Netflix's Sandman Season 1: An unexpected delight.

You know when I first heard about the Sandman, it was from an Audiobook advertisement which interested excited and confused me... My only exposure to the name Sandman before that, was from the Spider-Man villain.

And the first time I saw that guy was in Spiderman 3.

And...

Well I have a confession to make...

As a Kid Spider-Man 3 kind of scared me...

And my parents hated it because their only exposure to it was me getting scared and those Venom masks that the nearby store gave for free with... something... I dunno I was just a kid.

Not helping the fact was that I used those masks to make my Hot-Wheels set into a "monster ride".

Parents... especially Asian ones... don't like that kind of stuff...

So all that to say eventually when I finally got access to Sandman through some cartoon and learned how goofy he could actually be, I was... surprised...but suffices to say I had to fight for that knowledge, and when you fight for something you get attached to it.

So when I heard about this Audiobook and saw the sand, I was like... someone needs to learn to come up with better names...

They chose this name specifically do it would be confused with the Spiderman Villain.

I at that point had no idea that there was this entire Myth/Folklore in Europe about a supposed Sandman who sprinkles sand into the eyes of sleeping children.... which... ouch.

Like there are better ways to put children to sleep you know... Ah who am I kidding, most parents scare their kids with a Monster that is going to come and eat them... which... does that ever work?

Regardless, there is some logic to this myth, you see when people get up, they often have Rheum stuck in their eyes, which is why you must wash them when you wake, in todays modern scientific world we know why that is, but back then... you guessed it the Sand-Man.

And while yes the Sandman as a Character in DC first appeared in 1989 where as Marvel's Sandman appeared in 1963, given the existence of this Folklore figure, I believe it is safe to say that these are two independent creations which just happen to share the same mistake just by chance.

But regardless, I was stubborn and in spite of the many praises and advertisements I saw for this Audiobook I didn't check it out, even though I was intrigued, this was also partly due to the fact that I hadn't quite gotten into Audiobooks yet.

All this to say, when I heard that Netflix was making an Adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, I went in blind, I had no Idea who this guy was or what to expect, if anything I was kind of turned off by the whole thing? In spite of the Gothic and Dark nature of the whole thing being extremely alluring to me(obviously).

Reasons for all this are stated above...

And so I started the series...

And I was surprised to hear a narration from a character called [Dream].

And I was even more confused when the very next scene brought us into a cult which was giving me some serious "eyes wide shut" vibe...

Except there was no kinky sex...

Just the cult stuff...

And Kinky murder...

That is a phrase I just wrote...

I had... no clue whether to be turned on or horrified with what I was seeing... but moving past that...

We meet a man called Roderick Burgess who lost his son recently in Gallipoli and another called Mr. Sykes who lost his son Edmund when his destroyer sank last week off Jutland.

Since they were joined as such in their grief, Mr. Sykes decided to give to Mr. Burgess, an artifact from a museum in spite of his initial rejection to this idea, the Magdalene Grimoire now belongs to Roderick Burgess...

And he intends to use it to summon, and imprison death.

Unfortunately for the main character Dream, one of his subjects, a rogue nightmare called the Corinthian decided this would be the perfect moment to start preying on Mortals in the living world, violating his jurisdiction and putting countless mortals in Danger.

So Dream decides to go to the waking world himself to deal with this matter on his own.

And decides the best way to deal with this Rogue is to "unmake him" as he calls it.

It is precisely at this moment that the Order of Ancient Mysteries led by Roderick Burgess decided to begin their ritual to summon Death...

However, it seems that this ritual will work on any of the endless currently in the "Waking World"

It just so happens that most of the time Death is present on the Mortal plane because of course she is.

Yes death is a she, we will get to it.

And I imagine a part of the spell is trying to locate the most recent death as that is where Death is going to be...

And considering that Corinthian just killed someone right before Dream found him, it appears the spell glitched as... there was a death... and one of the endless was there to attend to the matter...

Dream just got unlucky...

I wonder if the fact that he is younger(and possibly less powerful therefore) to death has anything to do with it...

But regardless, they caught dream, disrobed him, and took his tools, trapping him in a pentagram.

The Corinthian, sensing a way to escape his fate, helps Roderick with keeping Dream trapped for as long as he can, he says a glass case must be made to contain his physical form, two people must always be at watch, and never sleep in his presence, or he will get to them.

