Ahead of The Sandman season 2, which is the show’s final season, co-showrunner Allan Heinberg reveals the team had to cut numerous scenes directly adapted from the comics, simply because they didn’t work on-screen.
Fans of Netflix’s The Sandman have been eagerly awaiting the next season for several years now. Season 1 debuted on Netflix in 2022. It took a couple of months for the streamer to renew the show, and then the entertainment industry was hit with strikes in 2023, halting progress even further. Now, however, almost 3 years after it debuted, the show’s second and final season is just around the corner.
At first, it seemed that Netflix would adapt the entire Sandman saga, leaving nothing behind — season 1 set up numerous future story arcs, such as A Game of You. But plans change, and the story will be concluded in 11 more episodes, plus a bonus spinoff tale following Death. Given that Netflix dealt Sandman a bad hand, giving the show only enough budget to see it through to conclusion in just one more season, co-showrunner Allan Heinberg tried immensely hard to keep the show true to the original, covering as many beloved stories as possible.
“We try to preserve as many of the comic book moments as possible and translate them in a way that feels like we’re fulfilling fan fantasies of what that would look like on film,” he told SFX Magazine.
In fact, Heinberg revealed that the cast and crew had filmed a lot of content adapted from the comic. However, many scenes were unfortunately cut because they didn’t translate well into the television medium:
“There have been plenty of times where I’ve actually tried to include too much from the comics: we film it, and you see it in the context of the cut and of the story, and you realise, ‘Yeah, nobody’s going to understand this.’ So there have been casualties already. But again, it’s bonus content for the website, and also the fans will love it because they can’t say we didn’t try!”
Regardless of what’s been cut, season 2 is still packed with tons of beloved tales from the comics. The main storylines of the season are Season of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake. Weaved into the narrative, too, are key stories A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Song of Orpheus, Thermidor, and so on.
The Sandman season 2 is being released on Netflix in two parts. Volume 1, consisting of the first 6 episodes, premieres on July 3. The conclusive 5-episode Volume 2 drops on July 24. There’s also a bonus episode, Death: The High Cost of Living, dropping on July 31.
