(tbh, I love The Sandman. Despite everything I still think it's a wonderful piece of television. I despise that it ended only after two seasons because of Gaiman, but I would have kept watching it forever)
But.
I felt cheated by the end, I felt Morpheus himself was cheated by a fate that changed according to what the plot wanted and how close it wanted to adhere to the comics. And here's the problem: in the comics IT MAKES FUCKING SENSE. It's still devastating but it makes sense. There is the weight of inevitability, a sense of tragic completeness — Morpheus couldn't escape what he was, couldn't change, and deep down, he didn't want to. That made his death feel like the natural end of a cosmic cycle, not a punishment.
But they changed his arc in the show.
They made him hopeful, cosumed by grief, yes, but unwilling to die, on the path to healing, especially towards the end, in the way he talks to Lucienne, how he gives Johanna and the Corinthian what he thinks he'll never have. He was emotionally complex in the comics too, but in the show you feel it more, his desires, his restraint, his vulnerability. They made him capable of growth and his end stopped making sense because of it — they changed his arc but not his death.
Right when he starts to believe, just faintly, that he isn’t alone, that maybe he can shape his own destiny, they have him killed. Honestly, it felt a punishment, a robbery even, while in the comics his death was meant to be cathartic. In the show it's only cruel.
What is even worse it's the timeline. It is stated that Daniel is 8 months old, which means by the end of S1 only 8 months have passed. So Dream only lived for about a year after escaping captivity. In that short time he confronts his past mistakes, makes impossible choices, grows into a better person, gets closure with his son, and finally realizes, only at the end, that there are people who love him even if Nada (well, she was right ofc) and his parents don't — only to take it all away. Right at the end, even after giving him the flickest shimmer of hope when he learns he can still shape his destiny.
They changed him too much to let him die as he does in the comics. It feels like the show couldn’t decide whether to stick to the comic or to honor the new emotional arc they had built. So they tried to do both but it didn't work, at least for me.
And honestly, I’m tired of this trope—the depressed, suicidal hero who gets a redemption arc only to die anyway. It sends a terrible message: that healing doesn’t matter, that change is too late, that some people are just doomed no matter what. We’ve seen enough of that.
If they were going to change Dream, they should’ve changed his ending too. Even subtly. Let Death give him a mortal life. Let him walk away into a new identity. Something. Anything other than turning hope into a trap.
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