Finally, 'The Sandman' Has Been Renewed For Season 2

Josh Rosenberg

This post contains spoilers for the season one finale of The Sandman.

After just one month on Netflix, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman adaptation amassed nearly 350 million hours viewed. To commemorate The Sandman's second week at No. 1 on the Netflix Top 10 TV list, the series even shared a surprise two-part anthology episode. And yet somehow—even though everyone was already buckled up for more insane tales from the world of The Sandman—the streamer took four months to renew the dark fantasy series for Season Two.

The wait is finally over—tat least for news of the Season Two renewal—which was recently reported by Deadline. Just before the confirmation, DC Comics's official Twitter page accidentally leaked the since-deleted announcement, which reads: "The dream continues. [The Sandman] will return with new episodes based on multiple volumes of the Neil Gaiman graphic novel to explore even more stories of the Endless."

Posting to social media last month, Gaiman cited that the delay was because of a Netflix strategy built on binge-watching. However, no one from Netflix had confirmed this theory. He explained that the "data harvesting" (whatever that is!) had only just finished, and a potential renewal was "complicated by a lot of people not binge-watching it, but spreading it out, letting episodes sink in before watching the next." As Gaiman is very well aware, The Sandman Season One is nearly 10 hours long, which may explain why viewers aren't watching it all in one sitting. "Telling Netflix to hurry up won't make decisions happen faster," he stated.

The Sandman is also full of pretty dense lore, or "rich fare" as one commenter put it, especially for anyone experiencing it for the first time. "I’m watching it quite slowly. 3 eps then a week off. Couple more, then a break... Loving it though," they told Gaiman. The Sandman creator responded with a succinct "You are not alone in watching it slowly." The writer's comments arrived at the same time as rumors that Netflix wanted to abandon its binge model and switch to weekly releases.

The delay to renew what seemed like a very popular show perplexed fans for months. Netflix has certainly renewed far less-watched shows than The Sandman before, even putting the series' higher budget aside. While the fans waited, showrunner Allan Heinberg confirmed to EW that he was already holding writers' rooms to work on scripts for a subsequent batch of episodes. The dark fantasy series, over 30 years in the making, ended with several characters plotting to destroy the King of Dreams, and there's still a massive amount of source material from Neil Gaiman's work to explore, after all.

"We’ve got as many [seasons] as they’ll let us have," Heinberg told NME at the show's premiere in London. "If enough viewers show up, we can go for quite a long while. We want to do all of it, we want a spin-off miniseries. We’d love to make it for as long as they’ll have us.”

When Will The Sandman Return for Season Two?

Fingers crossed that The Sandman Season Two doesn't sit in development hell for another 30 years before we see more episodes. If we had to guess, now that Netflix has given fans the green light for a second season, they should begin production shortly. Neil Gaiman confirmed that "The rumours are true" on Twitter. "There are some astonishing stories waiting for Morpheus & the rest of them… Now it’s time to get back to work. There’s a family meal ahead... And Lucifer is waiting for Morpheus to return to Hell."

What Happened in The Sandman Bonus Episode?

The anthology episode ran an hour long and followed two one-shot stories from The Sandman comics. "A Dream of A Thousand Cats" is an animated short, while the Melissanthi Mahut-starring "Calliope" is a live-action tale about a writer who captures the famous Muse for inspiration. Sandra Oh, James McAvoy, and David Tennant also provide notable voice acting roles, with McAvoy returning to Neil Gaiman's fantasy series after he voiced Dream in the official audiobook adaptation.

What Will Happen in The Sandman Season Two?

The 10 episodes of Season One covered just 16 issues of Sandman's original 75-issue run. And the next installment of the Sandman graphic novel series, titled Season of Mists, is largely considered Neil Gaiman's finest work on The Sandman. (How's that for a tease!?)

Dream's meddlesome family members will have a larger role in the episodes to come, as well as Gwendoline Christie's Lucifer, who is working up something truly diabolic.

"The end of episode one, if we move forward, is Dream saying to Matthew, 'I'm going to Hell and I may not come back,'" Heinberg teased. "So then episode two begins with the rematch between Dream and Lucifer. It's so juicy! I'm so looking forward to doing something entirely different with Gwendoline's look. I don't want to spoil the surprises for people who haven't read Season of Mists, but that's where Dream's trouble really begins."

Swiftly introduced characters, such as the demon lord Azazel (Roger Allam) and Nada (Deborah Oyelade), the woman imprisoned in Hell, will play more into the Season of Mists adaptation. Brand new characters will also need to be cast, including a whole pantheon of gods and demons. Like in Season One, it's also possible that The Sandman's second season could cover more than one graphic novel at a time and make room for the Game of You story to also be included.

"If we're able to do Game of You, we've got a lot of characters who aren't even human, who are talking animals, who I'm looking forward to meeting," Heinberg added. "Lenny Henry is so good as Martin Tenbones, and I can't wait for the audience to meet Wanda, Foxglove, and Hazel."

Following Rose Walker's quirky boarding house guests, the story would introduce Wanda (a prominent trans character in The Sandman), and loads of fantasy creatures that blend dreams and reality. Hopefully, now that the important concepts have been established, the creative team can go even nuttier with it.

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