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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
25
Mixed:
14
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Sep 5, 2025
Season 2 Review:
For now, let’s revel in six hours of topflight comics-to-screen mythmaking that rivals “Watchmen” or “The Boys” for complexity, intelligence and imagination capture. It’s mesmerizing in the best way, a dark dream that satisfies so thoroughly you loathe to call it nightmarish.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Netflix’s The Sandman isn’t perfect. But, goodness, it’s so, so much more than I ever thought I’d get. Fans of the original will inevitably find things to nitpick—and to be fair, there are some fairly significant changes to the source material—but the heart of the comics story is here, with many scenes that look as though they were lifted straight from the pages of specific issues, and an incredible ensemble cast that manages to embrace even the weirdest of twists with open hearts.
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Screen RantAug 29, 2025
Season 2 Review:
One of my favorite parts of The Sandman season 2 is how much more lore is chronicled and how much time Dream spends with his family, in whatever form this takes. While it would have been fun to see more of Death (Kirby), one of the most level-headed of Dreams' family, learning more about his other siblings was interesting and kept The Sandman season 2 fresh.
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RogerEbert.comJul 3, 2025
Season 2 Review:
As the series begins to challenge the very nature of the Lord of Dreams, it also challenges its audience with a show that becomes increasingly provocative with each episode. By the end of Volume 1, “The Sandman” has proved that despite this being a path to the end of the series, it will end with a bang instead of a whimper.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The season metes out its material with an economical approach (no episode runs over 54 minutes) and smart narrative structure. ... With enough forward-facing momentum and the might of Gaiman’s ever-complicating lore behind, Netflix’s “The Sandman” justifies its existence — and the potential for so much more story to come — time and time again.
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Radio TimesAug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The first season of this Netflix adaptation is extremely faithful to the source material – from delirious diners to "cereal" conventions – bringing the world of the esteemed comic book into live-action with appropriate visual flair. Any imperfections, of which there are several, are easily forgiven when the show gets so much right.
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Jul 3, 2025
Season 2 Review:
To its credit, the show manages to shape these disparate pieces into a fairly straightforward, linear story, one that’s probably a bit easier for viewers to follow than parts of its first season might have been. .... In the end, however, this season (and, really, this show) belongs to Tom Sturridge.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
“The Sandman” stands out visually. A parade of fine actors — Joely Richardson, Charles Dance, Stephen Fry — weave in and out, with David Thewlis particularly strong as an escaped mental patient. Still, the show remains comic-book thin on character and plot conveniences are everywhere. “The Sandman” dreams of being more than it is, but it’s still pretty good.
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ColliderJul 3, 2025
Season 2 Review:
This first set of episodes does make strong strides in character and world development, substantially expands our understanding of The Endless and the various powers that populate the world, and provides top-notch character work. It isn't The Sandman's overall best, but it might ultimately be a key component of an exceptional finale after the second part drops.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It’s an enjoyable enough series, with picturesque CG settings (think Asgard meets Rivendell for Dream’s castle), a likable cast and an occasionally disarming sense of curiosity about the human condition. But it’s too trapped in glass to let itself run truly free into the dream world it wants to conjure.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It follows the comic closely and hits all of the good stuff from the comic, so it is at least a pretty good version of that story—because, again, that story on its own is good. But the transition to live-action doesn’t really reveal anything new about Morpheus or his siblings or their shifting perspectives on the lives of mortals or why we should watch, not read, this all unfold.
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The PlaylistAug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It doesn’t help “The Sandman” for so many of its best ideas to feel like echoes of a story that’s already been told. And it doesn’t help that the show seems surprisingly afraid to get truly grisly. This should be a very adult show in terms of violent visions, but it seems toned down to appeal to a wider audience like so much product in the Content Era tends to be. So what does work about “The Sandman”? After some early season uncertainty, Sturridge settles into his role nicely.
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Jul 3, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 is more heavily serialized, unfurling a longer arc about the search for a missing sibling. Whether that carries the same appeal might depend on a viewer’s affection for Dream’s eccentric clan, combined with a curiosity about the politics and jurisdictions of the show’s various independent realms.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
In many ways, the 10 episodes that are now streaming on Netflix represent the closest thing possible to bringing Gaiman’s earliest Sandman comics to life. And in others, it illustrates why it has taken so long, and why, sometimes, the great stories are not best served by remaining in the original forms.
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IndieWireAug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It’s so focused on teasing this character or that realm that it forgets to craft a commanding through-line, fully abandons any discernible arc for its lead, and falls back on confounding dream logic to keep things moving forward. “The Sandman” isn’t an arduous watch, but absent a beating heart and a focused mind, it is easily forgotten.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The overall results are so shaggy and uneven, with characters and incidents from the comics that add little to the story on screen, that the reasons to adapt “The Sandman” never exceed the reasons not to have done so. ... The rocky performances and wavering accents among the secondary cast members parallel the disappointingly unimaginative (and not particularly lavish) special effects.
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Aug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The portrait The Sandman provides feels as paint-by-numbers as any other generated by the Netflix algorithm. The series rushes so quickly toward a kinder, cuddlier version of its titular character that his transformation first feels curiously weightless, and finally emotionally hollow — an ephemera evaporating in the daylight, or perhaps yet another example of beloved IP getting lost in the queue.
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RogerEbert.comAug 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
There’s no evidence that any care or consideration was given to appealing to people who aren’t already diehard fans of the source material. And as for those diehards. ... more than a few of them will grow weary of just how unimaginative—how sadly undreamt about—this series of dreams really is.
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