Last Thurday, Netflix announced its 2025 release slate, which included mention of the second season of The Sandman, though without a specific premiere date. On Friday, Variety broke the news that the second season will be the series’ last.
Showrunner Allan Heinberg told Variety, “The Sandman series has always been focused exclusively on Dream’s story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season.” The Sandman’s renewal, which came three months after its premiere, was a bit weird: Netflix didn’t call it “season two,” but “a continuation of The Sandman world,” and didn’t specify either an episode count or which volumes of the graphic novel series would be adapted.
The cancellation comes in the wake of multiple sexual assault allegations about author Neil Gaiman. In July of 2024, the British outlet Tortoise began publishing a series of podcasts in which several women spoke of their experiences with the author. Last month, Vulture published “There Is No Safe Word” in which eight women (including four from the Tortoise podcast) detailed their own experiences.
After the Tortoise pice, production on another Gaiman adaptation, Good Omens, was put on hold. A month later, Prime Video announced that the show’s third season would be a single 90-minute movie, finished without continued involvement from Gaiman. Last fall, Disney also put its Graveyard Book adaptation on pause.
In the weeks since the Vulture piece, Dark Horse Comics ended its relationship with Gaiman, and a Coraline musical that was set to begin in April in the UK was canceled. The New York Times also reported that “In an internal memo to the staff of W.W. Norton earlier this month, the company’s president said that the publishing company would no longer work with Mr. Gaiman and would not take on any future projects from him.”
The announcement of The Sandman‘s cancelation does not mention any of the allegations, which Gaiman has denied.
