slip back into his old life. But the consequences of his captivity, his actions upon escaping captivity, and the various sins of his past will only continue to manifest as the saga proceeds.

The Change: Well, for starters, he has eyes. And Tom Sturridge is pale like human beings are pale, not like a phantasm haunting the rest of the cast, which would be a more comic-accurate rendering of Morpheus. Hashtag not my Sandman.

Sturridge capably inhabits the many shades of Morpheus. Just by the way he holds his head or quirks his mouth, he can go from an unearthly, regal bearing to seeming like a prissy little shit you just can’t wait to smack. The show radically downplays the most unpleasant aspects of Morpheus, with an added layer of vulnerability inherent to Sturridge being a human being and not a spectral visitor from beyond the grave. This Morpheus cries when he’s upset, laughs and smiles much more freely than he ever did on the page, and is rather shockingly quick to apologize and offer contrition when he’s in the wrong.

After reading hundreds of pages of Sandman stories, Dream remains endlessly (wink) out of focus, forever unknowable no matter how much we learn about him. By the end of these ten episodes, audiences have a pretty comprehensive idea of who this guy is and what makes him tick.

What It Means Going Forward: Morpheus needed to be softened up exponentially if Sandman was ever going to work in live action, and for the most part, the show’s writers and Sturridge’s performance walk the delicate line of maintaining how mysterious and off-putting Dream can be while also making sure he remains human enough to be an engaging lead of a TV show.

Even so, when the season ends with Dream apologizing to Lucienne and letting Gault go free, it feels like we are seeing an entirely different character from the one Gaiman wrote for so long. The ending raises questions about how the show will tackle stories that revolve around Dream making his life, and the lives of those around him, infinitely harder because he is stubborn, proud, and obsessed with following rules and protocols. After seeing how the show softened Dream’s worst moments from the first two volumes, how will it handle the stories in which Dream is truly, unforgivably monstrous, stories that are intrinsic to the larger arc of The Sandman?

It leaves a gaping question mark right at the center of the show, but Sandman is so successful in so many areas that I’m left feeling more curiosity than concern. I want to see this creative team and cast run the full gamut. I want to see them try to grapple with the sprawling short stories, and all the major arcs, and the tangents and the side-quests and the weird detours that Gaiman loved to indulge.

Conclusion

They did it. They actually made a Sandman show and it is funny and scary and wondrous and odd and beautiful and gross and, and, and…

It’s a dream come true. Here’s hoping we none of us wake up for a good long while.

DC Comics, Mystic Librarians, and the Devil

For part two of our breakdown of Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman, let’s go deep into the comic’s lore and discuss some fundamental changes to certain characters and to the entire universe in which this story takes place.

The DC Comics of It All

The Comic: When Sandman began publishing, there were no alternative, adult imprints of DC Comics. As such, Sandman takes place squarely within the larger DC continuity, sharing a universe with Batman, Superman, those lantern guys, those twins with the magic rings, and Jason Momoa. That connection is especially pronounced in “Preludes and Nocturnes,” which involves the Justice League and trips to Arkham Asylum. Major Sandman characters originate from other DC comics, including Dream’s raven, Matthew (who began life as a Swamp Thing character that Gaiman resurrected after Alan Moore killed him off), his brother, Destiny, and dream-folk including Lucien and the incarnations of Cain and Abel that appear in the Dreaming. The connection to the larger DC universe grew more and more tenuous as Sandman progressed, but even by the final volume, there were still cameo appearances by a caped crusader or two.

The Change: While DC characters that Gaiman folded into Sandman are still a part of the Netflix show, any other connection to the DC universe is gone. We see Superman and Static Shock cartoons playing in the background of multiple scenes, making clear that this show is set in the real world and we shouldn’t expect to see larger than life fantastical creations like Superman or Wonder Woman hanging around.

What It Means Going Forward: Losing the larger DC continuity shouldn’t affect the Sandman show in any meaningful way. Gaiman never warmed up to writing within a shared universe, and so Sandman grew further and further away from its DC roots as it continued. That said, even as its own distinct branch of the universe, Sandman did trade in a bit on its human characters knowing and accepting that they lived in a magical, fantastical world. It’s hard to express too much disbelief in whatever cosmic chicanery is happening when Superman is a regular fixture of the evening news. The human characters on the show don’t have that same unspoken buffer, which could impact the way certain stories are written and played.

