ELSEWHERE

I genuinely don't remember how Dream gets himself out of this one, though I assume the solution is another 'How could you possibly underestimate the power and influence of the fucking Endless??'

That said this crack in Dream's armor is really well done, and should definitely set things up for the series climax

I feel like they're doing Lucienne a bit better than they did in the first season, maybe they were as annoyed with fandom interpretations of the character as I was. Or maybe I built up how badly they did Lucienne in my head because I was influenced by those interpretations. Either way she's not annoying me as much now (except for her first line in the first episode, what the fuck. But that was just bad writing, not her character.)

Does Dream's estate have thin walls???

I mean I guess the walls don't really exist, so,,,

I am pretty sure this story line is where the Nemesis is

I really, really want a fan to do an edit of this series that just gives Dream his starry-void-eyes

Oh we are getting the Midsummer issue?

I love Robin's mask

Don't fuckin' talk during the play, rude

This solution just feels like it's perpetuating a cycle

Nada is under his protection but fuck Chorizon I guess

Yeah this really feels like Dream decided by not making a decision, but that's not like, out of character for him. Another set-piece for the climax

Oooh I remember what's going on here but I don't remember the details. I look forward to being surprised

Ooo good effects on the shape shifting

This episode feels really long, and like it's had five different endings

I am pretty sure Lucifer was on a less... English... looking beach but I might be wrong

A couple of lines in this have gotten an actual laugh out of me

This episode is all about misdirection and it's very interesting, thematically

Yeah I am almost certain Lucifer was spending their retirement in like Miami or something. I guess they didn't have the budget, though a tropical beach feels pretty easy to fake

Brother she's been tortured for 10,000 years did you really think she'd be happy to see you??

Okay so like, I don't really want to examine this series through a lens of Gaiman's now-known (and suspected) behaviours but like, there really isn't enough judgment, in the narrative, of Dream for damning a woman to an eternity of torture because she wouldn't fuck him. Like obviously it's being framed as a bad thing, but not like, as bad as it should be? It's being treated as Dream made a poor choice and needs to fix this mistake and not as like, a deep, deep character flaw that he would ever even consider that an appropriate action, and even now does not consider it an atrocious way to behave, he has to be convinced to do anything about it. We could make an argument for this being a distance between himself and mortal concerns, maybe an inability to conceive of how long eternity is for a non-Endless, but like. The narrative is kind of treating this as him keying Nada's car and needing to apologise for it. It's, uh, an interesting framework from a man who has now been accused of, coercing women into having sex with him due to the power he had over their housing and/or finances

Like the issue is the 'for eternity' and not the ultimatum itself, right? Like the narrative is treating it like if he had said 'Love me or I will damn you to hell for ten years' it would have been fine

I do love that she is not even a little bit grateful for him saving her. Like yeah fuck that guy.

Dream just cannot avoid stepping on these rakes

Brother!! Let her go!!!

BROTHER!!! LET HER GO!!!!

Dream's actor is very good at some very subtle acting

That was a pretty good episode! A Lot happening in it and it felt very long as a consequence, but I enjoyed it

I think this episode skips things ahead right up to the final arc, but I'm not positive. I'm pretty sure that's when Delirium visits Dream

Interesting stuff happening with the lighting in this scene

They are doing Delirium's eyes but they're reeeaaal subtle

Occurring to me that I don't think we've seen Despair's hook at all and that's another sadly missing element to her character. Don't want to depict self-harm maybe? But like, she's Despair.

No one's going to know why Despair's sigil is a weird little box (or even whose it is aside from process of elimination)

Alright fuckin' Lucienne is doing the thing again

Dog actor is doing.... okay. The mouth movement isn't terrible

oh Wanda?

'I mean a stupid accident??' My dude you wandered into an active construction zone what did you think was going to happen

'You got a lifetime' does stick with me from the original

Good acting from the son

The chauffeur sitting with Dream and Delirium is a bit weird

Eeyy Wanda! Very interested in how they've updated this for modern audiences. Wanda is a trans woman, whose story at the time it was written was very progressive but has come under some scrutiny by more recent readers. I'm almost positive they've combined her character with a different character here

Those curtains are gonna catch on fire

What did I tell you

Honestly every thing Gaiman has done with a sex goddess just reminds me of the bit in American Gods where a sex goddess absorbs a man into her vagina

The dance is weird and not working for me. Feels like it's from a cheap 90s TV show

Oh. So they fuckin'. Just killed her off. Okay.

I really don't think this one can be blamed on anyone trying to keep Dream from Destruction, like Ishtar just straight up did all of this herself

That episode went a lot faster, a lot less to cram in. I do feel like we're missing out on a lot of like, context, behind the characters, I'll be curious to see how ash feels about any of it

I have no idea how many episodes there are in this season and I'm intentionally not finding out

Not enough context for the characters, and also I don't think that it's super clear how the Endless, like, work. But that I think ash wouldn't be a good gauge on for general audiences because this is the kind of thing that ash just gets

I was alright with Destruction's actor in the last episode but he is Not working for me here

Ohhhh my god this is so gross

Choosing to believe there's a BDSM club in Delirium's realm because she thinks it'll make Dream uncomfortable and not because the creators think you have to be crazy to be into BDSM

Or that they don't know the difference between BDSM and like, drug parties

Delirium in particular should get more costume changes that they're giving her

Hey look at that Dream's learned how to apologise. Did it much faster than he did in the comics

Oh that son, right

So at this point I'm starting to think that we're just cutting out that Despair is not the original Despair (and, tangentially, that Delirium was not originally Delirium), and if so that raises some questions about what they're doing with the ending that's making me a bit hmmm

