The second and final season of Netflix’s The Sandman opens with Destiny (Adrian Lester), the eldest of the Endless, calling a family meeting. It’s a messy affair that involves a lot of the immortal siblings sniping at each other while complaining about how fractious they’ve become.
“The Endless dynamic mirrors sort of my own family dynamic, in that they’re not necessarily the people you would choose, but they are your family, and there is love there,” The Sandman showrunner Allan Heinberg told Polygon in a Zoom call. “If you are generous and you want to cultivate those relationships, it is within your power to do it.”
In the same spirit, Heinberg wanted to cultivate the relationship between Dream (Tom Sturridge) and a key character from the end of The Sandman comics, the most mysterious figure in the entire story. For that, he went to series author Neil Gaiman for permission to add some crucial context.
“It allowed us to go off-panel in terms of the comic book story,” Heinberg said. “I wanted to believe that here are the panels you didn’t get to see in the comic.”
[Ed. note: The rest of this article contains spoilers for the ending of The Sandman.]
The family gathering is a way for Destiny to execute his job of ensuring that things play out as they should, according to the book of fate he carries. Destiny sets in motion a Greek tragedy that ends with the death of his brother Dream because Dream runs afoul of the Fates in his quest to make amends for his callous treatment of the people he loves. But Heinberg asked Gaiman for permission to change a key aspect of the comics to make Dream’s fate feel a bit less inevitable, and said the author agreed with his idea for expanding on the story.
“The key with this arc was calling Neil up and saying ‘Are you OK with the back half of Destiny’s book being blank?’’ Heinberg said.
Because Dream’s fate isn’t written, Destiny makes it clear that while he will eventually die, how and when that happens will be determined by Dream’s actions. That uncertainty leads Dream and his allies on a quest to stop the forces aligned against him.
“Dream goes to his parents for help,” Heinberg said. “Dream goes to the Fates to see if he can bargain with them. These are all the things that [I] would do if I were caught in this situation. There’s not a stone I would leave unturned if my kingdom and my people and my realm depended on it. He’s that responsible. He’s that honorable.”
But Morpheus eventually realizes that the best thing he can do for the Dreaming is to transfer his power to an heir, Daniel Hall, the only human child ever conceived in the Dreaming. As soon as Morpheus dies, Daniel goes from being a baby to an immortal adult played by Interview with the Vampire star Jacob Anderson. Heinberg said casting Anderson was “a no-brainer.”
“The big surprise was meeting him and finding out that he’s a huge Sandman fan,” Heinberg said. “He knew exactly who Daniel was.”
Daniel is one of the most enigmatic characters in Gaiman’s comics, which don’t address what it means for one of the Endless to be reborn. Heinberg made things clearer in the series finale by drawing a parallel between Daniel and the remade nightmare The Corinthian, in that they are newborns who share some of their predecessors’ memories and nature.
“A lot of it was having to tell the actor, ‘You are not imitating the actor who is playing Dream, but he’s in there with you, if that makes sense,’ Heinberg said. “Jacob is such a fan of Tom’s, and such a student of the show, that you see him doing this incredible balancing act where he’s entirely himself, and also at times entirely Tom, and it’s all him. It’s all Jacob’s genius that he manages to pull it off without bringing your attention to it, without ever doing an imitation.”
Netflix told Heinberg that Daniel needed his own arc to define the show’s final episode, which only depicts Morpheus in a flashback. While most of the show’s supporting characters attend Morpheus’ funeral, Daniel becomes a sort of audience surrogate as he explores the limits of his new powers and tries to puzzle out his relationship to his mother, the denizens of the Dreaming, and the rest of the Endless.
“Our Daniel wants as many answers as everybody else does,” Heinberg said. “We sympathize with him, we love him, and as he moves into his new responsibilities, we move with him.”
The complete second season of The Sandman, episodes 1-11, are now streaming on Netflix. The bonus episode Death: The High Cost of Living will be released on July 31.