“The Kindly Ones,” the third episode of the second half of season 2 of The Sandman, confirms that they’re really trying to put a little bit of everything into these episodes—considering they’re the last ones.
And sure, sometimes it feels a bit too much, like the story is too condensed and at the same time dragging in certain places. Pacing is always going to be an issue when you try to have too much. But sometimes one of those bits is just so brilliant that it makes you forget everything else, and that’s exactly how I felt about the buddy comedy subplot featuring Johanna Constantine and the Corinthian.
At first, of course, Johanna is not particularly happy to be accompanied in her investigation by a nightmare who used to kill people and eat their eyes, no matter how much Dream says this Corinthian is different from the previous one. But then she begrudgingly accepts, and thus begins all the buddy comedy plot points we know and love.
It turns out that this Corinthian really is different from his previous form. He has less murderous instincts, for starters, and he’s more relaxed—the perfect, perfect counterpart to Johanna’s sharp wits and reckless decisions. As a seasoned shipper, I have to admit I could feel my senses tingling ever since their very first scene on the bus at the beginning of the episode, and I hoped the show would sort of nod to this as well.
Instead, the Corinthian spends most of his time on screen tampering with Johanna’s more aggressive instincts and aggressively flirting with her, which is much more than what I hoped for. I just loved it. I almost want a spinoff based only on their day-to-day adventures as they solve supernatural crimes together.
Johanna and the Corinthian also prove to be really good at their job, since they manage to locate Loki and Puck, who had some sort of affair with the previous Corinthian and seems like he wouldn’t mind a round two. Loki deploys his considerable arsenal of tricks to avoid being captured, but there’s nothing he can do when Odin and Thor—family, again, always—show up. He’s dragged off back to his eternal prison, and Johanna and the Corinthian remain with Daniel, now a god and much more similar to Dream than he is to his mother, whom Johanna eventually decides better be taken to the Dreaming where he’ll be safe.
Here, Johanna and the Corinthian part, even though he tries to convince her to stay. I loved the little bit of her touching Lady Johanna’s diary and realizing that Dream might have given her the same thing he had given her ancestor—a great love, even though not without its complications.
In the meantime, Lyta Hall is indeed speeding up Dream’s final reckoning with the Kindly Ones. She meets them in their hut—which is a place where I normally wouldn’t mind hanging out, if I have to be completely honest—and first asks them to kill Dream to avenge her son, whom she still believes is dead because of him. The Kindly Ones, though, tell her that they can’t do anything about that—no family blood was spilled. But Dream did spill family blood on another occasion, and they could avenge that, if only Lyta asked them. And ask them she does, which makes me believe that next episode will really bring about the final battle—even though there would still be an episode and then the bonus episode to come.
A special note for the truly gorgeous soundtrack that plays as Lady Nuala awakes in Faerie, which is the perfect amount of whimsical and tense, and for just how great Delirium is. She lives in her own world, appears somewhat randomly, and has gorgeous costumes. Truly everything you could possibly want from a character with her narrative premises. And she’s on the hunt for her dog, which is always a worthy cause—even though Dream has slightly more pressing matters to attend to this time.
Episode Grade: A-
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