Netflix Drops A Surprise 11th ‘Sandman’ Episode, Two Weeks Later

Well this is a weird one. Once fans noticed that clips from apparently unaired stories of The Sandman had gone online, they wondered if we’d be treated to some sort of Sandman Christmas special, or if we were just seeing snippets of season 2 early.

Turns out, neither was quite right, and now those clips are online in the form of one final episode spanning two standalone stories, airing two weeks after the initial premiere of the show.

The eleventh episode, Dream of a Thousand Cats/Calliope, is online now, with Netflix tagging the thumbnail with a “new episode” notification, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before in this context.

These are two comic-based stories that apparently were filmed as part of season 1, but they couldn’t figure out quite how to fit the 30 minute tales into the overall structure of the season, so they simply made them their own thing.

A Dream of a Thousand Cats is animated, a story about a cat telling the tale of how they met the Dream Lord, and features voicework from James McAvoy, Sandra Oh and even Neil Gaiman himself.

Calliope stars Doctor Who’s Arthur Darville and is about a writer who enslaves Calliope in order to make better creative works. You can kind of see why these episodes weren’t included in the base show, as they just feel too separate from everything else. There were some standalone-ish episodes in the season 1 of course like the 24/7 diner episode, but they were still pretty plugged into the overall storyline.

I have to assume the decision was made to air this 11th episode two weeks later so the show could end on a true “finale” note with episode 10, as I can see it being confusing if instead the last episode was an animated cat adventure and something starring a Doctor Who actor. It does make sense why they did it this way.

It also reinforces how unique Sandman is as a property, as all of season 1 was blending together these somewhat disparate arcs into a cohesive whole. We still have not gotten an official announcement of season 2 yet, but I still believe that’s coming based on how the show has performed thus far. It was #1 for its entire first week, and it’s been consistently #2 after Never Have I Ever ever since.

So, one more Sandman to go, even if you’ve finished season 1 already. I’m going to watch today and report back how this standalone episode feels compared to the others.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.