John Dee

The Comic: Originally a supervillain created decades before Sandman, John Dee, under the name “Doctor Destiny,” possessed a magic ruby that he used to control the dreams and nightmares of his victims. There was probably a bid or two at total world domination—you know, classic mad scientist stuff. Sandman retcons Dee’s history so that he became the son of Roderick Burgess’s mistress, born long after she abandoned the Magus. Driven insane by his possession of Dream’s all-powerful ruby, Dee was eventually foiled by the Justice League.

By the time Sandman catches up to him, Dee is an emaciated, skull-faced lunatic in Arkham Asylum whose only goal in life is to reclaim his precious ruby. Dee escapes Arkham, kills the innocent woman who gave him a lift, retrieves his ruby, and promptly goes on a rampage. He uses the ruby’s reality-warping powers to sadistically torture a diner full of innocent people before driving them to self-mutilation and suicide in “24/7,” one of the most terrifying and disturbing issues of any comic book ever. He then turns his attention to wreaking chaos and horror across the globe and the Dreaming. In a final bid to kill Morpheus once and for all, Dee destroys the ruby and unwittingly restores its power to the Dream King. Morpheus ultimately takes pity on the wretched Dee and brings him back to Arkham, unharmed but now totally, permanently (at least for a while) powerless.

The Change: As played by David Thewlis, Dee’s supervillain histrionics are exponentially turned down. He’s able to pass himself off as a functioning, if odd, person, at least until the ruby gets mentioned, at which point the lights go out in Thewlis’s eyes and he can only focus on the gem. As with the other villains this season, Dee is allowed to be a bit more sympathetic than he was in the books, with added depth and shading and more opportunities to better articulate their worldview. In Dee’s case, that’s a pathological aversion to lies and half-truths, stemming from his con-artist mother’s constantly shifting identity.

Rather than being an unrelated boy born to Burgess’s mistress years after she left him, Dee is now Roderick Burgess’s bastard son. In fact, it is Roderick’s demand that Dee’s mother abort the child that results in the scattering of Dream’s artifacts to a variety of different hosts.

As in the comics, Dee ends the story returned to prison, though this time Dream places him in a seemingly permanent slumber. Defeating Dee now functions as the completion of Morpheus’s revenge against the Burgess family, with both heirs left suspended forever in sleep.

What It Means Going Forward: Don’t expect to see much of John Dee again, but do expect to see plenty more stories about fathers who fail their sons and sons terrified to fail their fathers. If Sandman is at its core a story about change on levels both macro and micro, about how one era gives way to another, then kings and princes and fathers and sons are the lens through which Gaiman continuously illustrates these notions. The alterations to Dee’s backstory don’t change the narrative very much, but the changes place the character in a thematic group he wasn’t in before. The mercy Morpheus shows Dee now stands in stark contrast to the way he has handled other misguided sons reaching beyond their means and abilities.

Lucien

The Comic: Dream’s most steadfast and devoted servant, Lucien is the keeper of the Dreaming’s infinite library, which contains not only every book ever written but also every book that has yet to be written. You know that novel you have in the back of your head, that you’re sure would be great if you could just find the time to write it? It exists in this library and Lucien’s probably read it. And he has some notes.

Despite his loyalty and capability, Lucien can’t help but cut a somewhat ridiculous and hapless figure, forever misplacing and losing track of various volumes from his charge. Dream may task Lucien with keeping the Dreaming running when he needs to run an errand in the waking world, but that’s the extent of delegation that Morpheus is comfortable with.

The Change: Lucienne’s (Vivienne Acheampong) position and role within the Dreaming is largely unchanged, but she’s just a bit more on the ball than her comic counterpart ever was, cool and collected where Lucien was often overwhelmed. The other dreams treat Lucienne as the de facto ruler of the Dreaming, a state of affairs that Morpheus knows about and deeply resents.

This comes to a head in the second half of the season when Dream and Lucienne engage in a brief feud, climaxing with Dream reprimanding Lucienne and ordering her back to the library. Shortly thereafter, a repentant Dream apologizes to Lucienne and even goes so far as to place her in charge of the Dreaming while he busies himself creating new dreams and nightmares at the fringes of the realm.

What It Means Going Forward: Lucien does not “feud” with Dream. It goes against every fiber of the librarian’s being to challenge his king, so much so that only the literally apocalyptic events of “The Kindly Ones” prove to be enough to trigger Lucien into finally giving Morpheus a piece of his mind. And while Morpheus can sometimes be coerced into admitting error (it just requires thousands of years of personal growth), he would never stoop so low as to actually apologize to one of his servants.

An assertive Lucienne and a chastened Dream are fundamentally different characters from the ones depicted in the comics, and it could have consequences for virtually every single story the show’s might tackle next.

