Netflix viewers have entered The Dreaming with the premiere of The Sandman Season 2. The first part of the show’s final season premiered on July 3rd, and according to Netflix, it was the streamer’s most-viewed last week — by a sizable margin. The Sandman got about 5.9 million views, while the number two series, The Waterfront, got 3.6 million. It’s no surprise, as excitement for this comic book adaptation has been high and the wait has been long. On the other hand, the show’s cancellation and the allegations against its original author Neil Gaiman have definitely dampened spirits a bit. It seems fans are still eager to see how the series will end.
Netflix dropped about five and a half hours of new Sandman content this month, and fans have cumulatively spent about 31.5 million hours watching it already. The series is an adaptation of the Sandman comic book published by DC Comics from 1989 to 1996, written by Gaiman with art by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, and several others. Part 2 of the season will drop on July 24th, followed by a final bonus episode on July 31st to close out the series.
It’s a bittersweet time for fans, as many are glad the show is finally back after three years, but sad that it is ending with just two seasons. By contrast, the comic has 85 issues, and is typically sold in a series of 10 trade paperbacks these days. Netflix announced the show’s cancellation back in January, around the time that allegations against Gaiman were making headlines and beginning to effect his career. However, showrunner Allan Heinberg said that the TV series was never intended to run as long as the book.
“It was a decision we made three years ago,” Heinberg told Entertainment Weekly back in May. While the book has a meandering, dream-like quality, Heinberg and his colleagues felt that the TV show would do best if it kept a tight focus on the character Dream (Tom Sturridge) himself. “There are some volumes where he just appears in two scenes,” he pointed out.
Heinberg also wanted to adapt the overarching plot of the Endless most of all, saying that he envisioned the story as “a family drama.” That is clearly the case with Season 2, which brings Dream and his siblings together and takes the audience back into some of their most dramatic moments. It makes Dream’s capture in the beginning of the series look small by comparison.
The Sandman is streaming now on Netflix, with just a few more episodes to go before it’s over. Season 2, Part 2 premieres on July 24th, followed by one final bonus episode on July 31st.
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