Sandman

Rating: 7.5/10

Summary: Netflix's The Sandman is at once a triumph and a missed opportunity. When it's good, it's among the most ambitious, soulful, and visually striking shows the platform has ever produced. But its ambition is also its undoing: fragmented structure, uneven pacing, and indulgence in weaker subplots prevent it from reaching the greatness it clearly aims for. That said, standout performances, moments of real brilliance, and a commitment to artistic vision make this a show worth dreaming about-even if it sometimes feels like a dream slipping through your fingers.

Full Review: The Sandman has always been a nearly impossible thing to adapt. The original comics were sprawling, philosophical, and structurally chaotic in a way that worked on the page because it was meant to be dreamlike. The show embraces that messiness with real heart and craft, but still ends up stumbling in familiar ways: pacing, coherence, and a lack of focus on the best material.

Tom Sturridge is phenomenal as Morpheus. He nails the cold distance and fragile dignity of the character without flattening him into a cliché. His arc-of rediscovering empathy, of being forced to change in order to survive-should be the spine of the show. And sometimes it is. But the structure undercuts that journey. His development resets from arc to arc, and the emotional throughline gets buried under too many detours.

That's really the core issue. The show is full of detours, and too many of them drag. Season 1 starts strong, dips badly in its back half, and doesn't quite recover until the Hob Gadling and Death episodes, which are standout gems. Season 2 flows a little better, but brings back several plots and characters-like Rose Walker and the Lyta Hall subplot-that already felt like dead weight the first time around. Lyta Hall in particular overstays its welcome. Even though it becomes important later, it still feels like the show is meandering when it could be soaring.

This is clearest in Season 2's indulgence with characters like Loki and Puck. Their presence feels cartoonish, indulgent, and distractingly silly. It's reminiscent of that era of Netflix greenlighting content during the COVID boom: quirky without purpose, loud without clarity. Same with the serial killer convention. It's a great concept, and the comics pulled it off with an eerie surrealism. But in the show, it comes off as goofy, tonally jarring, and undercuts the horror that should be there.

Some of this could have been solved with better pacing. The show often confuses slow burn with slow drag. It's not that audiences disliked the themes-death, grief, identity, hope, power-they just hated how long it took to get to them. Important arcs are compressed while irrelevant subplots are allowed to sprawl. This imbalance makes the whole series feel lopsided. It needed more seasons, more breathing room, and stronger editorial choices.

Structurally, the show is fragmented. It feels like four half-seasons awkwardly stitched into two. Characters come and go, some never to return. Rose Walker's entire arc in Season 1 revolves around her missing brother, who isn't even mentioned in Season 2. Plotlines start and vanish. Others never quite connect. It all feels just a little unfinished.

And yet, when the show clicks, it's unlike anything else. The still moments-the quiet magic-are where it shines. Hob through the centuries. Death guiding souls with gentle certainty. Morpheus wandering the Dreaming, trying to mend the intangible. The show excels when it trusts itself to be about ideas. It dares to be strange, melancholic, and poetic. That alone sets it apart from 90% of what's on TV.

There are also things it gets very right in terms of representation. The storyline involving a trans character whose death is interpreted by their parents as divine punishment is deeply affecting-and the show wisely centres the people who actually knew them, who honour their identity with grace and love. These are the moments when representation feels honest, powerful, and earned.

But not every choice lands. The show sometimes goes overboard in making every character's identity overt, regardless of whether it serves the narrative. The comics were quietly radical-they made space for queer, trans, and nonbinary characters without declaring it. The show often does the opposite: it highlights these identities in ways that feel more performative than natural. Representation becomes aesthetic rather than lived-in, and the messaging starts to feel didactic.

And while much of the casting is spot-on-Boyd Holbrook as the Corinthian is electric, Kirby Howell-Baptiste brings real warmth to Death, and Jenna Coleman is excellent as Joanna Constantine-there are missed opportunities. Gwendoline Christie is commanding as Lucifer, but her portrayal lacks the eerie androgynous glamour of the Bowie-inspired comic version. This Lucifer is too straightforward. Desire, too, loses something in the translation from page to screen. Mason Alexander Park brings presence, but the character lacks the uncanny, shifting quality that made them so compelling in the comics.

Visually, though, the show is stunning. The Dreaming looks great, the CGI generally holds up, and the surreal tone is consistent throughout. It's dark but not bleak, weird but not incoherent. The design choices are thoughtful, and the aesthetic has real coherence-something few fantasy shows manage.