If nothing else, Lucienne’s capability brings one of the subtextual questions of Sandman right out into the text: If the Dreaming can function without Dream, then what is the point of him? If the realm doesn’t need him, then why does he continue to rule? And if Lucienne is able to keep the Dreaming going, then wouldn’t everyone be better off with her in charge rather than the moody, temperamental Dream?

The last scene between the pair may not seem especially momentous, but it is quietly one of the most striking departures from Gaiman’s text. It remains to be seen if the show will quietly downshift away from the implications of that scene, or if they will continue to turn into the skid and let Lucienne evolve into an entirely different entity from Lucien, with an entirely different relationship with Dream. The ripple effects of such a change would have repercussions for the entire saga.

Lucifer

The Comic: When Dream arrives in Hell in search of his lost helmet, he is surprised to learn that Lucifer is no longer the sole ruler of the pit, but instead splits the kingdom with the demons Azazel and Beelzebub. Dream challenges unctuous demon Choronzon to a battle of wits for ownership of his helmet, which the Dream Lord wins thanks to the power of hope (so it is a strategy). When Lucifer attempts to threaten Morpheus with imprisonment within Hell, Morpheus challenges Lucifer with the immortal line, “What power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?” A furious Lucifer allows Dream to leave, but swears to one day destroy him.

The Change: The Triumvirate stuff is jettisoned completely, with Lucifer Morningstar presented as the lone lord of Hell. Beyond that, Lucifer’s role is largely unchanged, save that it is Lucifer who enters the challenge against Dream—you don’t hire Gwendoline Christie to be Lucifer and then have her stand off to the side while someone else has the big contest against the leading man.

What It Means Going Forward: Having it be Lucifer who personally loses to Morpheus doesn’t really change their dynamic—Lucifer dislikes Dream regardless—although it does go a long way towards underlining for new audiences that Lucifer’s scheming against Dream isn’t just your standard issue Devil stuff. No, Lucifer truly, specifically hates this fucking guy.

The larger question surrounding Lucifer’s role in Sandman has less to do with the show itself than the fact that Sandman got beaten to the screen by its own spin-off. The fallout of Lucifer’s grand scheme to defy God and doom Morpheus became its own comic series, entitled Lucifer, and Lucifer got turned into a very popular TV show, which was also entitled Lucifer. Does Sandman bite the bullet and re-tell a story that was already explored across multiple seasons of a recent, very well-liked show?

The final scene of this season explicitly cues up “Season of Mist” as the next arc, so it’s hard to imagine the show breaking too far away from that text. But it wouldn’t surprise me if show-Lucifer gets a far more definitive ending than the comic book incarnation, who was free to enjoy further adventures that TV has already exhausted.

We Have Thoughts. Many, Many Thoughts.

Holy crap, they actually filmed The Sandman.

Neil Gaiman’s sprawling comic book epic—created by Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mark Dringenberg, written by Gaiman, and illustrated by a revolving door of artists—has long been considered unfilmable because of all the failed attempts at filming it. The story was simply too massive, too expensive, too odd, too idiosyncratic to ever make it to the screen, despite its immense popularity.

But holy crap, they actually filmed The Sandman.

With a creative team led by Allan Heinberg, with David Goyer and Gaiman himself also playing large roles, the first two volumes of Sandman, “Preludes and Nocturnes” and “The Doll’s House,” have been faithfully brought to life.

There’s a Sandman TV show! It’s on Netflix! You can just…like…watch it!

The Sandman is the story of Dream of the Endless. The Endless are the gods that other gods bow to, consisting of Destiny, Death, Dream, the twins Desire and Despair, and Delirium (the line-up is actually a little more complicated than that, but let’s stick with the basics). At the outset of the series, Dream (Tom Sturridge) is captured by humans who are trying to bind his sister, Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). The humans keep Dream locked away for over a century, but he eventually escapes and, after a quick layover to extract grim vengeance, sets about restoring his shattered kingdom and tracking down the various nightmares and dreams that went missing during his absence.

The Netflix show follows the comics quite closely, but there are, of course, changes that get made from one medium to the next. So today, let’s talk about some of the places where the show splits off from the comic text, and what those changes might mean for future stories.

(I could say that this is meant to be a guided tour for people who haven’t read the comic but honestly I don’t really care about you guys; I’m writing this because JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST THEY ACTUALLY FILMED SANDMAN and I need to vent this energy somewhere.)

