Netflix has (probably) ordered a second season of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman
A since-deleted tweet from the official DC Comics account seemed to confirm that the Tom Sturridge-starring show would be coming back for a second season
Aux News The Sandman
Three months after releasing the first season of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman onto the streaming airwaves—i.e., enough time for people to start asking questions about whether the show would be getting the kind of slam-dunk renewal you might associate with this sort of prestige project—Netflix has apparently moved toward ordering a second season. Sort, of anyway: Per Deadline, the DC Comics Twitter page apparently issued a statement today announcing a second season for the series, only to then quickly delete it. Whoops!
Sandman stars Tom Sturridge as the titular Man O’ Sand, a.k.a. Dream of the Endless, who spends most of the show’s first season recovering from an ill-advised effort by some opportunistic mystics to lock him away from the world. The series co-stars Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Dream’s altogether more cheerful sister, Death, plus Boyd Holbrook as one of the most vicious of the nightmares that escape Dream’s kingdom while he’s indisposed.
The series received mixed review, trending positive, from critics, who dinged it for a bit too much faithfulness to Gaiman’s original comics, but had nice things to say about the performances. The series was also touted, in the usual way, by Netflix itself, which claimed that the show remained its most-watched original program for several weeks after its release. All of which made it a little odd that Netflix has been very quiet about its future—outside the release of a bonus episode a couple of weeks after the initial release—to the point that Gaiman has had to smack down fake tweets on social media claiming the series had been canceled. (While also admitting that the series’ high cost makes renewal less automatic than one might hope.)
Even now, Netflix has declined to comment officially on a renewal; it’s not clear whether the streamer is waiting for some coordinated announcement that got screwed up by the deleted tweet, or if there’s still some question about the show’s future that’s up in the air.