What Gaiman Scandal? Producer Claims ‘Sandman’ Show Was Always Planned for Only 2 Seasons

Entertainment Weekly says TV/film producer Allen Heinberg (whom once wrote a few comics himself), in charge of the now-canceled Sandman adaptation, has addressed Neil Gaiman’s sexual abuse scandal, and insists the staff planned just two seasons all along. Interestingly enough, at the start of the article:

Much of The Sandman season 2 is about reclaiming the narrative. It’s true of Dream (Tom Sturridge). After the odyssey to retrieve his artifacts and restore his kingdom in the Netflix drama’s freshman go, the one known as Morpheus believes it’s business as usual, until his past mistakes, made across thousands of years, come back to haunt him.

“That’s the entirety of the second season: how to reckon his idea of who he is with who he was to all the people in his life,” Allan Heinberg, showrunner and executive producer, tells Entertainment Weekly. “Dream has a very secure narrative about who he is, what his story is, what other people have done to him, and what he’s done to them. But he’s the hero of that story. In season 2, he realizes, ‘Oh! I’m the bad guy in Nada’s [Deborah Oyelade] story, I’m the bad guy in Lyta’s [Razane Jammal] story, I’m the bad guy in my son’s story [Ruairi O’Connor as Orpheus]. And it rocks him.”

Good gosh, the description they give here is eerily reminiscent of how one could describe the Gaiman scandal. Did he oversee these particular teleplays in development? Real life certainly can be stranger than fiction. But seriously, a guy who doesn’t deliver sound punishment to fit the crime in issue 14 and 17 of the original comics series is a “hero”? I’m sorry, but that’s quite disputable, and there’s no “secure” narrative in that.

Reclaiming the narrative is true for the creatives, as well. Netflix’s January announcement that season 2 would also be the final season came at a time when several sexual misconduct allegations were made against Neil Gaiman, the co-creator of the original Sandman comics who also developed the series. The assumption was that the two events were related, since multiple other Gaiman projects were either delayed, reworked, or canceled entirely.

Heinberg sets the record straight: “It was a decision we made three years ago,” he says of season 2 being the final season.

Please. I realize these scandals are embarrassing, but all the same, sometimes it’s best to just admit that, with a scandal that serious emerging, it puts a whole cloud over the production, and leaves the production company with little choice but to end any further filming. In the next decade, these productions will surely be forgotten, and some who’ve seen them may reevaluate them too. They really aren’t worth the celluloid they’re filmed on, any more than the paper the comics were printed on.

Originally published here.