So they must take forced march Tablets taken by trench soldiers to prevent them from sleeping...

God this frame looks like a beautiful painting doesn't it.

Now, you might think why am I spending so much time on the beginning moments of the first episode when looking at a ten episode season, and there is good reason for that.

These beginning moments establish a lot of who Dream is, and how he deals with things and how that might potentially be a problem for him going forwards.

Dream is one of the endless, and he takes his duties very seriously often going personally on jobs that most monarchs would send a servant or a soldier to do, Dream is also overconfident, he believes in his power and so he often misses some crucial cautionary steps, but he is not happy go lucky, he does not throw caution to the wind as they say.

And given that he spends most of the first episode without uttering a single word, I will say that Dream is determined, because for a hundred years he was trapped there, and he spoke not a word, even when his actual captor was dead and his son offered to let him go, if he simply agreed to not harm them.

How could he, when the one offering him the freedom had killed his beloved Raven, Jessamy.

Sure, he had done it for the fear of his Father who abused him, and treated him like absolute trash to the point of everyone else thinking that Randall, the son he lost was his only one...

How could Roderick be proud of a Son who is gay?

It is true that Alex Burgess did not just kill Jessamy, he also Killed Roderick, allowing him to offer Dream his freedom....

But it appears that much like us, the endless are often ruled by emotion, some of them simply deny it.

And so it was, that Dream could not put the greater good before his own personal vendetta as the world continued to suffer from Encephalitis Lethargica, a disease caused by his absence where people who sleep would refuse to wake, or some who were unable to sleep but were perpetually in a dream like state.

All of this, the result of Dreams and Nightmares running rogue in the Absence of their ruler.

If dream had simply forgiven Alex, understanding their common struggle of being caged(one physically and one by abuse) then he would have been out, potentially sixty to seventy years earlier... who knows...

Encephalitis Lethargica, btw, is also a real disease, and its symptoms are quite accurately described in the show, with some creative license of course.

And funny thing is, there was a mass outbreak of the disease right around the time that Dream was captured according to the show.

So this is one of those, taking a real thing and tying it into the real life stories,

But regardless of all that, a century passes and Alex still tries to speak with dream until deciding to give up, now an old man, Alex needs a wheel chair, in which he is hauled by his lover and former gardener Paul.

This wheel chair is what leaves the binding circle broken and allows Dream to finally escape.

After a century of being trapped, Dream lures Alex as a cat and then gives him the gift of eternal sleep as a punishment.

Dream claims to stick to his rules, to be bound by his duties, and yet he acts purely out of vengeance here, but as we will see later, that isn't always necessarily a bad thing.

But for now, there are bigger worries, Dream has been gone for over a century, his kingdom left abandoned and in ruin, kingdoms do not tend to survive the absence of their monarch, especially without a replacement.

This is a first of Dream, his entire existence is defined by his Kingdom, his duties, to be gone for so long, to escape purely by chance, expecting a warm welcome, only to see everyone having left you and your kingdom, without a care for its state...

It is definitely something....

But Dreams are necessary, for the waking world to have meaning, there must be a world when they sleep.

The collective unconscious must survive.

But Dream isn't strong enough, and neither will he call upon his siblings.

He says it is because they do not interfere in each others matters, but the truth hidden behind his cold words is that he is hurt not a single one came to his aid.

In fact one of them might have caused it.

Here we see the true problem that dream must confront, his duties, his realm, his rules are an excuse, to hide his inner feelings, and to occupy his mind, lest it dwell on how he really feels, he is lonely, and often due to his self imposed sense of pride, and also due to the very same rules that he uses as a shield.

So he must do this by himself, even though he doesn't actually need to, but we will get to that later.

Dream decides to call upon the Hecate, also known as the Fates, those who ask a high price, one he is not able to pay in his current state, and who speak in riddles, something which does not help at the moment, also not helping is that the only way to regain strength at the moment is to absorb some of his creation that remains intact...

This means a dream must be sacrificed.

And for a monarch who makes his subjects his entire reason for existing, this isn't easy.

But ultimately, Gregory's sacrifice is necessary for the Dreaming to survive(is it?)

The Hecate come difficult, as the Dream-lord must travel through dreams to gain gifts to give them.