This series will be discuss the Netflix show in full, but I’ll be as vague as possible in discussing future stories in the comic. I will also note here that I’ll be referring to the main character interchangeably as both “Dream” and “Morpheus”. Dude’s got a lot of names.

The Brothers Burgess

The Comic: Self-styled “magus” Roderick Burgess captures Dream because he’s an evil old man who wants to conquer death and gain unlimited power, as evil old men are wont to do. After his death, Roderick’s mistreated son, Alex, presides over Dream’s captivity and torment for the remainder of his own life. When Dream finally escapes, he condemns Alex to “eternal waking,” trapping him in an endless sequence of nightmares in which Alex experiences false awakening after false awakening forever.

The Change: The show adds the backstory that there was another Burgess son: Roderick’s beloved eldest son and heir died in World War I, and it’s out of desperation to bring him back that Roderick (Charles Dance) undertakes his failed bid to harness death. His grief festers into resentment for his surviving son, Alex (played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Laurie Kynaston, and Benedick Blythe), who is significantly more sympathetic in this iteration. Whereas comic-Alex was every bit as power-hungry as his father, show-Alex only continues Dream’s imprisonment because Dream won’t promise not to retaliate against Alex and his loved ones. (It’s not the worst rationale for keeping an angry god under lock and key.) This time, Dream sentences Alex to eternal sleep, not waking. Alex remains trapped in perpetual slumber, but it’s a pointedly less gruesome fate than in the comics.

What It Means Going Forward: Dream’s punishment of Alex is a reader’s first indication of just how cruel and, frankly, terrifying Morpheus can be when he is displeased. The show pulling that punch is likewise an early indication, this time communicating that live-action Dream has a softer touch than he did on the page.

Spending more time with and getting a more nuanced perspective on the Burgesses (including another new son we’ll discuss in a moment) demonstrates what adapting, updating, and changing mediums can add to a story. The Sandman is a denser comic than most, but it’s still a comic book, and Gaiman often drew (not literally) in broad strokes in order to keep the story moving within the confines and limitations of the comic format. The show takes the liberty of its own format to sprawl out a bit, and take its time getting to know the characters a bit more before the mystic starts intruding.

Brute & Glob

The Comic: Two runaway nightmares determined to create their own kingdom during Dream’s long absence, Brute and Glob set up shop inside the imagination of abused child Jed Walker, cutting him off from the main Dreaming. Inside this private dreamscape, Brute and Glob also corral the soul of dead superhero Hector Hall and his (living) pregnant wife Lyta, convincing Hector that he is the Sandman and has a perpetual mission of battling nightmares to protect children across the world. When Morpheus learns of what they’ve done, he promptly dismantles Brute and Glob’s operation and condemns the two to “The Darkness.” We never really get a full picture of exactly what “The Darkness” is, but all the screaming suggests that no one’s happy to go there.

The Change: Brute and Glob are gone entirely, and in their place is a new character, Gault (Ann Ogbomo). Like her comic counterparts, Gault is a nightmare hiding within the imagination of Jed Walker (Eddie Karanja) after separating him from the main Dreaming. A shapeshifter, Gault takes the form of Jed’s mother and convinces Jed that he is a superhero called the Sandman. As in the comics, a displeased Morpheus eventually arrives and puts an end to the whole charade.

But in a fairly devastating deviation from the comic, Gault reveals that unlike Brute and Glob, she had no malicious motivations behind her actions: She’s just a nightmare who stumbled across a horribly abused boy and wanted to give the kid a chance at happiness, even if just in dreams, and live out her own longing to be something more.

A nonplussed Morpheus condemns her to the Darkness anyway. But not really. Instead in the season’s final moments, he not only frees Gault from her imprisonment, he even fulfills her wish and transforms her into a dream.

What It Means Going Forward: Sandman is fundamentally a story about change and transformation. It’s about how individuals, be they people, gods, or worlds, constantly change even as real people, God(s), and the world, never really change. Gault is a walking, talking manifestation of that theme. Heck, as far as metaphors go, a nightmare longing to become a dream could only be more on the nose if she emerged from a cocoon flapping butterfly wings— OH WAIT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS.

Regardless! As mentioned previously, show-Morpheus is a significantly softer, more humane character than he was on the page, with his damnation of a defiant Gault serving as one of the only moments in the show where we get a taste of just how heartless the Dream King can be. It also recalls and anticipates his doomed relationship with Nada, teased early in the season, another instance of Morpheus banishing a Black woman to eternal suffering because shev dared defy him.

