It’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything, I didn’t get to watch anything new in a while. But now I’m back, with the gayest thing I have ever watched.
While I have read Good Omens and American Gods, and consider myself a fan of Neil Gaiman, I never got around to reading any of The Sandman comic books. When I heard about the new Netflix adaptation, I thought it’s about time I gave it go. I started the first episode and quickly decided I should read the comics first. And I tried to do so, but I only got about halfway through the first volume when I realized I can’t wait, and watched the series anyways.
I’m not kidding when I say this show exceeded any possible expectation that I had. I went in thinking, this will be good, I love me some magical realism, love Neil Gaiman. How did nobody tell me that this is so gay? I was caught off guard, and it’s the best surprise. Enough prologue, let’s talk about this show.
The general idea of The Sandman revolves around Morpheus/The Sandman/Dream of The Endless/King of Dreams. It starts with him being captured by a some sort of wizard, and kept in a cage for a hundred years before he manages to escape. He then starts to fix his deserted realm, The Dreaming, and retrieving his stolen tools. Along the season we encounter many characters — Lucifer, Death, witches, demons, humans, serial killers?, Dreams and Nightmares. I won’t go much further into the plot, it’s obviously great, Neil has been very involved in the production of the show, and it seems relatively loyal to the comic books.
I obviously have to talk about the best and most interesting choice — everything is gay. So many casual gays, lesbians, non-binary people, it’s amazing, and treated so casually! I love it.
It actually makes a lot of sense, many of the characters are some form of eternal beings, why should they have gender? Why should Lucifer be a man? Why should Desire be anything binary? Why would any immortal being be straight? This feels incredibly natural in the show, why would any of these things matter in the scale of eternity?
When it comes to the humans, it seems like they wanted to show the diversity of human experience, not by talking about it, or making it some story or tragedy. Simply by having a diverse cast, and a mix of identities, they mirror the world around us beautifully, without having anyone say anything about it.
I also had a lot of fun attempting to place all the fantastic actors, trying to remember where have I seen them before — Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones) as Lucifer, Jenna Coleman (Doctor Who, Victoria) as Johanna Constantine, Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Killing Eve, Why Women Kill and many more) as Death and of course David Thewlis (Lupin from Harry Potter!!!) as John Dee. Such an incredible cast, they all gave wonderful performances. I also can’t forget Tom Sturridge, who is truly a perfect Morpheus in my opinion.
Honorable mention to the crazy good CGI and SFX, everything seemed very realistic, especially the teeth in The Corinthian’s eyes. The amount of work that must’ve gone into the making of all the different realms and creatures, it’s mastery in action.
All in all, I really enjoyed watching this show, and now I’m going to read the comics while waiting for the next season. 5/5 obviously.