In the end they only give him enough to claim the sand, as it is in London, with a Constantine.

In the books, John, in the show Johanna, which in the comics is actually an ancestor to John, but seeing that Johanna plays a much larger role in Dream's journey, and they will probably have to cast a lady for her... because she is one... I guess they just thought it would be simpler for casting and understanding to make both of them Johanna.

And for some reason having heard the audio book I like Johanna better?

Idk.

Maybe it is my love for Clara Oswald from Doctor who, maybe its the actor, maybe its the characterization, maybe its all three.

For context Jenna Coleman played a Doctor who Companion called Clara Oswin Oswald, who was the main companion for the short time I watched the show on T.V.

Then Netflix happened and no one watched T.V. anymore, but I digress.

Johanna in the show is a sorceress and exorcist, just like in the comics, and she has Dream's pouch of Sand, or rather she had it, and left it with her ex Rachel.

Here we begin to learn the why of Dream's evolution.

Sure, he was forced to go through a century of confinement and that gave him time to reflect, the confinement filled him with Anger and a need for Vengeance.

He wanted his tools back, he told himself that he was doing this because as he says in his words:

His absence caused the outbreak of a harmful disease, and left his realm in ruins, no one to look after his subjects.

He convinced himself that he was doing this for others, for his duties.

When he visits Rachel with Johanna, Johanna is invited in by Rachel, in a manner that is surprisingly seductive for someone who was left one night by her ex suddenly and hasn't heard from that ex in six months.

Dream comes in even though he was asked to stay outside, he is forced to.

The sand had made that place a heaven for nightmares and rogue dreams, and the stray sand would cast a spell on all those who would come in.

Johanna was caught in this spell and saw a dream image of her Ex, who has since been using the sand to cope with her pain.

And this is how that left her:

The sand is not meant for mortals, and it can be very addicting to mortals, and like any addiction, it is triggered by undue stress, in this case due to Johana leaving.

It seems Rachel used the sand at first just to get by, but as time went by, she used it more and more, letting her body deteriorate to the point that now the only thing keeping her alive is the sand.

Feeling Justified in his quest to "save humanity" he simply takes the sand and gets ready to leave, knowing it will kill her.

Johanna is someone who routinely fights Demons both literal and Metaphorical.

As such she is probably one of the few people who can get away with saying things like this, or even gather the courage to say things like this to Dream, and as a human her opinion on this matter is more valid than anyone else who is powerful enough to stand up to dream and speak as an equal.

Dream is also in a unique state at this point, as someone who has met with her ancestor, he has a unique respect for Johanna and an intimate understanding of her mental state, while also feeling indebted as a vast majority of her pain is from her nightmares and another vast majority is from his Sand.

Being trapped and feeling vulnerable has given him perspective in feeling weak, and while he is acting normally here, being told that he treats everyone like he would Roderick Burgess makes him realize the inconsistency and problem with his approach.

And while he can't "help" her, as in he cannot save her life.

There is one thing he can do.

Exactly what his myth says he does.

Pour sand on her eyes to make her dream come true.

Constantine gets a last boon from the dream lord so the nightmare won't trouble her any longer and Dream is off to hell.

It was at this point that I realized that the Sandman is a DC character, because Hell is ruled by the first among the Fallen.

None other than Lucifer Morningstar.

Well yes... But also no.

I mean the character that Tom Ellis's Lucifer is based on is the same character that this Lucifer Morningstar is based on.

But pretty much everything about them is different.

For one the Comic's Lucifer is significantly powerful compared to Ellis's version, he is neigh on Omnipotent, second in power only to the Presence(God).

Amenadiel doesn't exist and neither do Chloe and Dan and all the police Gang.

The Comic's Lucifer doesn't interfere in Human Matters as much as Tom's Lucifer does.

And this Lucifer is much closer to the comic's version of the Morningstar, except of course in the comics while Lucifer is Genderless, the appearance is mostly male presenting, but in the show the cast is a woman.

I mean Lucifer was based on David Bowie, who is known for his Gender non conformity, so does it matter? Eh...

But regardless, what is without a doubt is that Lucifer's battle with Morpheus and subsequent hatred/rivalry is well set up, and so is his upcoming confrontation with Nada, someone he confined to hell for ten thousand years... Why? We will learn.

