The Sandman (TV Series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about The Sandman (TV Series) are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Angst? What Angst?
    • Jed has had a rather shitty life. His abusive father refused to let him go with his mother and sister when Miranda demanded a divorce, using him as a pawn. When his father died, foster care shunted him to a couple that locks him in the basement as punishment for running away, where rats feast on him at night; it's implied that Barnaby beats him for various mishaps. Despite all this, Jed remains a chipper kid, especially when the Corinthian honors his promise that he's going to reunite the kid with his big sister Rose while keeping them safe, and Unity pulls strings so that Rose becomes Jed's legal guardian.
    • Rose also hasn't had a fun life. In the comics, her response to her two-book Trauma Conga Line was at first to deny that Gilbert wasn't a creation of Dream because he was her friend, or that Unity Kinkaid died to save Rose despite barely knowing her for a year. She later describes what happens to her as "Weird shit" while emotionless and depressed in The Kindly Ones. Her mother dies, leaving most of her money so Rose can have an apartment, and then her friend Judy is killed hours after making a video-call with Rose about a bad breakup. No one knows what happened in the diner except for Dream and John Dee, and neither wants to volunteer the information. Rose bears most of this stoically, focusing her limited resources on locating her brother Jed. She finds out someone murdered his foster parents just as she got a lead on his location, and the police are no help. A man she finds out later is a serial killer calls her to meet him at a convention to reunite with Jed, where one of the attendees nearly kills her and her brother. Oh, and she finds out she's an Apocalypse Maiden in the Dreaming who endangers all dreamers, a vortex that Dream will have to kill if she loses control of her powers, as she does in the season one finale. Rose accepts her fate with dignity, telling Dream that she's ready to save her friends; she cries when Unity ends up taking her place, the sole grief she shows about the past few months. It's implied that because Rose likes writing, her book on these happenings helped her cope with that much trauma and she remains an optimistic woman who takes comfort that Jed, Lyta, and Lyta's baby are safe.
    • Similarly, Calliope in the comic was a Broken Bird who spent her captivity dealing with two creeps that had their way with her per the old rules; she gets better after Dream secures her freedom but is nowhere near as happy as she was in the flashbacks at Orpheus's wedding, for understandable reasons. When she undergoes the same ordeal in the show, she remains a Defiant Captive, telling Richard Madoc bluntly that he may think he's better than Erasmus but if he truly was then he would free her and worship her, as the muses used to be worshipped, if he needs help for his new book. Despite being anguished that the Fates cannot help her, she plays The Long Game for four years and sends a distress call to Dream after seeing in the newspaper that the sleeping sickness has ended. She also specifies that she doesn't want Richard hurt; she wants her freedom, while Dream wants revenge on her behalf. What's more, once she is free, she tells Dream she wants to talk about what happened to their son, so they can grieve, but understands that he needs time before they can even clear the air. Calliope returns to the minds of mortals, to inspire them to be kinder than their predecessors. She's tough.
  • Cry for the Devil: John Dee isn't as much of a monster as he was in the comics, being a Justice League villain, but he still has a body count and compels the innocent diner residents to kill each other when he forces them to be honest with each other. Dream still pities him, genuinely warning John that the Ruby is affecting his senses because humans are not meant to have such power. His mother Ethel also admits that it's her fault John is this way, shortly before she pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to give him her amulet of protection.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Corinthian crossed this in the pilot by running away to Earth and starting a killing spree of the humans there. Dream lambasted him for the senseless waste of life.
    • Roderick crossed this not by keeping Dream captive, but by the sickening way that he abuses his son Alexander, physically and emotionally. He outright threatens to shoot him when Alex as a teen talks with Dream and shows sympathy for him. It reaches a breaking point where Alex outright says that if his brother Randall were alive, Randall would hate Roderick for the monster he is.
    • While it can be implied that all the serial killers that were at the convention count as this, there are several onscreen highlights:
      • The Good Doctor giggles as she shows how she got Corinthian's attention: by killing their waiter and taking his eyes. Rose sees in the Doctor's dreams that she gets sadistic pleasure out of poisoning patients while they're in the hospital and unable to protect themselves.
      • Fun Land outright confesses to Philip Sitz that he is a pedophile that uses a theme park to find his victims. Despite the rule of "We don't shit where we eat" and Corinthian establishing that young Jed is under his protection, Fun Land still goes after Jed when the latter comes to him for help after seeing the Corinthian assist in killing Philip. Then when the latter merely goes to hug Rose on seeing her, Fun Land tries outright grabbing him, hunting down Rose and Jed in the hotel lobby.
    • While Desire in this version is not a rapist, as Unity confirms that their "golden-eyed lover" met her in her dreams and she truly loved them, they crossed it by siring a child so Dream would have to kill a descendant and bring the fury of the Kindly Ones on them. When Dream confronts Desire about this, how Rose and Unity were innocent pawns in this scheme, Desire gloats that it nearly worked.
  • Rooting for the Empire: The one moment where Corinthian is not a straight-up supervillain is when Jed confides in him that Barnaby has a habit of hunting him down every time Jed runs away, and Barnaby will probably drive after them. Corinthian isn't worried about this detail because he killed Barnaby and Clarice, hiding the bodies from Jed, before telling Jed that he was going to reunite him with Rose. Mind that unlike the comics, Corinthian wasn't planning to kill Jed anyway, figuring it would be in his best interests to reunite Jed with Rose and use her powers to take down Dream. Here, he silently seethes on Jed's behalf, asking if he had to run away for his safety often. Corinthian also relates that he is also running from someone that wants to hurt him. Dream ends up having a good reason because he learns that Corinthian inspired a generation of serial killers, some who have a high body count.
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