Oh delightfully ominous

Oh boy a shitty CGI snake

Kind of hilarious to follow up 'I can't bring people back from the dead, that's not how things work' immediately with a myth that's very famously about bringing someone back from the dead

Not, like, successfully, but it is about that

Even when trying to comfort his grieving son Dream's face looks like he's standing in a very gross public bathroom

'I've lived my whole life!' you're like four

'Have you spoken to [Death] about [bringing your wife back from the dead]' 'Can she help me??' Bruh

Wow in this one Orpheus basically turns around for no reason. What a dipshit

That is the fakest decapitated head I've ever seen

God Dream is such an asshole

As he should be

Oh we are getting some Delirium backstory

Like a tiny smidge, but still. And I don't think the namedrop is going to mean much to non-fans

Another kind of slow one! There's been real mix in quality on these episodes. I think it would have benefited heavily from getting to be three seasons, but of course if that had happened then the news about Gaiman would have come out before it was finished, so. For the best, I guess

Constantine!! Yay! I was wondering if we'd see her again

Oh my god poor Orpheus

Concerned that someone watching this without having read the comics will take from it that Constantine is another immortal/very-old-person, I don't think they're making it at all clear that this Johanna is her ancestor. I'm also a little concerned that I somehow missed Constantine being immortal/a very-old-person in the comics, but if so then that's a deviation between Sandman and Hellblazer (we know John Constantine's birthday and he is not 200 years old). I'm almost positive it's explicit in the comics that this is an ancestor

Yeah okay -- I am not looking things up as I'm watching this but I decided to here because I thought she was also Johanna in this comic, and it turns out that is indeed the case. This one isn't a gender-swap, it's clear that it's John Constantine's ancestor and not John Constantine himself because she's a woman

I have heard that one of the reasons Constantine is a woman in the series is due to difficulty getting the rights to portray John Constantine in it (which seems strange to me, but legal issues often do), so if that's the case I understand why they then wouldn't gender-swap the ancestor Constantine, though if Johanna Constantine is distinct enough from John Constantine then I'm not sure why an eighteenth-century John Constantine wouldn't be. But it would have been interesting to do it that way

Maybe they just didn't want to cast and pay for another actor

Anyway they definitely needed to make the situation more clear imo, that this Constantine and the Constantine we saw last season are two different people. Assuming they still are in this adaptation

It's always really hard to portray a like, a supernaturally good artwork in television/movies, like for example Orpheus' singing being so movingly beautiful that Hades and Persephone let him take Eurydice out of the underworld. They're doing an Okay job with that in this, I think

I'm so worried about her gloves

This doesn't have anything to do with this episode except that I'm thinking about how easily the Endless, and especially Dream, punish people by cutting them off and it's so weird for Dream to have sent Nada to hell for eternity. Like Hell isn't his purview, why is that what he went for. He's done multiple horrific dream-related punishments in the series, why Hell?

Okay yeah that's confirmation the Constantines are different people. That's going to be weird and confusing for an average viewer, imo

God it must be so boring to be Orpheus

Honestly just don't think Destruction is Big enough

His like, jovialness is also coming across as disingenuous to me. He needs to be more boisterous. This Destruction is a guy who shit-talks you behind your back

Dream getting all high and mighty because Destruction Destroyed

Like he's not wrong, but like.

Fakeass grapes

I do Not think sending Barnabas to live with Sheogorath Delirium is a good idea

I swing pretty back and forth on what I think of Delirium's portrayal, but largely I think she's being played as pretty flatly confused and needs to be played more, changeable. You know, crazy

Loving these Fates

Episode over! Another alright one, pretty well paced

Things should really be kicking off, now, all the pieces are in place for the climax

Man Destiny can't tell you what to do, he's Destiny. That's not how Destiny works

Dream looks very small in that chair somehow

That was the least homoerotic kiss I've ever seen between two men

Zero chemistry between them

I thought british people pronounced the 't' in valet

'Children are an inconvenient consequence of love' thankfully someone invented condoms

Fucked up family dynamics, that really make sense of how the Endless treat each other

Oh my god poor Nuala. Shunted back and forth between kingdoms like no one actually wants her

What fuckin' "home"

Dream, once a fuck always a fuck. The once and future fuck

This episode feels so long

Very funny for Netflix, which provides video exclusively as a streamed service, to include a spray of glittery powder in the credit sequence of a series it has produced, which notoriously ruins the quality of videos streamed over the internet

Okay yeah, that was another slow one, very just setting up the pieces and no real action

Frankly Cluracan is not wrong

Mopey Dream

Oh good we are getting some time with Despair, maybe they'll shoehorn in something about her history here

Robin's actor is playing his character way too creepy

Oh nice it's relevant that Lucienne is a librarian

Woo Constantine

'Have you read it?' 'I am in it' not an answer to the question

'She's had her three questions, she's wasted them' Okay but you only answered one of them

Robin has more chemistry with the baby than with his supposed lover

To be fair I think that's more Loki's fault, I don't think his actor has ever in his life been attracted to a man

Nice little reinforcement of Dream's flaws, that are going to -- currently are -- leading to his downfall

Woag ass

Boy is Hob lucky they let him stay 40 forever

It would really be something to live long enough to see gods die

Right that's what it was, Dream made a bet with Death, Hob wasn't the one wagering at all

I think by now we should be getting Lyta's side of things and I'm definitely feeling its absence. Certainly there should be something else going on to break up the monotony of Dream's private little funeral march

I don't fuckin remember who this is

'Is this real or is it a dream?' Yes

Oh okay I thought it might be Burgess. Could absolutely have been clearer

That scene was kind of dumb

Lucienne does a lot of looking at people sideways

Christ

The credit sequence for this season is not as good as the first season. I bet it's not done by the cover artist