It is one of the great surprises of the year, a series that faced the challenge of adapting an iconic comic from the 90s. However, and against all odds, Netflix’s Sandman passed the litmus test and the public and critics praised adaptation of the Neil Gaiman classic. And in this context, the streaming platform surprised its audience with a very special gift.
On August 5, the 10 episodes that make up the first season of Sandman debuted. But the surprise was greater, when the platform premiered in the last few hours, an episode number eleven, which serves as an epilogue to the initial year of this fiction. The new installment consists of two stories entitled “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope.” And although for the fans of the series, the appearance of the episode was a novelty, the showrunner Allan Heinberg, expressed: “In the past, there were many hints about it. We got an order for 11 episodes, and if you go back and look at press releases, you can see that.”
David Goyer, screenwriter and one of the executive producers of the fiction, assured that the episode as a bonus was conceived by him together with Gaiman himself, and revealed: “Anyone who is familiar with the Sandman comic knows that there is a great lots of self-contained stories in the context of the original saga, and we were determined to adapt them. So when we presented the idea of the series, we proposed to make an eleventh episode that would deviate from the central plot, and that would serve to adapt some of those stories, but also as a way to send a love letter to the fans.
Later, Goyer concluded: “It was somewhat unconventional, but very much in tune with the spirit of Gaiman and his unconventional stage in that comic. And we had a lot of offers to adapt Sandman, but Netflix was the only one that agreed to produce a secret chapter, and that was one of the main reasons we went with them.”
Neil Gaiman
The first of the stories that make up the new episode, “A dream of a thousand cats”, is an animated story that revolves around the dreams of felines. The second, “Calíope”, focuses on a writer looking for inspiration and what happens when the muse that gives the story its title emerges. As a color fact, it should be noted that these stories include the names of artists of the caliber of James McAvoy, Sandra Oh, David Tennant, Derek Jacobi, Michael Sheen and even Neil Gaiman himself.
In reference to his comic, Gaiman assured that it is “an exquisite blend between modern myths and dark fantasies, where contemporary fiction, historical drama and ancient legend are perfectly intertwined. And he does so as he visits the people and places affected by Morpheus, the king of dreams, during his attempts to repair the cosmic and human mistakes he has made during his vast existence.”