Now that Netflix’s The Sandman has been renewed, fans anxiously await any news about the next chapter in the series. Who will be cast as Dream’s sister Delirium? Which volumes of the original comics will new episodes cover? When is the release date? Recently, Mason Alexander Park, who plays Desire, shared some intriguing—yet ambiguous—information.
Park recently spoke at Fan Expo San Francisco. Although the con took place last November, Park’s comments are only now making their way to a wider audience online.
In the clip above, Park says that filming for the next batch of Sandman episodes will start in the summer of 2023. However, Park couches the announcement in some ambiguous comments about what form the new episodes will take.
“Netflix has not gone on record as calling it a season two … on purpose,” Park said. “There’s more Sandman coming in a really cool way, and it can take many forms … We’re going to tackle the next huge chunk of stories in however long that might take, and I’m really excited to share the format of what that might be with everybody eventually.”
Season 1 of The Sandman covered the first two volumes of Neil Gaiman’s comic series, Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House. However, a bonus episode, which was released as a surprise after all the other episodes, covered the first two self-contained stories in Volume 3, Dream Country. In the first story, “Calliope,” the muse Calliope is imprisoned by a human writer, and in the second, “A Dream of a Thousand Cats,” a kitten listens to an older cat describe her fateful meeting with Morpheus in a dream.
Self-contained stories like those, plus the various Sandman spin-offs that have come out over the years, could make for a more innovative format than a straightforward season 2. Plus, there are two stories in Dream Country that the Netflix series hasn’t covered yet: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in which Shakespeare and a troupe of actors performs for the real Auberon and Titania, and “Façade,” in which the DC superhero Element Girl longs for death.
In a December interview with Variety, Peter Friedlander, Netflix’s head of UCAN scripted TV, hinted at this approach but didn’t reveal much.
“There are decisions that haven’t been made, but we are considering batching approaches,” Friedlander said. “Everything’s on the table when it comes to Sandman. It’s an innovative show.”
Plus, there’s the fact that Netflix commonly releases all episodes of its TV seasons at once, which is a departure from the very idea of a “season.” This format could give Netflix room to release episodes in a way that strays even further from what viewers would call a season 2.
(featured image: Netflix)