The battle in particular was something unexpected for me, and therein lies one of the many strengths of this show, in a sense it does everything different from every other show in existence, and yet it does it so well that there is no denying how great it is.

And it is also during this battle that I found out Lucifer Morningstar was a DC character...

You know because of the Anti-Life.

Yes, it would seem that Anti Life is found DeSaad

And we will stop at nothing to possess it.

Damn I wish Zack Snyder's Justice League was the one we saw in theatres.

And yes, I also did not Know that the Morningstar was a DC character.

But here we are.

Speaking of DC, the episode right after this is very much a proof of it's connection to DC, but at the same time it is proof of why this works as a much better more self contained story.

You see in the Comics, the upcoming Villain who has the third Dream tool, the Ruby, the gem with the power to bring Dreams to reality, is called John Dee or Doctor Destiny.

He is a Justice League villain currently in the Arkham Asylum.

There is also the small thing that John's Mother isn't exactly Ethel Cripps and John lives in the Arkham Asylum according to the comics.

And neither does the Corinthian play as big of a role in his escape as he does in this case.

But that is why I like Netflix's story better, because in this version Dream's decision to spare John comes out of pure kindness, in the comics, it is so that he may continue to berate the Justice League.

But apart from all that, since John Dee/Burgess is completely a self contained character there is no pre conceived notions about who he is or what he must do, he is as one would say, just a normal guy who is caught up in a whirlpool not of his own creation.

The Dream-stone is not meant for mortals, and it was stolen from the Dream King before John was even conceived, Roderick Burgess is the one who hurt John, Ethel Cripps stole it to escape a toxic and abusive environment, and John was a kid who used the Stone to defend himself, at least that is what is implied.

Today of course he is an Adult, aged almost more than his mother, who has stayed young due to the Amulet of Protection.

Him just being another guy and not a famous Justice league villain makes him as a character even more interesting.

In a sense John Burgess is still the same kid who wants the world to be the way he thinks is justified, he wants a world free of lies, free of pretention, where everyone can be their true selves, without a care.

And when looked at from a certain angle, John Burgess is not a bad person, in the sense that he truly believes what he is doing is for the best, this is exemplified when he gives up the Amulet of protection to Rosemary, a random woman who picks him up and drops him to where the Ruby is.

This is after the fact that Rosemary had betrayed him previously, causing the death of a shopkeeper due to the Amulet of protection.

At this point he has every reason to hate this person for breaking his trust, but he realizes that at her heart she is a good person, and the world needs more of her, not less.

But the unfortunate truth is, the good seldom survive in this world.

But being the kid he is, John goes to a hotel and begins to "change the world".

Now it may just be me, but it seems this episode and its root story is inspired from the Acali Raft experiment.

The Acali Raft was an attempt by a researcher known as Santiago Genoves to recreate the Rat Utopia experiment.

For those who don't know what that is, the idea was to confine a bunch of rats in a limited space with unlimited food and other resources, and while this lead to consistent population growth initially, as time went on, there was intense societal breakdown, endless violence and neglect of the young while everyone acted hyper sexually.

Now, this experiment was repeated with Monkeys... but not with Humans.

Santiago Genoves was once caught in a plane Hi jack and that excited him so much that he became fascinated with the idea of violence from a purely... academic point of view.

Now believing that he can recreate this experiment for Humans and "make an intense scientific breakthrough" (I am not quoting him) this man set up the experiment with an almost equal number of men and women, (four each as far as I know) and made sure that the all the women were married and with children because... well in the monkey experiment the monkeys fought the most over females with the ability to have children...

I... I can see a few problems with that experiment.

The thing is though, none of this actually happened and every one just became best buds, and if you read into the experiment's details, you will soon realize that this is mainly because human beings don't exactly jump to action on their first most base instinct, they often take time and go through things rationally.

However, for my dear John Dee, not revealing your innermost darkest desires and choosing not to act on them for the sake of "politeness" or "societal norms" is "lying" and so he does in a sense reduce everyone in that hotel, and pretty much all over the world to their base instincts, applying a child's view of good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, and confines the few people in the diner to the diner it self.

He does it mostly (in my opinion) because like Santiago he wishes to observe what transpires, he is interested in these few stories.