In the end, The Sandman is a work of ambition that almost rises to its own standard. It has the pieces of something great: a strong lead, a rich mythology, bold themes, and real visual imagination. But its structural flaws, indulgent pacing, and uneven focus keep it from reaching the heights it could have.

Still, it's a rare thing: a show that dares to be literary, metaphorical, and idiosyncratic in a television landscape built for speed and simplicity. For all its flaws, The Sandman is worth watching-maybe even worth dreaming about.

When "The Sandman" first came out on Netflix, I fell instantly and absolutely in love with everything in the series... the plot was good and strong (even innovative!), the characters were well constructed and the world was built with substance, with a lot of layers. It was indeed a breath of fresh air when it comes to fantasy series or movies that have been coming out this past few years.

The script itself, having a lot of philosophy in it, was also something that attracted me because you could tell the lines were not forced at all. Overall, the series were a 10 out of 10.

But then, season 2 came out this year.

I was excited to see again another story happen in this fantastic world that was built but then... it was just a big, huge, disappointement. The plot is going side ways with no plausible justification on why "x" thing happens in the context of the story and the characters are full with lines that dont add anything relevant and seem unnatural for a certain character to say or act that way.

To make matters worse, how does it make sense to start throwing new characters every episode just to fill holes, when they add almost nothing to the general narrative?

The ending of season 2, was the cherry on top of a badly baked cake. I mean, it just splashes on our faces that they wanted to end the series as soon as possible but didnt even bother to build something that had quality and felt like it was thought over like the first season. It really made me angry to see such good characters (and amazing actors!!!), plot and story just thrown away to the trash literally to end something fast.

It's very sad because then people wonder why we dont have any good series or films with a fresh point of view being made and coming out like we had in the 90s/2000s, for example. Write better and dont waste great potential like in "The Sandman" season 2.

The good: I haven't finished the comics yet but I appreciate that the show attempts to stay close to the source material. There have been a staggering number of adaptations where writers insert their own ambitions into the project and it ends up looking nothing like the original work.

I also appreciate the casting for Morpheus. The actor embodies the character beautifully and is a joy to watch.

The production quality of the show is great and I like the pacing and flow of the story.

The bad: The forced diversity is awful. It's neither subtle nor organic and as a person of colour, it seems like western media thinks diversity is just black and white. Strong, black women lecturing a god and showing the error of his ways is about as ham-fisted as it gets.

Overall, I do enjoy most of this show and I would recommend it. It's just a shame that politics would mar what could have been a great show. Alas, it's just alright.

As someone who has read the comics - The Absolute Sandman 1-4 and Absolute Death proudly sit on my shelf - I approached this adaptation with cautious optimism.

Season 1 blew those doubts away. From the extraordinary visuals to Tom Sturridge's hauntingly precise embodiment of Dream, it struck the delicate balance of fitting television while never betraying Neil Gaiman's original vision. Episodes like The Sound of Her Wings reminded me why the material was always considered "unfilmable", and why that was wrong.

Season 2 deepened the world. Season of Mists delivered scope, The Song of Orpheus merged Greek myth with tragic inevitability, and the introduction of Destruction and Delirium proved the Endless could thrive on screen. Even side players like Johanna Constantine and the Corinthian elevated the ensemble. For much of the season, it was intelligent, faithful, and frankly cinematic television at its best.

And then came the stumble. The closing arc in Ep 11, and then a needless Ep 12, felt indulgent and oddly slight... a missed opportunity to end with the grace and gravitas the comics achieved. Having loved Season 1 and nearly all of Season 2, this final note was jarringly flat, as if the production lost sight of its own rhythm.

Still, across two seasons, The Sandman remains one of the most ambitious and visually stunning comic adaptations ever attempted. Even with its uneven close, it captured the heart of Gaiman's mythos and gave us performances (Sturridge especially) that deserve to be remembered.

That Netflix has now cancelled it only underlines the melancholy: a dream realised, but cut short.

I thought the show was really great the first episodes, dark setting and interesting characters. Somewhere along the way I grew bored by the show however. I will probably watch the second season if it ever comes out since I am a fan of the novels. This was entertaining but the stark difference to how it started and how it ended made it less interesting for me. I hope the next season will focus on what made the first episodes so good. I think maybe sandmand will have a hard time to compete with all the upcoming franchises coming out this fall, I hope I am wrong though!

On another note, 600 characters requirement for a short user review is too damn long!