Who is John Dee in The Sandman?
By WiC Staff
Netflix has finally dropped the first season of The Sandman, its adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s seminal comic book. Fans have been waiting decades to see The Sandman onscreen, and this is a version they can be proud of.
The first season of the Netflix show adapts some of the most memorable moments from The Sandman comic. That includes “24/7,” the episode where John Dee — armed with Dream’s lost ruby — tortures people in a diner. This is a hugely disturbing comic and it made for a hugely disturbing episode.
John Dee is the son of the occultist Roderick Burgess — who imprisoned Dream for decades in his home — and Ethel Cripps, Burgess’ mistress who left him after he demanded that she abort John after she got pregnant with him. When she left, she took Dream’s ruby with her, and eventually passes it down to John, which is how he’s able to bend reality.
Who plays John Dee in The Sandman?
In DC Comics, John Dee is the supervillain Doctor Destiny; he has similar powers involving the manipulation of dreams, although in the comics he’s more of a mad scientist type. The Sandman kind of borrowed the character of Doctor Destiny and reworked him to fit this new narrative. In the show, the DC connection isn’t mentioned at all, we assume because of rights issues. Here, John has been in institutions for much of his life because of his violent tendencies. In the comics, he gets the ruby after his mother Ethel dies and leaves it to him in his will. On the show, she gives him an amulet of protection that helps him break out of prison while she’s still alive, after which he goes and collects the ruby.
Another difference is his appearance: in the comics, John looks grotesque, more like a monster than a man. He’s impossibly thin, almost skeleton-like, and has grey skin. On the show, he’s played by David Thewlis as a pretty innocuous-looking middle-aged man. It’s an effective choice; John is all the scarier because he doesn’t look like someone who might harbour dreams of driving the whole world mad.
Thewlis has had a long career, although he’s probably best known for playing Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies.
Next. The Sandman: All episodes reviewed and explained. dark
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