You see unlike Santiago, John Burgess has the ability to bring out the darkness in people, and so as a result, we see the Rat Utopia recreated, There are six people in the Diner save John, Bette the waitress/aspiring writer, Marsh the head chef(I assume) Kate, a CEO of a company called Vanguard and her husband Gary, Judy a lesbian woman reeling from a recent break fight with her significant other, and Mark, a young man looking to interview at Vanguard.

Bette seems to think she has a way with people, in fact she set Kate and Gary up, unfortunately she also holds some regressive opinions about Judy's current relationship, thinking that any man would have her, and so she tries to set up Mark with her.

She also believes she is currently dating Marsh, I say believes because... you'll see.

She is also a single mother with a child called Bernard and takes time from her work to write when she can.

As John begins to work his Magic, small cracks begin to appear, like for example, Marsh and Bette getting Gary's Order "wrong" because he had ordered a Salad at the behest of his wife, but he really wanted the double decker, Kate being a CEO acts very controlling towards her husband who secretly resents her for it and especially resents being the trophy husband.

Judy keeps trying to reach her lover "Donna" but inside she knows its no use, Donna is gone, they had a fight and Judy struck her.

people try to leave but are pulled back by some sort of desire to stay, Bette confides her desire to have him over this weekend but he reveals that the only reason he keeps visiting is to get to Bernard who he likes to sleep with regularly, and who "knows what he is doing" thank god its at least not Pedophilia because Bernard while Bette's child is 22.

I mean knowing how dark this show gets later... yup..

It is at this point that it is revealed that Bette like so many conservatives is actually a closeted Lesbian/Bisexual and that her concern and desire to set up Judy with a man is actually just her wanting her happiness cause of course she fancies her.

Mark is interviewed by Kate as a ruse to get him to be her new Husband, and it turns out they are a perfect fit, as Kate likes to give orders and Mark likes to be submissive receiving them, Gary and marsh hit it off both sharing a lot of obnoxious traits, and as was seen in the Utopia, in the beginning, everything is changing for the better as the lies are removed and people become more honest about themselves.

And then, Gary gives in to his anger and attacks Mark for sleeping with his wife, forcing Mark to kill Gary.

You would think Kate would like this given how much she badmouthed him, but it turns out she did care for him.

All of this goes down and John Just sits there, eating ice cream, showing what a truly overgrown baby he is, thing is he does see through a lot of non sense, like calling his "hospital" for what it is, a prison, he rightfully recognizes that Rosemary is someone who deserves to be protected, he has the emotional intelligence to recognize that Gary and Kate do not like each other, that Bette wants more from her life than she already has.

There is a lot of power in keeping the childlike dreams alive, after all if you have seen Superman vs the Elite, you will realize that that is what makes superman better than the rest of us, that he believes in his dreams, he believes in the best of humanity.

But whereas Superman comes at this from a hopeful angle, trying hi best to make his dream a reality by leading through experience, John Burgess takes a more cynical approach, he forces everyone to come out with the truth in their hearts, whether they want to or not, he resents the world for being full of liars and in essence he takes it too far.

Dream explains it best.

It is a grave Irony that in his quest to make his dream come true, John took away the dreams of others.

And while the Dream lord puts up a fight, ultimately the power of the Ruby is too much and John takes away all of Dream's power, and crushes the Ruby, seemingly ending his life.

Until...

Damn, talk about being ripped straight from the comic panels.

The Sandman then thinks for a brief moment to kill this man who has caused him so much trouble, but he takes a page from John's book and realizes that the main reason for all this, the Dream stone, came to him through no fault of his own.

And so he sets John Back to his bed, bidding him to sleep well.

The destruction of the mortal realm is unparalleled to anything, but Dreams reveals that John merely revealed wounds that were hidden but never healed.

tomorrow the rebuilding will begin, in this realm and in the Dreaming.

But now that the king of Dreams is back, an age of rogue nightmares and Dreams going about the place destroying everything was coming to an end.

And tonight at least...

Now a lesser show would have ended here, and perhaps this would be a good ending to a season, in fact this would have been great, but the thing is, this is not a lesser show, just because Dream has merely gained his power back.

And while a lot of Hero's Journey stories use this sort of event to tie a neat little bow around the whole thing, in reality, the real trouble begins afterwards.