Brief Episodes

I'm three more episodes in on season three of Sandman, episodes that basically cover the Brief Lives graphic novel in which Dream and his sister, Delirium, personification of delirium, set out on a road trip to find their missing brother, Destruction, who abandoned his role at some point before the events of the series. So the show skipped over the Game of You graphic novel, which is not very surprising since Dream only briefly appears in it and it's odd for a conventional television series to leave out the main character for several episodes. So I guess producer David S. Goyer decided to make this more of a conventional series. Characters from Game of You were introduced in season one like they were being set up for an adaptation of the volume so maybe there was a change of plan when Neil Gaiman was forced out of the writers' room.

One character from A Game of You does sort of appear in these episodes, though; Wanda, played by Indya Moore, whom Time named one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019. I guess I fall outside their sphere of influence because I'd never heard of them but they give a good, charismatic performances as someone with a completely different appearance and personality than the Wanda of the comics. Actually, this Wanda replaces a character called Ruby who was Dream and Delirium's driver in the waking world. I don't know why they thought it was so important to crowbar Wanda into this story. If they'd left her out, they could've left the door open for an adaptation of Game of You somewhere down the line.

Actress Esme Creed-Miles plays Delirium as generally dim, which I guess works, although she doesn't seem to change much in the brief scene where her mind clears.

The two begin searching for Destruction by looking up his old friends, the second of whom is Ishtar, formerly a goddess of sex and war, now a dancer at a strip club. She's played by Amber Rose Revah who played Madani on Punisher. She gives a decent performance but I wish they'd gotten a professional dancer who could've done something really special for the dance sequence that concludes her story. The makers of the show did get someone who could sing to play Orpheus, an actor named Ruairi O'Connor, and his song to Hades and Persephone is genuinely effective.

I'm still mostly enjoying the series. The Sandman is available on Netflix.