Which is what makes Dream sparing Gault in the closing minutes of the season such an odd choice. A Dream who can readily admit his mistakes and quickly address them is a very different creature from the proud, temperamental king who causes so much havoc over the life of The Sandman with his unwillingness to accept fault.

Constantine

The Comic: Streetwise occultist John Constantine helps Morpheus locate the Dream King’s lost bag of sand, which fell into John’s possession before being taken by one of his old girlfriends, who becomes addicted to the sands with some gruesome, lethal results. Dream reclaims his sands, and the two go their separate ways. It’d be a stretch to call them “friends” at this point, but it’s altogether a rather genial dynamic between the pair.

The Change: Streetwise occultist Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman) is pointedly unimpressed by Morpheus and spends most of their time together dressing down that Edward Cullen-looking motherfucker and all his ludicrous pomposity. Whereas Gaiman tends to write Constantine (in both Sandman and his Books of Magic miniseries) as being much more affable and easygoing, the show’s Johanna Constantine is ruthless, destructive, and self-loathing in a way that brings her much closer in line to the character Alan Moore created, even with the gender swap.

The show also downplays the body-horror of what Dream and Constantine find in Jo’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment, instead focusing on the heartbreak and guilt that Constantine feels over what she inadvertently caused to happen to a woman she once loved.

What It Means Going Forward: John Constantine never again plays any significant role in Sandman, though his ancestor Lady Johanna Constantine (also Coleman) returns and plays a major role in one of the comic’s best, most disturbing, and most important stories, in which Morpheus charges her with retrieving something of great value to him from the ravages of the French Revolution.

So we’ll see historical Johanna Constantine again, but what about contemporary Jo? Coleman’s chemistry with Sturridge is so interesting and distinct from his interplay with the rest of the ensemble that it seems a downright waste to never again bring them together. Certainly if the show wanted to bring Constantine back, the opportunities are there. If all hell is literally breaking loose next season when they (presumably) adapt “Season of Mist,” then it would make sense to have Joanna be our point-of-view character for the consequences on Earth, given that she’s already plugged into such affairs. And if the show gets to “Brief Lives,” then it would make sense that Dream would go to Johanna and take advantage of her investigative skills for the search he and his sibling are engaged in.

The show could even—and now we’re in total conjecture land—but the show could even slide magic-user Johanna Constantine into the role occupied by the witch Thessaly in the “Game of You” and “Kindly Ones” stories. Which would be downright goddamn devastating, but also excellent television.

The Corinthian

The Comic: The most fearsome of the runaway nightmares who abandoned the Dreaming after Morpheus disappeared, the Corinthian spends the intervening century living it up in the waking world as a serial killer. Blithely unaware of Dream’s freedom, he only learns of his former master’s return when Dream materializes at a serial killer convention (like Comic-Con for murderers) at which the Corinthian is the guest of honor. Thoroughly unimpressed by how the Corinthian has spent his time away, Dream unmakes him on the spot, leaving behind only his skull. Dream pockets the skull, vowing to make the Corinthian again someday; like all writers, Morpheus is convinced that this next draft is the one where he will get it right.

The Change: The Corinthian’s (Boyd Holbrook) role has been expanded until he essentially functions as the Big Bad of the season. He’s the reason Dream goes into the waking world and is thus susceptible to Burgess’s spell. He’s the primary architect of Dream’s imprisonment and, after Dream escapes, he schemes to sic first John Dee (David Thewlis) and then Rose Walker (Kyo Ra) on Morpheus in the hopes that they will disrupt the Dreaming and/or destroy its vengeful king. He even attempts to weaponize the collective dreams of the serial killer convention in order to bring Morpheus to his knees. His efforts come to naught and, as in the comics, Dream eventually corners and destroys his disappointing creation.

What It Means Going Forward: Dream does eventually get around to making a new Corinthian, and this very different, if equally bloodthirsty, version plays a minor but important role in the mayhem of “The Kindly Ones.” If Holbrook is available and interested, it would certainly be possible for that to get pushed up and for a version of the Corinthian to appear again in some capacity.

What’s really significant about the expansion of the Corinthian’s role is less the Corinthian himself, since he ends up at the same place albeit in a more roundabout fashion; instead, the Corinthian’s arc throughout this season demonstrates the first effort at combining elements from multiple arcs. This mixing-and-matching will continue to be necessary, as Gaiman’s sprawling stories do not cleanly chart onto seasonal TV structures. The merging of “Preludes and Nocturnes” and “The Doll’s House” into one season is not always gracefully handled, but the expansion of the Corinthian’s role was a smart tactic and it makes me curious as to how this creative team will play with the comics going forward.