Netflix releases bonus episode of The Sandman

Well, this is quite a surprise (and a rare example of the sort of cool thing you can pull off with a streaming platform that you couldn’t do on regular TV): Netflix just released another episode of The Sandman. The show just premiered on Netflix a few weeks ago, but it has since proven itself to be a big hit on the service—a press release notes that it’s been the number one TV show in English since it premiered and that it has been viewed for “196.98 million hours,” which at least does sound like a lot—so this new episode is being billed as a “bonus” for “fans who have been long-awaiting additional stories from The Sandman universe.”

That last bit might sting for Stranger Things or Witcher fans who have had to wait years in between seasons, but it is just one episode. It’s not like Netflix will keep doing this every two weeks, regularly releasing new episodes of The Sandman until it has a full second season before anyone even realizes… but that would be pretty cool.

Until then, Sandman fans will have to make do with this one, which is an adaptation of two stories from the Sandman comics: “A Dream Of A Thousand Cats” and “Calliope.” The former is an animated segment featuring a wild assemblage of voice actors (some of which are meta-Gaiman nods), including Sandra Oh, Joe Lycett, David Tennant, Michael Sheen, James McAvoy, and Neil Gaiman himself. Tennant and Sheen star in Prime Video’s adaptation of Good Omens (based on a book co-written by Gaiman), McAvoy played Morpheus in Audible’s very good audiobook version of The Sandman, and Neil Gaiman is… Neil Gaiman.

The latter part of the two-part episode, “Calliope,” stars Melissanthi Mahut in the title role and Arthur Darvill (the great Rory Pond) as Richard Madoc, plus Derek Jacobi, Nina Wadia, Souad Faress, and Dinita Gohil. Both parts of the episode will most likely be standalone stories, which is probably why they’re being released separately from the rest of The Sandman, as that’s what they were in the original comics. Still, Tom Sturridge’s Dream will stop by and there will be important Sandman themes to dig into.

The 11th episode of Sandman’s 10-episode first season is available today on Netflix. Steal a magic ruby and maybe you can manipulate reality enough to turn this into a regular thing. (Don’t steal the ruby, it doesn’t work out well for any of those people.)