Currently, Netflix’s The Sandman has become one of the most watched shows on the platform. The adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel is very loyal to the source material, while making some changes to the narrative to modernize it. In a recent interview, Gaiman spoke about the setup for a potential season two with the conflict between the Rulers of Hell and Dreaming.
The Sandman season one spoilers below!
One of the smaller changes from the comics to the show is that when Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) makes his way to Hell, rather than three co-rulers of Hell, it is just Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie) ruling in her majesty. This means that in “The Oldest Game” scene, rather than facing off against another character, it is directly Lucifer.
When discussing this change, Gaiman talked to Variety about the economy of the page versus real actors. “I kind of feel like every medium has its own economics,” he explained. “If you’re writing comics, you have an economy of page. You only have your 24 or 22 pages, your six panels per page, your 35 words per panel. Those are your economies. So everything is going to have to be folded into things. In making television, you have an economy of actors. You go, OK, I want an actor of this size. And if I’m going to put an actor of this size in this place, I have to give them something to do. And when I was bringing Lucifer on in the comic, I was going, OK, I’m going to have Lucifer there and I will have somebody else playing this game, and just watch Lucifer getting pissed. Because we know that Lucifer is going to be seriously destroyed and I want everybody going, ‘When is the rematch? When is the rematch?'”
He showered specific praise on Christie, who is a sublime towering Amazon in the role and managed to capture the Morningstar’s soft but dark underbelly. “When you’ve hired Gwendoline Christie because one, she is a ‘Sandman’ fan and she wants to play Lucifer and you are not going to argue with Gwendoline, and two, because you want her to play Lucifer. She’s 6’3″, 6’6″ in heels, and 7’5″ with wings. And you want her on the stage as much as possible. You go, well, we have this fabulous confrontation here.”
In addition, it sets things up for season two, covering Season of Mists, which will see Lucifer wanting revenge against Morpheus for publicly shaming her. Gaiman said he loves telling people who haven’t read up on Sandman that “everybody who’s ever read ‘Season of Mists’ knows how that’s going to work and you don’t. But that’s good because not everybody will have read ‘Season of Mists’ and this is going to be so much fun.”
And I can’t wait to see the renewal news and the speculation start again.
(via Variety, featured image: Netflix)
