The Sandman has a fantastic first 10 days on Netflix—season 2, please?

It’s been a while since I’ve been as taken with a new show as I am with The Sandman. Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s seminal comic book is very faithful to the source material, but it doesn’t feel rote; they’ve carried a lot of the magic over from page to screen, resulting in a show I am very eager to see more of.

And although Netflix hasn’t confirmed a second season as of yet, the signs are good. In its latest batch of numbers, Netflix has revealed that The Sandman was watched for over 198 million hours in its first 10 days.

That puts it in some elite company. Netflix only started revealing these numbers in June of 2021. The Sandman has had the third strongest 10-day window of any new English-language show released since that point. Per Forbes, here’s the top 10:

1. Inventing Anna — 273.3 million hours
2. Maid — 227.6 million hours
3. The Sandman — 198 million hours
4. Vikings: Valhalla — 194 million hours
5. Sex/Life — 156.6 million hours
6. The Lincoln Lawyer — 153.2 million hours
7. Pieces of Her — 149.4 million hours
8. Stay Close — 144.9 million hours
9. Clickbait — 127.8 million hours
10. The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On — 102.2 million hours

If Netflix doesn’t renew The Sandman I will set fire to the rain

This list doesn’t include foreign language shows like Squid Game or returning shows like Stranger Things, both of which absolutely crushed it in the numbers. But The Sandman shows potential to reach those big leagues. The show held the #1 spot on the service for the first seven days after its release, and has been either in the #1 or #2 spot since. Netflix has a hit on its hands, and given how strong the rest of Gaiman’s comic is, there’s no reason to think future seasons wouldn’t do just as well or better.

And yet we haven’t heard about the show getting renewed. I like to think that these numbers make a second season more or less inevitable, but let’s play devil’s advocate for a second: The Sandman cost far more money to make than most Netflix series — it’s hard to skimp when you’re making a show about an eternal being who has all kinds of wild extra-dimensional journeys. Accordingly, the numbers would need to be higher than average to justify a season 2 renewal.

And I imagine these numbers hit that threshold! Let’s hope they have and that The Sandman doesn’t go the way of First Kill and get cancelled.

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