The second and final season of The Sandman, based on the comic book series by Neil Gaiman, drops in just a couple weeks. The first season covered the first two volumes in the comic. The second will take things all the way to the end, which means we're skipping over a lot of material. I'm a little bummed we won't get to see the full tale adapted for the screen, but the trailer looks pretty promising. Watch below:
The trailer comes complete with a bevy of new, surreal images. Things begin in the Dreaming, the realm ruled over by our lead character Dream, aka Morpheus, aka the Sandman, aka a lot of other things (Tom Sturridge); when you're an eternal being who's been around since before the dawn of time, you pick up a lot of names:
Season 2 will adapt some of the most iconic moments from the comics, including Dream's affair with a woman named Nada (Umulisa Gahiga), a mortal whom he took as a lover many years ago. The Endless aren't supposed to do that, but Dream has always been a brooding romantic and keeps getting into relationships with mortals even though they tend to end spectacularly badly, and his relationship with Nada ended worse than most.
Nada comes up at an Endless family dinner to which Dream invites his siblings, including Despair (Donna Preston):
Without giving away too much, because of Dream, Nada ended up in Hell. We visited Hell in season 1. It's ruled over by Lucifer, played with delicious menace by Game of Thrones veteran Gwendoline Christie. She'll be back for season 2:
Dream is an emotional person, or immortal god-like totem, or whatever he is. But he also tries to take responsibility for his actions. In the second episode, he'll go to Hell:
The next image is from the third episode: Nuala (Ann Skelly) is a member of the faerie folk who comes to the Dreaming to work for Morpheus.
Dream's home is guarded by a dragon, a griffin and a pegasus, which beats the hell out of SimpliSafe. This is a very long shot, but you can see that there's someone dangling from the dragon's mouth: that would be Dream's sister Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles). In the comics, the two of them go on a journey to find their lost brother Destruction. I remember this exact moment from the comics, so it looks like that journey will go down in the fourth episode:
In Episode 5, we'll get an extended flashback to ancient, mythological Greece, where we'll meet Dream's son Orpheus.
If you're familiar with Greek myth, you know how Orpheus' story ends. The Sandman reveals what happens after.
We get glimpses of some of Dream's other siblings here, dressed in their best ancient Greek attire. Say hello to Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste)...
...and Desire (Mason Alexander Park);
Moving onto Episode 6, Doctor Who veteran Jenna Coleman will play Lady Johanna, an ancestor of Johanna Constantine, whom we met in the first season.
Barry Sloane will appear as Dream's brother Destruction, who abandoned his duties as one of the Endless some time ago. We'll find out why:
Finally, we have images from Episode 7. Gilbert (Stephen Fry) and Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong) are both denizens of the Dreaming who serve Dream:
Things will get very dicey in the Dreaming towards the end of the season. We see little glimpses of the final conflict in the trailer, with the Fates stirring up trouble and Merv Pumpkinhead (Mark Hamill) picking up a sub machine gun. I could describe what's happening in detail, but when the images are this strange, I think it's more fun to just let them wash over you.
New episodes of The Sandman will drop in three chunks. The first six episodes will appear on Netflix on July 3, the next five on July 24, and a final episode of July 31. Looking at the trailer and these images, I have hope that the season will do right by the comics, even if it'll be cutting some things out.
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